Things seen in the grot. posted by lenin

2008 in glorious technicolour:

Labels: new year

The intelligence posted by lenin

Amira Hass, in a powerful article for Ha'aretz, writes:

This isn't the time to speak of ethics, but of precise intelligence. Whoever gave the instructions to send 100 of our planes, piloted by the best of our boys, to bomb and strafe enemy targets in Gaza is familiar with the many schools adjacent to those targets - especially police stations. He also knew that at exactly 11:30 A.M. on Saturday, during the surprise assault on the enemy, all the children of the Strip would be in the streets - half just having finished the morning shift at school, the others en route to the afternoon shift.

This is an important insight. Israel's control of the situation is immense. They have detailed intelligence, sattelite imagery (which they like to show off at press conferences), sophisticated guidance technology, etc. It has planned this assault for months in advance, and its leadership is ostentatiously proud of how all the branches of military and intelligence, from Shin Bet to the Southern Command, have gelled in this attack. If an assault on major public facilities is timed to coincide with children being in the streets, this is not accidental: it is intended to leave a number of children lying in their own blood, and terrorise others.

So far, we have been given the impression in media reports that the majority of those killed have been in some sense not civilians. The UN has suggested that of its estimate of 320 deadths, about 62 are civilians (see chart embedded in this news story). I had assumed that this was because the majority of those killed were policemen and, for some reason, we are all going along with Tel Aviv in not considering this a civilian profession. However! Apparently, I was under-estimating the creativity of the statisticians, for here's a weird thing (spotted by Keith): the UN's tally of the civilian dead "does not include civilian casualties who are men". There is no such thing as a civilian adult male in Gaza! According to this supposed scourge of Israel, any Gazan male with a bit of size on him is fair game.

Israeli power is, of course, extremely creative in determining the fields of law, morality and knowledge within which it operates. After all, when the IDF slaughtered women outside a mosque in plain view not only of the public but of the cameras, it was immediately explained by Israeli spokespeople and their apologists that the women were in fact part of a cunning Hamas military operation to stop morally upright Israeli men from killing morally degenerate Palestinian men. So, they were a legitimate target. And besides, it was hinted, why do they get to wear the veil? What are they hiding? So, if needs must, the very category of civilian, adult or child, male or female, can be conjured out of existence. And then Lt Gen Ashkenazi can come out to the podium and explain: "our intelligence shows that 1.5 million terrorists were eliminated today..."

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, Israel, zionism

A few notes on Hamas' military strategy posted by lenin

Clearly, Hamas are not the only group using Qassam rockets, but they are the dominant force in Gaza right now and the leading resistance force in Palestine as a whole, so the focus is rightly on them - or, more accurately, on the ‘Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the organisation. The other day I expressed some doubt that these rockets had much going for them as a means of resistance. My incomprehension of the tactic is hardly a good basis for making a proper evaluation of it, however. So, in the interests of at least coming to a rudimentary understanding, here are a few notes on the background.

Much of Hamas' current military strategy is based on training received from Hezbollah in the early 1990s. Prior to that, their range of tactics was quite crude, the weapons technology as primitive as a few knives. The expulsion of 415 Hamas members from Gaza following the First Intifada led to them being taken under Hezbollah's wing in southern Lebanon. There they acquired the means of resistance that eventually enabled Hezbollah to free (most of) southern Lebanon of Israeli occupation: the Katyusha rockets, suicide attacks and the kidnapping of opposing soldiers. When the exiled cadre were able to return to Gaza in 1993, they put those tactics to work.

They could measure the success of such means not only by the effect they had on Israeli opinion, but also on whether it improved their standing among Palestinians, especially in light of the serious deterioration of Fatah and the creeping death of the 'peace process' under which colonisation was proceeding apace. At the same time as Hamas was establishing itself as the ideological successor to one-state nationalism, it also announced itself as the bearer of popular armed struggle, asserting the seriousness of its position through successful attacks and raids. Its suicide attacks proved that poorly funded and armed Palestinian groups could inflict substantial casualties on IDF troops as well as 'soft targets', killing dozens in a single attack. Between 1993 and 1997, the first wave of Hamas' campaign, 20 suicide attacks killed 175 people. As Robert Pape has shown, Hamas attacks were sometimes effective in achieving limited, tactics goals, such as a partial withdrawal from Gaza in 1995, or the release of political prisoners. This didn't always happen: the 1997 attacks only produced a new wave of repression under Netanyahu, which was able to do some substantial, if temporary, damage to Hamas' political and military infrastructure.

Throughout the Second Intifada, from September 2000 to November 2006, Hamas combined all three methods: suicide attacks, the abduction of Israeli soldiers, and rocket attacks. Suicide attacks were sometimes co-ordinated with others groups such as Islamic Jihad or the PFLP, but mainly carried out independently of any other group. They were sometimes in retaliation for Israeli assassinations, but their supposed deterrent effect was mainly intended to undercut support for Israel's repression more generally, as well as to destroy infrastructure, attack settler-colonists, and kill troops where possible. The abduction of soldiers included, obviously, the successful capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit, whom we are all supposed to feel sorry for. And the rockets have been used periodically, largely in response to renewed Israeli offensives. Like suicide bomb belts, they are cheap and easy to make. Unlike suicide bombs, they don't need live humans attached as mobile guidance systems. Of course, these were not the only methods used. Hamas repeatedly demonstrated a knack for peace offensives, as when in June 2003, at the height of Israel's repression, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad called a 45 day unilateral armistice.

Hamas has not claimed responsibility for a suicide attack since January 2005, when four people were killed at a Gush Katif checkpoint. The last major abduction was Shalit. Rockets have been used mainly in Gaza during the period of occupation, and since then in clustered attacks responding to Israeli assaults. In the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal from Gaza, the rocket-fire diminished dramatically. The number of rockets fired soared following a new round of Israeli incursions into Gaza in mid-2006, which culminated in the murder of the Ghaliya family, and during Israel's war on Lebanon, and then again during subsequent assaults on Gaza. Obviously, the recent six month 'lull' was the occasion for another decline in their use.

One cannot treat the rocket fire in isolation, or as simply a desperate military gesture of lobbing missiles in the hope that someone, somewhere cops it. As Mishal and Sela have pointed out (The Palestinian Hamas, 2000), Hamas' military leadership is entirely instrumental about the use of violence: if its immediate ends can be obtained through peaceful measures, they will opt for those; if Israeli leaders make that impossible, they will use whatever military means are at their disposal. The rockets are expected to create fear in proportion to their number and their pervasive effect. Within a certain radius, they can hit anywhere and anyone. They are one component of a strategy designed to put pressure on Israeli society and undermine the government, showing that it cannot protect its citizens if it chooses to kill Palestinians.

It remains questionable how effective they are, however. The fact that the occasional person might actually get killed by such a weapon is unlikely to result in pressure on Tel Aviv to adopt a more humane policy toward the Palestinians: quite the reverse. Indeed, there can be such popular support for war on Gaza only because it is tacitly acknowledged that the provoked response is unlikely to be very deadly or frightening. If Israelis were really that terrified of the rockets, they would be considerably less gung-ho about blowing the shit out of Ay-rabs. The basic inefficacy of Qassams means that the IDF has always had an array of ultra-violent responses available to them. Back in 2004, before the Gaza pull-out, the doctrine espoused by Major-General Shamni was "stimulus and response": the IDF would try to stimulate attacks and then, with the evil-doers exposed, assassinate them. You don't provoke attacks in that fashion if you think the rockets are truly that menacing. Today, it seems that the doctrine of "stimulus and response" has been elevated to a whole new plateau: having provoked Hamas into renewing rocket fire after months of ceasefire, they created an excuse to launch this vicious operation. The current assault is demonstrating, inadvertently, that the rockets are becoming more effective, with longer reach into Israel. Five Israelis have been killed during the assault, one a soldier. However, this is little compared to Israel's ability to turn dozens of sites to rubble overnight, and kill hundreds in a few days.

The best hope that Gaza has is if the riots and protests still erupting across the West Bank turn into a full-scale Third Intifada, the protests in Egypt become the basis for the final demolition of the Mubarak regime, and the rest of the Middle East explodes in rebellion.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, Israel, qassam rockets, suicide attacks

Protest in London this Saturday posted by lenin

Stop Gaza Massacre

Hands Off Gaza: Stop the Bombing: Free Palestine
Assemble 12:30pm Embankment, WC2

Nearest tube Embankment.
Called by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, British Muslim Initiative and many other organisations.

Israel has launched a terror bombing against the people of Gaza, with over 350 dead and many more injured.

Not content after 3 days of devastating slaughter, the Israeli government promises more barbarity to come.

The head of the Israeli military says, "This is only the beginning".

The people of Gaza are asking, if this is only the beginning, what will the end look like?

Labels: air strikes, gaza, Israel, protest, zionism

Kicking them when they're down posted by lenin

So, as of yesterday, Israel had killed 360 people and injured 1600. This is good news in some quarters: according to the Angry Arab, footage is being shown on Al Arabiyya of Israelis dancing in joy at the Gaza attacks. Seumas Milne notes that the Israeli newspapers have been salivating over the attacks:

Israel's decision to launch its devastating attack on Gaza on a Saturday was a "stroke of brilliance", the country's biggest selling paper Yediot Aharonot crowed: "the element of surprise increased the number of people who were killed". The daily Ma'ariv agreed: "We left them in shock and awe"

Ran HaCohen reports some of the same cheery elan:

Yediot Ahronoth had six columnists on its front page and several more inside. The war's cheerleaders. Nahum Barnea, an over-appreciated "critical" journalist, expressed his view about the bloodbath rather succinctly: "better late than never." Dov Weissglass, "closely linked to the peace process" as Wikipedia puts it, was similarly outspoken: his column was called "Do Not Stop," with an exclamation mark to make things clear. "It should be just the beginning," he advises to the very government that has just vowed "it's just the beginning."

Well, apparently, "the element of surprise" was amplified by the fact that Israel attacked during a 48-hour truce brokered with Hamas. There is a bit of evil, Machiavellan genius in this: break one truce, blame the other side for breaking it, then promise to honour another truce, then use the interval provided to launch a devastating series of attacks - and then blame the other side for having brought it on themselves with some feeble rocket fire. Olmert now says he won't even talk about a ceasefire, and intends to pursue Hamas with an "iron fist". And when he's done pulverising Gaza, he will explain, poker-faced, that he regrets he has no partner for peace.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, Israel, zionism

Things you won't hear on the BBC posted by lenin

From my inbox:

Last night Israeli aircrafts targeted more than 20 places in Gaza city, let alone other areas. Let me tell you what I knew from those bombings:
1- A thirds attack on my neighbour the former preventive security department. One missile did not explode and fall in front of my apartment building just meters from the ambulance station.
2- Two major building were leveled to the floor at the Islamic University of Gaza. One building was main laboratories and the other was lecture rooms buildings. Each building was 4 floors high and a basement.
3- A home next to the home of Ismael Haniyeh at the Beach refugee camp was leveled to the ground by attack from air and sea simultaneously.
4- Two mosques were leveled to the ground by air raids. 10 people died inside, among them were five daughters of Anwar Balousha as they might have took refuge is the mosque as their home was unsafe! So far, six mosques have been demolished
5- A building for passport department at the ministry of interior was put down this morning.
6- The building of the Ministry of Culture was leveled to the floors this morning.
7- A building for the Prime Minster's office was totally demolished in an air raid.
8- The main building of Civil Administration has been totally demolished.
9- Several attack were executed on places that I did not know and the local media could not cover. I saw helicopter launching their attacks at night.
10- Jabalia youth sports center (UNRWA facility) was hit directly from the air.
11- An empty house near Sarayya government center was demolished by air raid.
12- A moving vehicle was targeted and destroyed killing two men and a child in Zaitoun neighbourhood.
13- Two sister in the high school were returning home from school died together by air bombing.
14- Several police stations were hit again.
15- Journalists and reporters were officially informed by Israel to stay in their places and offices otherwise they will be targeted. This is to stop media coverage of what is taking place in Gaza.
16- Two hospitals were targeted. Fata hospital is still new and did not start working but hit from air, another small private hospital, Al-Weaam in Tel el-Hawwa was targeted as well!
17- Biet Hanoun municipality building was destroyed last night.
18- Rafah governorate building was demolished last night.
19- Rafah municipality building was targeted last night.
20- Hashash neighbourhood in Rafah was attacked twice last night. Each time with two missiles. The second hit demolished 15 adjacent homes. Many people died in the attack.
21- A playground in zaitoun neighbourhood was hit by a missile.
22- Israeli aircraft targeted 40 tunnels at the Rafah border, destroying all of them.
23- Beach Camp police station was totally destroyed.
24- The palace of the former Egyptian governor of Gaza was totally destroyed from air and sea missiles!

Prof. Abdelwahed
Department of English
Faculty of Arts & Humanities
Al-Azhar University of Gaza

Labels: air strikes, gaza, Israel, war crimes, zionism

The way it works posted by lenin

Boycott Israeli universities: disgrace, shame, new antisemitism, crypto-fascist, etc.

Bomb Palestinian university: a regrettable necessity in the war against totalitarianism.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, Israel, zionism

Change you can make believe in posted by lenin

Just so you know what you have to look forward to, Obama has, predictably, lined up behind the Bush administration in support of the Gaza attacks. He presents this as a deference to the outgoing president, but that is absurd. Obama has never been reluctant to speak on other issues, and even while pretending to defer, he clearly signals his support for Israel's action. That hoary old racist warhorse Ehud Barak certainly considers Obama a key supporter. His appalling AIPAC speech already made it clear not only that he considers Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, but that he sees the defense of Israeli interests to be crucial to securing American interests in the Middle East. Obama has always stressed that the real need was not to defeat Iraq but to contain Iran, which he argues is both the major strategic threat to Israel and to the US in the region. He has even gone so far as to say he would support bombing Iran. Hamas and Hezbollah he portrays as mere extensions of Iranian influence, rather than as movements against Israeli aggression. As a result, they are seen as legitimate targets for military attack. Reflecting this position, Obama has appointed fervent supporters of Israel to most important foreign policy positions, and as for his VP - can you imagine what a lunatic like Joe Biden would make of Gaza? And it is important to recognise that in global terms, Obama's position is simply off the charts. Even David Miliband daren't support this latest aggression and is calling for a ceasefire (do you think he remembers what happened to the old boss after Lebanon?). Even the UN Security Council has issued a statement calling for a ceasefire and the opening of the Gaza border. Of course, all this is shrouded in obfuscatory language about Hamas 'provocations' and violence 'on both sides', but at least there is a recognition that Israel is engaged in an act of bloody adventurism. Obama's position recognises none of this, and as such is an extremist one. It is very likely to result in some early blood-letting, somewhere. Biden's creepy warning about Obama getting his mettle tested early on at least suggests this. So, prepare yourself for the worst - they certainly are.

Labels: david miliband, gaza, Israel, obama, zionism

"We are all Gazans" - الحرية لفلسطين posted by lenin

The slogan of West Bank protesters, who have been attacked and injured in the dozens by Israeli troops. Protests took place in Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria. In London, and cities across the UK, there was a repeat of yesterday's demonstrations. There were also protests in Paris.

Btw, anyone expecting a fair hearing of protests in the media should consult the News Sniffer, which tracks changes in online news stories. It caught the BBC 'disappearing' 1,300 protesters yesterday.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, Israel, palestine, protest, zionism

The myth of Hamas rejectionism posted by lenin

Israel's opponents are always rejectionist, refusing to acknowledge the Jewish state's repeated olive branches and fanatically insisting on a maximalist programme. Thus, the late Yasser Arafat could never be Israel's much sought after 'partner in peace'. This image was never accurate. The PLO spent the 1990s engaged in a drastic reduction of its aims and aspirations, eventually coming close to negotiating a two-state settlement at Taba, before Ehud Barak called off the discussions. Former Clinton aide Robert Malley pointed out that far from Arafat rejecting a 'generous offer' from Israel (as has been alleged), "it could be said that Israel rejected the unprecedented two-state solution put to them by the Palestinians, including the following provisions: a state of Israel incorporating some land captured in 1967 and including a very large majority of its settlers; the largest Jewish Jerusalem in the city's history [and] security guaranteed by a US-led international presence".

Still, the myths persisted throughout the assaults on Jenin and Rafah, throughout the bulldozings and massacres, until Arafat died under seige. Mahmoud Abbas is so craven that it is difficult to depict him as a sinister rejectionist. Instead, Sharon insisted that Abbas use the scant resources of the Palestinian Authority to pursue a war against Hamas, even as the settlement building continued and the wall was erected, with Palestinian farmland being destroyed and the economy crushed. This was itself one of the causes of the surge in support for Hamas which, contrary to prevalent misconceptions, was far more pragmatic in its ability to work with other forces, such as the PFLP (despite the latter's occasional sectarianism).

Since Hamas sees the whole of historic Palestine as an Islamic waqf, and does not concede the legitimacy of Zionism's claim to any part of the territory, it was easy to construe them as rejectionist. They adhere to the principles of the old Palestinian national movement, before the PLO embarked on its long swerve to accomodation, those of Palestinian nationalism and popular armed struggle. So, when Ismail Haniyeh was sworn in as Prime Minister of Palestine, it was simple to dismiss him and the movement he represents as a terrorist, enemy of peace, etc. Yet, everything about Hamas' subsequent conduct demonstrates their pragmatic attitude, including the attempts to forge a national unity government with Fatah despite the latter's acceptance of Israeli weapons and money in its pursuit of a civil war against Hamas.

Despite an international blockade and opprobrium from the Israeli leadership, Hamas repeatedly signalled its willigness to accept a two-state settlement. It imposed a unilateral ceasefire on its own cadre, refusing to be drawn by repeated Israeli provocations. A crippling blockade, habitual violence and naked attempts to destabilise the elected government did not deter Hamas from this course. Only this year, after a US-Israeli sponsored armed coup attempt in Gaza, a successful putsch in the West Bank, and repeated incursions by the IDF, Hamas offered Israel a ten year ceasefire if it could abide by the terms of a two-state settlement: this offer, just like every other peace overture, was contemptuously dismissed. And now, most recently, a ceasefire agreed on in June has been flagrantly overturned by Israel. No one noticed, at least no one who writes for a newspaper. The myth that Hamas ended the truce as just the latest example of its innate rejectionism now underwrites a depraved assault which has killed 300 people and is about to become a ground invasion. Israel's intransigence, brutality, recklessness, refusal to work with anyone or negotiate in any meaningful way, will continue to be projected onto its opponents for as long as Israel has the superior propaganda resources, and for as long as the colonial trope of 'native fanaticism' governs discursive responses to occupation and resistance.

Update: Dennis Perrin notes "how all the excuses for slaughtering Palestinians when the PLO was Hitler are now being used to tar Hamas. They reject compromise, are bottomless Jew haters, are addicted to death, want to drive Israel into the sea, etc."

Labels: colonialism, fatah, hamas, Israel, native fanaticism, plo, rejectionism

The Qassam rockets myths posted by lenin

I warned you months ago: the magic word is 'Sderot'. Any amount of barbarism can be justified by the frankly risible rocket attacks on southern Israel. The Israeli propaganda line, repeated with dogged fanaticism by its apologists everywhere, is that Israel performed an immense act of goodness in withdrawing its colonies from Gaza, and the native ingrates actually responded by sending a spray of Qassam rockets aloft in celebration. To add insult to injury, the bleeders even used former 'settlement' buildings to launch the rockets from. Such beliefs have to be encouraged to justify such outrageous proposals as the levelling of Gaza. Before this gets out of hand and people start using the rockets to justify some sort of "holocaust", let us at least bear the facts in mind for a while.

The Qassam rockets were being used as one component of an array of military tactics deployed by Gazan groups before the pull-out, the Gush Katif colonies being the prominent target. This was a response to a wave of violence and expulsions in which, for example, 13,350 residents of Rafah had their homes and life belongings destroyed in the year preceding the withdrawal, courtesy of Israeli tanks and Caterpillar bulldozers. Parts of Gaza came to resemble Grozny. The Israelis frequently attacked ambulances, at one point using the argument that UNRWA had allowed Qassam rockets to be loaded on board one such vehicle (this turned out to be a lie, but it is still repeated on many a media outlet and website). The vast majority of casualties from their use date back to the period of formal colonialism. After the withdrawal, the rate at which these were used diminished dramatically. Their use has spiked in response to serial atrocities against Palestinians, such as the slaughter of the Ghaliya family on the Gaza beach, (in which Hamas broke an eighteen month unilateral ceasefire).

There were few such rockets fired during the six-month ceasefire, even though Israel didn't respect its terms, but their use was increased again as Israel broke the truce on November 4th (burn that date into your brain and remember it next time someone tells you that those nasty Hamas thugs wouldn't renew the ceasefire). Now, there are legitimate arguments about both the efficacy and ethics of using such weapons. To my mind, they have very little going for them as a tactic of resistance. But the apparently widespread belief that Qassam rockets are the vindictive and jubilant response of sneering Palestinian jihadists to Israeli mushiness is not justified by any evidence. In fact, if the aim were truly to end Qassam rocket fire, the logical option would to be engage in a unilateral ceasefire and invite Hamas to enter into a process of dialogue. But that brings us to another myth, the myth of Hamas rejectionism, which is for another post.

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, qassam rockets, sderot, zionism

Gaza protests posted by lenin

Two quick observations. First of all, there is another protest today between 4 and 6pm, opposite the Israeli embassy at Palace Greens (nearest tube High Street Kensington). I am told that yesterday's was extremely impressive, the successful street occupation resulting in riot cops having to physically remove people from the road. Secondly, the protests across the country yesterday, called at extremely short notice in a holiday, demonstrate the continuing urgency and necessity of the antiwar movement. Granted, it has not had the centrality it once had as the recession has taken hold. But, clearly, the 'war on terror' isn't going anywhere, and neither is Israeli aggression. Obama's signals during this attack clearly indicate that he backs it and will continue to back such aggression once in office. Indeed, it has to be said that he is one of the more extreme supporters of Israel to have entered the White House. So, the antiwar movement still plays a significant role as the major force for humanitarian intervention in British politics. The fact that thousands could be mobilised across the country within 24 hours (pics here, footage here) shows that the lessons that were learned over Afghanistan, Iraq and the Second Intifada, and then again over Lebanon, have not been forgotten.

Labels: antiwar movement, gaza, humanitarian intervention, Israel, stop the war coalition, zionism

The barbarians live in E14 posted by lenin

The Independent on Sunday editorialises on the Gaza attacks, urging 'restraint' but also pretty well regurgitating every Israeli propaganda theme in the book. This, however, is appalling:

But there are always grounds for hope. Before yesterday’s attacks, there were some signs that disillusion with Hamas was setting in among the people of Gaza. Partly because of the continuing Israeli blockade, Hamas has failed to deliver higher living standards. Some Gazans even complain that life was better under the Israeli occupation. (via Jamie)

The paper that likes to sermonise about Third World hunger and poverty now openly advises us that the deliberate imposition by blockade of malnutrition and miserable poverty on 1.5m people, which has been condemned by the same relief groups and UN personnel that the Indie often relies on in its exhortations, provides "grounds for hope". So atrocious was the blockade that it made some Gazans compare it unfavourably to Israeli occupation, when there was at least an economy to speak of, and this is "grounds for hope". It is important to recognise that the tolerance for such barbarity, the ability to say such things in public without embarrassment or shame, is a function of the dehumanisation of Hamas. Those who imagine they can defend Palestine while conceding the lies about Hamas - that they are fascist, murderous brutes who reject dialogue, rather than a legitimate resistance movement who have consistently offered dialogue and ceasefire even under the most unpromising circumstances - are the victims of some strange illusions.

Still, this is comparatively civilized. Soon, the tanks that are gathering around the borders of Gaza, this "enemy entity", will be rolling in. As hundreds of deaths turn into thousands, the argument will be heard that no nation can tolerate missile attacks being launced against its civilians (exactly the same argument that was offered to justify the slaughter in Lebanon, and just as disingenuous). The racist logic of this argument is obvious enough: it will never occur to these people to ask why Palestinians should tolerate being occupied and confined, subject to regular killings and a military blockade. We will also be reminded that Hamas broke a six-month ceasefire, although Israel never respected its terms and finally broke that truce on 4th November long before Hamas declared that it wouldn't be renewed (as there was no longer a truce to be renewed). Perhaps as the war grinds on, someone will call for "lights out in Gaza" until the Qassam missiles stop and Gazans depose their Islamofascist masters. "You want 1948, we can bomb you back to 1948." Etc. Maybe we will be advised that Gazans are being collectively punished because they bear collective responsibility for supporting Hamas' slow-burning genocide against the Jews. Maybe someone will say that not enough people are dead, because too many jihadists are still alive. There might even be a benefit concert for poor, captive Sderot, with Paul McCartney singing about freedom and Maureen Lipman channelling Joyce Grenfell. Public discourse is about to get very ugly.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, zionism

Military targets posted by lenin

Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have been ongoing through the night, with civilian houses and medical centres being targeted by Israeli air-strikes...

Labels: gaza, hamas, iaf, Israel, racism, zionism

الأرض المقدسة posted by lenin

Here is a seasonal treat for the yapping terriers of the Israel fan club: Israeli air strikes have killed 140 205 people in Gaza. Apparently, the furore over Gaza and its disgraceful oppression of the indigenous people of southern Israel (go with it) is producing soaring support for the Israeli far right. The difference between the far right parties and Kadima is that the far right wants to ethnically cleanse Palestinian towns in Gaza and incorporate them into Israel, using the Qassam rocket fire into Sderot as a pretext, while the Kadima administration has so far preferred to do it gradually, starving Gaza and depriving it of electricity and water.

Consider: according to the UN, the Israeli blockade has resulted in Palestinians receiving running water only once every five to seven days. UNRWA ran out of flour some time ago, and Gaza's bakeries have warned they will have to close down. No more bread. 70% of Gazans already had no reliable source of food. Poverty is soaring, with nine out of ten Gazans living below the poverty line. Gazan families have been forced to eat grass to survive. And if those people aren't sufficiently careful in their selection of pasture, they may end up taking home a poisoned batch, because raw sewage has been pumping out into the streets and into the soil since the blockade was first imposed.

The purpose of this sadistic policy, punctuated by frequent bouts of blood-letting, is supposedly to produce an end to the Qassam rocket attacks. If this appears to be a feeble excuse for imposing such misery on one and a half million people, bear in mind that at least the Qassams - unlike Saddam's WMD arsenal - actually exist. By the standard of our times, Israel's casus belli is indisputable. And if sanctions on Iraq killed up to a million people, what is a little 'diet' in Gaza? As for legality, the policy has been supported by the Israeli supreme court, whose impartiality in the matter could hardly be more obvious. Am I over-doing it with the heavy irony here? The true purpose of the blockade is the same as that which lay behind the blockade first imposed upon the election of Hamas, with the support of the Quartet. And it is the same as that behind the coup-plotting that led to Dahlan's gangs being booted out of Gaza while Fatah seized control of the West Bank. It is to force the population of Gaza into changing their political behaviour and voting for a tame leadership that will, as Fatah did throughout the 1990s, tolerate Israel's regular incursions and the growing network of colonies meshed together by 'Jewish Only' roads (not to mention Jewish Only land). It is to accomplish by gradual and insidious means what the brutes of the Israeli far right would like to accomplish in another six day war: politicide. The final, successful destruction of Palestine as a potential nation.

The options for a 'Jewish state' determined to maintain itself as such, with a majority no lower than 80%, are few. Obviously, any recognition of Palestine as a free nation is anathema to a wide swathe of Israeli opinion, including much elite opinion. And Israeli leaders have never shown any sign that they are willing to contemplate this. Just as surely as Gaza is an "enemy entity" today, a truly independent Palestine would be a mortal enemy entity, calling into question by its very existence the whole narrative and rationale behind a 'Jewish state' built out of blood and iron in an Arab country. However, the incorporation of a Palestinian Arab population into Israel would undermine the labyrinthine racial hierarchy that Israel's leaders have so assiduously constructed. What commentators are apt to describe as the "demographic timebomb" is a colonial one: how to get the territory and at the same dispose of the troublesome population. In a previous era, it might have entailed little difficulty just to drive them out in a bloody purge and force the surviving refugees to try and integrate as discarded untermenschen into societies run by bribed police states. As Benny Morris has said, it would have been much easier for Israel had it simply completed the task in 1948. Now, they've got to answer to the soft-headed humanitarianism of modern television audiences, and they've got to pretend to be the victims. All they have to assist them in this task is a few measly rockets being lobbed into southern Israel to little effect. They don't even have the suicide attacks that characterised the Second Intifada, during which time the decontextualised focus on explosions ensured that people in the West largely missed the fact that Israel was knocking of Palestinian civilians at a much higher rate than the suicide attacks were killing Israelis. With so little to assist its PR plight, no wonder Israel needs its overseas contingent of berserkers more than ever. Just watch, and wait: as Israel ramps up its attacks on Gaza, the permanently livid fellowship of offshore Middle Earth colonists will be spitting about Sderot, about terrorism, about Islam, about the world's unfair bias against the plucky little Levantine racists, about anything in the world except what is being done and what has been done, deliberately and brutally, to Palestine.

Update: Protest tomorrow, 28 December at 2pm, outside the Israeli embassy.

Labels: blockade, gaza, hamas, herrenvolk, Israel, palestine, untermenschen, zionism

Various posted by lenin

Labels: immortal technique, public enemy, saigon, various artists

Bad language posted by lenin

American Football by Harold Pinter

Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

Labels: harold pinter rip

Notice. posted by lenin

Labels: america, islamophobia, liberalism, racism

Racism after Obama. posted by lenin

Labels: 'obamamania', class, david s roediger, imperial ideology, obama, race, racism, us working class

The true meaning of Xmas posted by lenin

Oxford Street, noon today.

Labels: credit crunch, recession, sales sales sales

Vanity as an aspect of slave morality posted by lenin

Labels: narcissism, nietszche, vanity

Still lying about Iraq posted by lenin

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who kindly gives my book a mention, points out that the spinners of the Iraq war are still hard at work. Obviously, one expects no different from Bush or Brown. But one might have hoped that those whose jobs don't depend on backing a sinking ship would have been thoroughly re-educated by reality. And, in fairness, many commentators did come to their senses, recovering their critical faculties not only with respect to Iraq but also US foreign policy in general. Nevertheless, for an example of deranged obstinacy, look no further than Michael Gove: "The liberation of Iraq has been that rarest of things – a proper British foreign policy success". As British troops prepare to be withdrawn from a war they lost, the British newspapers are repeating much the same mantra. "Job well done", declares The Sun, assuring its readers that those who died did so "liberating Iraq".

Most commentators lack the chutzpah to keep that foolishness up, and many are reduced to mourning what might have been had Iraqis not been so ungrateful and so unready for self-government. But it is worth noting that the language of 'liberation' is not merely an accidental echo of WWII. It was consciously settled on as one of the propaganda planks in the run up to invasion. When the White House decided to convoke the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq under the direction of former Lockheed Martin boss Bruce Jackson in 2002, it had not even decided what its rationale for war would be - but policymakers knew that the language of 'liberation' would be central to it. This is why it doesn't necessarily work when people say that 'liberation' was invented as an excuse for war after the fact, when the promised WMD mysteriously failed to materialise. Clearly, the promise that American troops would become a rescue squad for oppressed peoples was secondary to the fear factor. But, just as clearly, the moralistic language of the neoconservatives and liberal hawks was crucial to galvanising one potential layer of supporters. Those who can no longer contend, poker-faced, that the last five years have been in any sense a 'liberating' experience, will at least have new wars to look forward to. Articulate progressives in the US media show little sign of resisting Obama's escalation in Afghanistan, or his disgraceful position on Israel-Palestine. They will even be positively gushing with enthusiasm for the bloody 'liberation' of Darfur from the clutches of Ay-rabs. However, it seems that a rear-guard of hardcore defenders of the Iraq war will continue to operate in the meantime, robotically defending the indefensible until the ideological climate improves for them, and people of their faith.

Labels: 'liberation', afghanistan, darfur, iraq, neoconservatism, pro-war 'left', sudan

Egypt: long live the free union. posted by lenin

Hossam has photographs and news of the formation of Egypt's first independent trade union in over half a century. Click on the image below to see a slideshow.

Labels: egypt, mubarak, revolution, socialism, trade unions, working class

Michael Rosen on Adrian Mitchell posted by lenin

"Adrian was a socialist and a pacifist who believed, like William Blake, that everything human was "holy". That's to say he celebrated a love of life with the same fervour that he attacked those who crushed life..."

Labels: adrian mitchell

'Greek Syndrome' posted by lenin

A pandemic of protest on the European continent...

Labels: greece, intifada, neoliberalism, protest, socialism

Jail that veil posted by lenin

So, a Muslim woman is jailed by a US judge for refusing to remove her hijab in court. Apparently, this particular judge has a preoccupation with disciplining Muslim women who wear the hijab in his courtroom. I am constantly amazed by how un-nerving people find a simple garment - and for what a variety of reasons too! Either it is hiding something, or it is a symbol of patriarchy (as if patriarchy exerted no effects on the clothing of non-Muslim women), or it is a special privilege, or a symptom of separatism and radicalism... The veil is the 'borrowed kettle' of liberal-conservative discourse.

The woman in question was merely asserting her rights in a secular state, yet I have an almost clairvoyant sense that someone, somewhere, will already be preparing a 'secular' defense of the judge's actions. Those who have defended the actions of various European states in banning the veil, foulard or sluieren, in different contexts, are perfectly placed to do so. In lieu of an engagement with that kind of argument, I should just like to briefly state a position. As much as I detest - and I really want this word to count - most of those who loudly proclaim their secularism, I would critically defend the principle. Thieving copiously from the armoury of arguments elaborated by the great Alasdair Macintyre*, whose writing is valued as much by Muslim intellectuals as by marxists, I endorse a secularism that contests the state's right to uphold values of any kind, 'Western' or otherwise. The state's role should be restricted to delivering certain public goods, but it has nothing whatever to do with morality.

Yet, it is interesting that the specific work done by the invocation of what is defended as a universal principle can be strangely exclusionary - and also, in an odd sense, particularist, eventually boiling down to a defense of 'Western values'. The self-congratulatory hyphenation 'Judeo-Christian' is no more justified than 'Islamo-Christian', but it is the former that purportedly properly encompasses said 'values', while the very texture of the veil apparently contains, woven into it, a threat to them. Of course, such a threat is part of the fabric of the veil to the extent that 'Western values' exclude the right to practice a religion that is held in low regard by a broad coalition comprising liberals and reactionaries. In other words, the argument that the veil is in some sense a challenge to 'Western' norms boils down to a confession that such 'Western' norms are sectarian, bigoted and irrational, (as opposed to rational, humane and universal).

The way in which secularism is both asserted as a universal value and as part of the family of 'Western values' is a hangover from Europe's colonial era. For example, when those French soldiers were marauding in the Algerian countryside, their deference to universalism compelled them to remove the veil first before raping and killing the women. And when the Algerians rebelled, the veil was seen as both an expression of and subterfuge for 'native fanaticism', proof and advertisement of their separatism, and their rejection of French universalism. Subsequently, in the debates about 'integration', the veil was just one symbol of the incompatibility of North African Muslims with the secular French republic. That was as true of the discussions around mass postwar migrations that made up for a decimated labour force as it is today of arguments about the discontented banlieues.

One last thought. What is the abjuration of the term 'Islamophobia' symptomatic of? There are so many people who insist that it means nothing, or that it is dangerous. They say it protects iniquity from criticism and forecloses serious inquiry. Yet, such arguments rarely go on to elaborate an alternative way of discussing the way in which Islam is unfairly singled out as deviant, as an abberation from cherished values, as the ultimate source of much or most global violence etc. The documented racist violence against Muslims as Muslims, the ceaseless acres of verbiage denouncing Islam and purveying false accusations of 'extremism' (which really is a meaningless term), the hysteria manufactured by newspapers who apparently learned all the wrong lessons from the Dreyfuss Affair... all of this doesn't deserve a name? Isn't this disavowal really an expression of guilt? Doesn't the unease about the term simply reflect the fact that many liberals distrust their own criticisms of Islam, that they don't trust their own motives, and suspect that if all of this viciousness was given a name (or 'christened' if you like), they would be incriminating themselves on a regular basis? They know very well that the misuse of a term doesn't make it invalid. Unfair accusations of antisemitism are extremely common - far more so, in my view, than unfair accusations of Islamophobia - but most of those so branded don't decide that the term itself can have no meaning. It is accepted that there are parameters for sensible discussion and that the accusation of antisemitism should be taken seriously. It is uncontroversial that some criticisms of Israel, never mind Judaism, can be antisemitic in tone and content. The argument is almost always over what does and does not constitute antisemitism, not whether the charge is even worth listening to. So, why are some people so timorous, unless they doubt their ability to defend their arguments from a charge of Islamophobia?


*This infamous, delicious quote is relevant: "Modern nation-states which masquerade as embodiments of community are always to be resisted. The modern nation-state, in whatever guise, is a dangerous and unmanageable institution, presenting itself on the one hand as a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services, which is always about to, but never actually does, give its clients value for money, and on the other as a repository of sacred values, which from time to time invites one to lay down one's life on its behalf; it is like being asked to die for the telephone company." (Alasdair Macintyre, "A Partial Response to my Critics", in John Horton and Susan Mendus, eds, After Macintyre: Critical Perspectives on the Works of Alasdair Macintyre, 1994).

Labels: 'veil', 'war on terror', hijab, islam, islamophobia, liberals, pro-war 'left'

On the right to food posted by lenin

In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia (Federated States of), Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Against: United States.

Labels: capitalism, human rights, starvation, UN, united states

Adrian Mitchell posted by lenin

Labels: adrian mitchell

Statement by Iranian Bloggers on Hossein Derakhshan posted by Yoshie

Statement by Iranian Bloggers on Hossein Derakhshan

We, the undersigned, view the circumstances surrounding the Iranian authorities' arrest of Hossein Derakhshan aka Hoder, one of the most prominent Iranian bloggers, as extremely worrying.  Derakhshan's disappearance, detention at an unknown location, lack of access to his family and attorneys, and the authorities' failure to provide clear information about his potential charges is a source of concern for us.

The Iranian blogging community is one of the largest and most vibrant in the world.  From ordinary citizens to the President, a diverse and large number of Iranians are engaged in blogging.  These bloggers encompass a wide spectrum of views and perspectives, and they play a vital role in open discussions of social, cultural and political affairs.

Unfortunately, in recent years, numerous websites and blogs have been routinely blocked by the authorities, and some bloggers have been harassed or detained.  Derakhshan's detention is but the latest episode in this ongoing saga and is being viewed as an attempt to silence and intimidate the blogging community as a whole.

Derakhshan's own position regarding a number of prisoners of conscience in Iran has been a source of contention among the blogging community and has caused many to distance themselves from him.  This, however, doesn't change the fact that the freedom of expression is sacred for all not just the ones with whom we agree.

We therefore categorically condemn the circumstances surrounding Derakhshan's arrest and detention and demand his immediate release.

Signed, in alphabetical order:

Arash Abadpour
Niki Akhavan
Hossein Bagher Zadeh
Sanam Dolatshahi
Mehdi Jami
Jahanshah Javid
Abdee Kalantari
Sheema Kalbasi
Nazli Kamvari
Nazy Kaviani
Peyvand Khorsandi
Nikahang Kowsar
Omid Memarian
Pedram Moallemian
Ali Moayedian
Ebrahim Nabavi
Masoome Naseri
Shahrnush Parsipur
Khodadad Rezakhani
Leva Zand

---

This statement first appeared in Pedram Moallemian's blog Eyeranian.net on 18 December 2008.  The links to the text of the statement are added for informational purposes.

Labels: 'free speech', bloggers, freedom, ideology, iran, media

Footage and images of the Greek intifada posted by lenin

MRZine has a good collection of videos and photographs of the ongoing Athens protests.

Labels: athens, greece, intifada, neoliberalism, socialism

How a truce ends posted by lenin

On 19th June, a 'truce' of sorts between the Israeli government and the Hamas government in Gaza was negotiated at Cairo. The truce was scheduled to last for a period of six months, and would therefore end today (Israel maintains that the truce was indefinite but, as will become clear, this is misdirection). In exchange for some easing of the blockade imposed on Gaza, and an end to military incursions into Gaza, Hamas agreed to end the firing of home-made rockets into southern Israel. The blockade remained in place and exerted the devastating humanitarian effects that UN spokespersons have pointed out. The occasional rocket was still fired.

But on 4th November, Israel blocked all crossings into Gaza, preventing both trade and aid, and launched a series of raids into Gazan territory. Some people might take this to be an act of war, and it certainly escalated aggression against Gazans collectively, which in other circumstances might be described as a war crime. Richard Falk, the UN human rights rapporteur, argued that it constituted a "crime against humanity". Israel seems to be taking to pains to demonstrate its contempt for such qualms. Earlier this week, it was reported that Falk was prevented from entering Gaza, detained and then expelled. Yesterday, Israeli jets launched another raid on Gaza. Hamas, who have arguably been unreasonably patient for more than a month, fired off ten rockets and advised the media that as there was no truce to speak of, it could not be renewed.

What is interesting about this is that the truce, such as it was, ended on 4th November, but no one noticed. How could this be? Israel did not exactly cover its tracks - it was flagrant, brazen, openly violating the terms of the truce. Even Gordon Brown, whose government has been party to Israel's blockades and putschism, reportedly asked Ehud Olmert to stop the seige. Israel would seem to have been going out of its way to ensure the resumption of full combat, perhaps the better to proceed with its reported plans to depopulate the north of Gaza. So, how did this state of affairs elude the media, so that they are now largely convinced that Hamas is responsible for ending the truce?

The clue, perhaps, is that Israel doesn't regard its violations as violations. Thus, Ehud Barak maintained a few days ago that the "lull" was still in place, just as its renewed siege was generating serious international criticism. And perhaps this is the underlying assumption of many reporters: Israel's crimes are expected, because they are the overwhelmingly dominant force. They can impose mass starvation on a population of 1.5m, and it is just business as usual, certainly not something that should result in retaliation or that should be considered a break in the 'lull'. This is a view that is challenged in some of the Israeli press. As a Ynet op-ed points out: "the lull between Israel and Hamas, which lasted about five months, was violated in the wake of Israeli military activity within the Gaza Strip that prompted Qassam barrages. This operation served as further testament that Israel still views the Gaza Strip as an area under its absolute control in every way, and reserves the right to do whatever it wants there; a sort of occupation by remote control."

Labels: gaza, Israel, occupation, palestine, siege, starvation, zionism

Strange freedom posted by lenin

As you will undoubtedly have heard, the Iraqi journalist who lobbed heavy duty leather shoes at Bush has been beaten and tortured in custody. Hardly a novelty in the 'new Iraq', where torture has reached such a scale that the UN described it as being worse than under Saddam Hussein. In light of which, this Times leader column seems not merely inapposite but actually grotesque. It claims that the protest "demonstrated how far Iraq has come", and that Iraqis "have learnt to enjoy freedom of expression." It would be redundant to go through all the ways in which this disgusting reverie constitutes both a moral and intellectual insult. But one has to wonder: if a Times journalist was bleeding internally, with broken ribs and a smashed arm after suffering a severe beating by police, would its leader column be waxing wistful and ironical about 'imperfect' freedom?

Update: More freedom of expression - US Troops Open Fire On Fallujah Students at Shoe Rally.

Labels: george w bush, iraq, journalist, protest, saddam hussein, torture

Appeal for solidarity with South Korean opposition posted by lenin

South Korea's police are conducting a search for Kim Kwang-Il, a socialist and antiwar activist, and leading member of the socialist group 'All Together'. (You can read an interview with him here.) As a leader in the 'Candlelight Movement' sparked by the government's neoliberal policies, he is the only one not yet captured. After mass, peaceful protests all summer that had been sparked by the government's decision to resume the import of US beef suspected of carrying 'mad cow' disease, the government is harrassing the Left with a series of raids and arrests and, using repressive anticommunist laws from the dictatorship era, the cops have already arrested the chair of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. They have the offices of the 'All Together' movement and placed it under constant surveillance. The government is also interfering in academic freedom, the better to bury the emerging revisionist histories that potentially bring the state's legitimacy into question. Socialist Worker is carrying an appeal in support of the opposition, which they encourage people to circulate and sign.

Labels: anti-war, dictatorship, socialism, south korea, trade unions

Siege posted by lenin

The excellent Chris Hedges on the siege of Gaza:

Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.

Labels: gaza, Israel, palestine, racism, zionism

Iraqi journalist protests Bush visit... posted by lenin

...by throwing shoes at him.




Images from Angry Arab.

Update:

Labels: george w bush, iraq, protest, US imperialism

Thoroughly Modern McCarthyites posted by lenin

I will tell you what this is all about. David T of the Harry's Place blog is attempting to get someone fired for reviewing a book I wrote, positively, in The New Statesman. Now, this could be because the reviewer namechecked the Harry's Place blog in passing. It could be because, so far, Mr T has not found a way to get me fired from anything. It cannot, however, be the result of any personal animus. I know this because David T would like nothing more than to be friends. Every now and again, he will send a missive to invite me to his birthday party, or to try and get a rise out of me in some way. He will coyly approach if he spots that I am available on Google chat, and try out a new opening line. This despite the fact that I had made it perfectly clear online that I regard him as something of an unstable creep. Even after I 'outed' him, when he launched a witch hunt against selected academics for thought crimes, he still didn't turn off the charm. Only the other day, he wrote to say that he had dreamed about me the previous night - me and him doing lawyer talk, apparently.

True, I didn't agree to go to his party, and it is only because of my weakness for taunting imbeciles that I didn't block his e-mail address, but you would be a fool and a communist to make anything of it. There is no personal element to David T's latest inquisition. He just doesn't like the fact that I have written a book, that it has been reviewed positively, and that as a result of the review and subsequent coverage (some of it, ironically, on Harry's Place), the book's UK Amazon sales rank soared, leaving said supplier with only one book left to sell. Unfortunately, David T is arguably even less equipped to properly review my book than the strict orthographer, Oliver Kamm. However, since he has developed a taste for vindictive attacks on individuals whom the Harry's Place mob have any reason to dislike at all, he decided to attack the author of the first review to appear in a major publication. Describing the reviewer, Owen Hatherley, as the "Dilpazier Aslam" of the New Statesman (recalling a case in which a trainee journalist was fired from The Guardian, having written an article that included praise for Hizb Ut-Tahrir while he was a member of said organisation), the post on Harry's Place claims that Owen Hatherley is a member of the Socialist Workers' Party. He is not, and never has been. But it is on the basis of this single fabrication that the author of the post launches a lengthy diatribe effectively demanding that the New Statesman publish a correction and fire the reviewer. It is a small irony that, while in effect demanding a purge on the basis of an invention, David T fantasises that it is SWP members who are 'totalitarian'.

On the one hand, all of this is immensely encouraging. If the deranged political cult of liberal bombers didn't find the book in some sense threatening, they would not waste so much energy on vain attempts to undermine it. On the other hand, this petty, spiteful attack comprises a maniacal McCarthyite troika. It not only seeks to have a positive review of my book retracted and a 'correction' published. It also attempts to hound someone who did absolutely nothing wrong out of a livelihood, and to establish an ominous precedent of surveillance for actual and supposed members of the Socialist Workers' Party on the basis of ignorant claims about it made by David T and his cohort. A while ago, you will remember, Harry's Place launched a frantic campaign of vilification against one Jenna Delich. It resulted in a complaint to the site's service provider, which decided that the libellous nature of the posts meant that the terms of its agreement with the blog's authors had been breached. The site was taken down, and the Harry's Place posse complained of oppression, declaring that their 'free speech' was under attack. Some websites foolishly extended their 'solidarity' to these corrupt and unscrupulous opponents of free speech. I hope that after this episode it will be obvious even to them that Harry's Place deserves no comradeship, especially from those who might themselves be the targets of such an attack if the occasion arose.

Labels: 'free speech', hp scum, mccarthyism, the complete and utter works of richard seymour, the liberal defense of murder

The will to possess posted by lenin

Nietzsche, in his typically indiscriminate way, skewered the humanitarian and philanthropist in these terms:

Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be helped, as though, for instance, he should "merit" help, seek just THEIR help, and would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them for all help. With these conceits, they take control of the needy as a property, just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a desire for property. One finds them jealous when they are crossed or forestalled in their charity. Parents involuntarily make something like themselves out of their children--they call that "education"; no mother doubts at the bottom of her heart that the child she has borne is thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right to HIS OWN ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in former times fathers deemed it right to use their discretion concerning the life or death of the newly born (as among the ancient Germans). And like the father, so also do the teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new individual an unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. (Beyond Good and Evil)

Nietzsche's greatest contempt, of course, was reserved for "socialist pity", the "common herd" and "the rabble", but I just quote this passage because it seems to me to sum up a certain attitude that is sometimes confused with "solidarity".

Labels: charity, humanitarian intervention, humanitarianism, nietszche, will to power

Greenwash and Blackmail posted by lenin

Labels: congestion charge, environment, greenwash, neoliberalism

Latest Menezes insult posted by lenin

Last week, you will have heard, it was reported that the judge presiding over the inquest into the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes told the jury that they were prohibited from reaching a verdict of unlawful killing. This was a disgusting low point in a story that has included lies from day one, calculated smears directed against the deceased victim, seemingly endless cover-ups, and the most obscene rhetoric from the former Met commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.

Now, it seems that we were not even told the whole truth about what subsequently happened. A gag order imposed by the judge meant that we were not informed of protests made by relatives of Menezes, who quite rightly disputed the judge's claim to be acting impartially or fairly. They decided to withdraw their cooperation from the inquest on that basis. At a certain point in Judge Wright's summing up before the jury, he instructed the public and media to get out of the court - offering no other explanation than that he had reached a 'sensitive' point in his summing up. The family and members of the public refused, and a stand-off ensued for one hour and forty minutes. When the public were eventually cleared out, the family made a decision to try to storm the court, to register their conviction that any impartiality in the process had disappeared. All of this drama had to be suppressed in order for the charade to proceed, undisturbed.

Today, the jury - denied the option of finding unlawful killing - has delivered an open verdict, rather than clear the police. That the police expect to draw a line under the killing after this atrocious procedure, with this non-verdict, is an insult too far.

Labels: cover-up, Jean Charles De Menezes, metropolitian police, police shooting

Kamm reviews posted by lenin

I must admit I am feeling rather smug. I made a secret prediction to myself when I started to research and write my book. I told myself, with a certain amount of guilty pleasure: 'The "pro-war left" will not want to give this book any publicity at all. However, there are one or two historical controversies about which that crank Oliver Kamm will not be able to resist sticking his oar in. He will pad those observations out with sniffy comments about various spelling mistakes, and other errors, and then affect a haughty, contemptuous demeanour about the whole thing'. Kamm did not disappoint me. Here is his review. As it turns out, beyond vaguely resentful comments about a positive review I received from Gary Younge of The Guardian and The Nation, an ungainly attempt at an in-joke about the marxist lexicon ("the bourgeois superstructure of the repressive capitalist state"), and a comment about Islamophobia that the principle of charity compels me to attribute to stupidity, there is very little to engage with. So I will be concise.

There are three historical points that Kamm takes issue with. The first is on the topic of Srebrenica. Kamm asserts that my "account of Bosniak deaths at the hands of Serb forces in the early 1990s" "relies" on the work of Ed Herman and David Petersen. This is simply false. Though I cite these authors at one point, my main sources on deaths in the Bosnian war are Ewa Tabeau & Jakub Bijak, ‘War-related Deaths in the 1992–1995 Armed Conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critique of Previous Estimates and Recent Results’, (European Journal of Population/ Revue europeenne de Demographie, Volume 21, Numbers 2-3, June 2005: 187-215), and the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Centre. Kamm's objection therefore cannot be to my relying on Herman and Petersen on this topic, because I did not, and he knows I did not. In fact, his objection appears to be that he doesn't like the conclusions that Herman draws about both Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and therefore I shouldn't cite anything he has written. The trouble, then, is that the tabloid columnist doesn't understand that one can cite a source on one finding, or assessment, without necessarily assenting to anything else they say. For example, the majority of my sources, a large number which were scholarly books printed by university presses, drew conclusions that I didn't like about various topics. I cited them, nonetheless, despite their thought crimes. That fact that Kamm finds this improper says a lot about his intellectual disposition.

The second concerns my description of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's remarks on his role in preventing the United Nations from taking any measures that might frustrate American support for Indonesia's massacres in in East Timor. Moynihan described how he had been given the task of frustrating any measures then UN might undertake, bragging that he did so with considerable success. He also, elsewhere, described the effects of this success, namely the eventual murder of 10% of the population of East Timor. The issue is that I cited in my footnotes to this argument one Noam Chomsky. Kamm accuses Chomsky of, in some of his writing, misrepresenting Moynihan by running together two passages from his memoir, Dangerous Place, as if they were sequential even though they were from different parts of the book. Perhaps, but I did not do that, and in my cited source (Chomsky's preface to Funu: The Unfinished Saga of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta's personal account of the Timorese genocide), Chomsky did not do that. The point I made, which is the most important point that Chomsky makes, is that whatever his rationalizations about preventing Chinese support for the Fretilin, Moynihan tacitly acknowledged the impact of his actions, which was to facilitate the massacre of 10% of the East Timorese population, a level of death he compares to that accomplished by what is sometimes called a 'totalitarian' regime, ie Nazi Germany. Notwithstanding this acknowledgment, whereby he identified himself as an accessory to a crime against humanity, he expressed some pride in what he was able to accomplish. Kamm's tortuous attempts to resist the obvious aside, the real issue appears to be not what I said, nor what I cited, but who I cited: namely, the man whom Kamm would have as his bête noire.

The third is on the topic of Hiroshima. I asserted in my book that the revisionist account of the Hiroshima bombing was the "current mainstream" among historians on the matter. Kamm asserts, citing the Boston-based social scientist Michael Kort, that it retains only "marginal support" among historians. Now, I am not so committed to my assertion that I will not consider revising it. After all, the theory began with "marginal" support, and its return to that status would in no way invalidate its essential conclusions. My assertion is based on the verdict of Samuel Walker, a chief historian of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who explained that "careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts" had answered all the critical questions and generated the conclusion that "the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan to end the war within a relatively short period of time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it." This was written well before Kort's text book (published in 2007), which I have not had the opportunity to read, and therefore may well be - must be, if Kort's description is right - out of date. Kort, to be sure, is a furious critic of the revisionists, a devotee of 'orthodox' (or rather, apologetic) accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima. Nonetheless, his assertion may be right, and I am happy to check it out.

As to petty errors, I somehow called 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern 'Eugene McGovern' (I probably awarded George the first name of Eugene McCarthy, another 1972 presidential candidate). I also mis-spelled Pierre Vidal-Naquet's name, intruding an unwanted 'c' between the 'a' and 'q', and left out a vital 'r' in François Mitterrand's surname. While I thank Oliver for his free sub-editing work, I should point out that the book is 344 pages long, including 75 pages of footnotes. If his aim was to undermine the book, the discovery of two spelling mistakes, one misnomer, one possibly legitimate dispute over who gets to be 'mainstream' on the topic of Hiroshima, and the contrivance of two spurious controversies over sourcing, looks decidedly flimsy. What is more, he only posted this in response to a positive review of my book that featured in The New Statesman. This was the good stuff, in other words, the material he was holding back. Awesome.

Labels: the complete and utter works of richard seymour, the liberal defense of murder

Will Mia Farrow Invade Sudan? posted by lenin

I was going to write about the policy options of the incoming Obama administration, but let's face it: it's a race. If Mia Farrow can procure the services of Blackwater mercenaries before Obama gets a NATO or UN-led coalition together, then Mia wins. Oliver James points out in one his books that Ms Farrow grew up in a large family, in which love and attention were difficult to obtain. The result, inevitably, is that she seeks a large family herself. The latest service to this psychic dilemma is that she has adopted the whole of Darfur as her own children. And now mother goose is prepared to round up the posse and kick ass to stop her kids being meddled with by troublesome Arabs. She may well succeed. I know for a fact that Erik Prince, the ultra-reactionary catholic potentate of the Blackwater crime syndicate, is interested. He is still outraged that "no one has stood up to" the Janjawid, and believes that his fighting team could turn amateur African Union squaddies into ninja warriors, thus teaching the Janjawid that "their habits are not sustainable".

But Mia now has to race against time, because we know that both Obama and Hillary publicly favour imposing a no-fly zone, the first step on the slippery slope to invasion. Joe Biden wants to get stuck right in there with American power, while Susan Rice, the incoming ambassador to the UN, favours air strikes. Two former Clinton officials, William Cohen and Madeleine Albright, are now heading the Genocide Prevention Task Force which urges Obama to adopt a strong anti-genocide policy, with genocide alert systems and so on. They presumably acquired some of the necessary expertise while imposing genocide on Iraq on the 1990s. Save Darfur recognises the opportunity here, urging Obama and the new liberal Congress to "end the Darfur genocide and prevent the next Darfur from occurring". You may wonder why anyone is talking about genocide at this point. Arguably, over a period of months between 2003 and 2004, the level and manner of killing was sufficient to be called genocide. Alex de Waal breaks down the statistics:

The vast majority of killings occurred between June 2003 and April 2004. Estimates for the total number of people killed in those ten months range from the ICC figure (which is very conservative) of under 30,000 to more than twice that number. The overwhelming majority were civilians killed by militia and army. During the subsequent nine months, perhaps 4,000-7,000 were killed, though data for this period are also poor. The data are much better from January 2005 onwards, with about 9,000 people killed in the last three years and nine months, of which about half were civilians killed by government and pro-government forces. (Mortality from hunger, exposure and disease is not included in these numbers.) After January 2005, not only did the level of killings drop away sharply, but the pattern changed too, with a greater proportion attributable to rebel attacks, banditry and inter-tribal fighting.

The high-end estimate of total murders is 76,000 from June 2003 to the present day, with the vast majority of killing concentrated in the early months of the counterinsurgency. As Alex de Waal points out in an interview in 'Liberal Defense', the murder rate since the peak of the war ended is comparable to that in Washington DC. That is to say, there is no genocide in Darfur to 'end'. There is combat, there is a needful humanitarian situation, and there is a political process, including negotiations, some of which is bearing fruit. Ah, but if this was your line of thinking, you would be missing the point. The US government has already declared the situation in Darfur to be genocide, and there is no statute of limitations on that claim. You may also be wondering how they will manage to retail a military intervention as a 'humanitarian intervention', which is surely the obvious ideological basis on which to launch an attack. After all, one of the contributors to Save Darfur's crisis last year was a scathing critique by coalition of aid groups condemning their calls for a no-fly zone and forced military intervention, saying the proposals would disrupt relief supplies, escalate violence, and result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Well, there is one possibility. Sabotage the negotiations, make clients of one or more of the rebel groups, pool them together under CIA tutelage if possible, and get the insurgency in full flow again. That would guarantee an extremely violent response by the regime. I am not suggesting that any American government would be so unscrupulous as to actually do such a thing, but - let us say - in an absent-minded way, such a felicitous sequence of events could just 'come about'. Then the colour-coded genocide alerts could be set off, the Oval Office illuminated by flashing sirens, and in goes the Marine Corps.

Hurry, Mia, hurry!

Labels: blackwater, darfur, genocide, mercenaries, sudan, US imperialism

The New Statesman reviews 'Liberal Defense' posted by lenin

"If (as seems likely) the new US Democratic administration rehabilitates 'humanitarian' imperialism, this book will be essential reading as a reminder of previous form."

Labels: the complete and utter works of richard seymour, the liberal defense of murder

Wheels grinding, sparks flying. posted by lenin

In Greece, riots and general strike in response to neoliberal cuts and police brutality. (Those who have the morning free can show solidarity with the Greek protesters by showing up outside the Greek Embassy at 11a Holland Park today at 10.00am. If anyone can send me a report or pics, I will happily put it up as a guest post.) Strikes and protests in France, a New Anticapitalist Party and a defection from the PS to form a left coalition at the elections. In Canada, the ruling Tories - having benefited from the meltdown of the Liberal party - have to prorogue parliament to avoid losing a vote of confidence after they try to push through unpopular neoliberal measures. But it looks like Stephen Harper might be hoping for the Liberals' incoming leader, Michael Ignatieff (who looks like he has been coronated by a few party insiders) to bail the Tories out with a cross-party alliance. The fragile coalition between the Liberals and the labour-based NDP may be the first casualty of Iggy's ascension. In Italy, after the horrifying rise of the right, the grassroots opposition is getting it together. Students have been out en masse, protesting against the massive cuts Berlusconi plans for the education system. A wave of transport strikes has just begun, and a general strike by the three main trade unions is to take place this Friday. This doesn't necessarily result in gains for the Left, especially as the main left organisation, Ridondazione Comunista, destroyed its reputation by participating in a neoliberal, warmongering government. Nonetheless, it is a chance to regain some lost ground. And in the US, a hopeful start and, if successful, an example to others...

Labels: crisis, economy, neoliberalism, recession

Chicago workers close to victory posted by lenin

The factory occupation has forced the Bank of America to back down.

Update. It's not over yet:

A spokeswoman for the United Electrical Workers union said the statement was released prematurely because negotiators had not yet finished hammering out a deal.

"We're hopeful that something might happen today, but nothing has been decided and no settlement has been reached," Leah Fried told AFP.

Labels: chicago, factory occupation, sit-in strike, strike

Greek intifada continues posted by lenin

Labels: greece, intifada, police shooting, riots

Afghanistan by the numbers posted by lenin

Over NATO 100 trucks and 70 humvees destroyed in a single attack. 72% of the territory of Afghanistan has a permanent Taliban presence. Three of four supply routes to Kabul are susceptible to Taliban attack. And if you want to understand how this state of affairs could possibly have come about, there is no better guide than Jonathan Neale.

Labels: aghanistan, NATO, resistance, taliban, US imperialism

The 'new Zimbabwe'? posted by lenin

Here is an instance of convoluted hypocrisy for you: the fabled "international community", many of its constituents both benefiting from and deeply involved in the genocidal mass murder in the Congo, decided to apply sanctions on Zimbabwe for its role in the war. From the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, 2001, to the EU's 2002 sanctions, the justification in both cases was to a large extent Zimbabwe's participation in 'The Second Congo War'. No such sanctions were applied to Rwanda, whose rulers have been cherished local allies of the US and UK. One result of such sanctions was to intensify the economic crisis which has accelerated the decline of Zimbabwe's infrastructure and created massive suffering. The agents of those sanctions are now using their effects to further cordon off the ZANU-PF regime, and threaten intervention. Obviously, sanctions are far less important to this crisis than a) the ruling regime's mode of control and b) the strategies of accumulation that Zimbabwe's capitalist class have pursued. And the attempt by Mugabe to blame EU sanctions for the cholera outbreak is ridiculous. Nonetheless, the triple-crown hypocrisy is as apparent as it is wearily familiar.

The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, (who at least agrees with Mugabe on the issue of homosexuality), is today demanding some unspecified kind of intervention by the "international community", echoing Gordon Brown's remarks yesterday. The vagueness of his appeal, padded out as it is with lovely pieties, can only inspire a yawn. Sentamu will have to do more than chop up his dog collar this time if he wants to have an impact. Nonetheless, one thing that Sentamu is probably right about is that any idea of power-sharing between the MDC and Zanu-PF is dead. Mugabe has taken the opportunity to delay action on the part of his opponents while they wasted their time trying to get a workable deal from the South African Development Community. Now, the army is crushing protests. But then it was always a mistake for the opportunistic Tsvangirai to try and lead a trade union based movement into coalition with what is, essentially, the party of the Zimbabwean ruling class. It would be, as Sam Kebele acidly says of the current regime, a 'government of national impunity'. But this reflects Tsvangirai's tendency to try and win the support of a powerful constituency, although he has occasionally signalled a willingness to rely on the militancy from below that brought the MDC into existence in the first place. Previously, he had tended to make concessions to Western business interests and flatter overseas politicians. Recently, he has acquiesced to those in his party who want to win over disaffected segments of the Zanu-PF, who pointed to the integration of the faction led by Gibson Sibanda and Welshman Ncube into the Senate. After Tzvangirai clearly won the popular vote in the March 2008 presidential elections (despite extensive official rigging), and boycotted the second round because of a surge of violence against MDC supporters, elements of the MDC leadership obviously decided that they had to reach a compromise with the existing structure - this despite the fact that the vote clearly reflected the resiliency of the mass movements that brought the MDC into being. Now, Tzvangirai may once more swing the other way, as Western politicians express an interest in trying to prise open the Mugabe regime and hopefully coopt any subsequent administration.

Critics rightly point out that the MDC has all too often supported the neoliberal policies that contributed to Zimbabwe's plunge in the first place. This was a tragedy, since the optimistic labour movements and agrarian struggles that arose in the 1990s were first and foremost a reaction to the effects of those policies. The MDC arose in 1999, at the apex of a period of struggle during which landless agricultural workers (who comprise a large part of the workforce in the countryside) as well as organised labour in the country's biggest cities had landed blow after blow on Mugabe. It was almost enough to win the MDC the 2000 election. The trouble was that although forces to the Left wanted the MDC to be a Labour Party, the coalition embraced middle class elements who wanted to get rid of the corrupt and increasingly ineffectual rulers while not abandoning its basic policy orientations. In February 2000, the party appointed Eddie Cross, a rich white industrialist and official in the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, as its economic secretary. Cross threatened to privatize 'parastatals' (partially or wholly state-owned enterprises) and the education system within five years. Its response to the issue of land redistribution was to defend white commercial farmers rather than press for the interests of agrarian workers whose support it relies upon. The result has been that the MDC has habitually disappointed its supporters. It doesn't do to be overly simplistic about this, of course. There have been challenges from the left of the party, and these have sometimes borne fruit. After all, an immediate result of Cross' privatization agenda was a revolt on the left of the party that forced the leadership to accept a more social democratic agenda. It is by no means inevitable that a post-Zanu PF regime would continue or intensify its neoliberal policies - it depends on whether the transition is effected by mass resistance, or by a shoddy elite compromise.

Mugabe now speaks in the lingua franca of anti-imperialist nationalism, but it is a hollow lie. The Zanu-PF movement took power on the basis of an agreement with the former colonial masters at Lancaster House, namely that white property would remain untouched outside of some very limited provisions. Even as up to twenty thousand African dissidents were slaughtered in Matabeleland, the white owners were left alone. It wasn't until Mugabe felt threatened in the run up to the June 2000 elections that there was even a hint of opposition to the grotesquely unfair distribution of land and resources, a direct legacy of colonialism, from the now supposedly anti-imperialist government. In fact, Mugabe was quite content to use the repressive apparatus left behind by the old colonial state to bash strikers and opposition movements and also to benefit from US military cooperation in the 1990s. His response to economic stagnation at the end of the 1980s was to appeal to the World Bank and IMF, and in 1991, he accepted the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme. The measures included de-regulation of trade, devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar, the abolition of price controls, and the reduction of consumer subsidies and social spending. Such measures necessarily reduce the scope of the nation-state to act. Patrick Bond and Masimba Manyanya quote Keynes on this topic: "In my view the whole management of the domestic economy depends upon being free to have the appropriate interest rate without reference to the rates prevailing in the rest of the world. Capital controls is a corollary to this." Moreover, in order to do all this, Mugabe had to take on substantial layers of his support, namely veterans of the liberation war whose power was substantially reduced by the abolition of whole swathes of the state apparatus. Mugabe had consistently acted as an agent of reducing Zimbabwean sovereignty, not increasing it.

It was the decision to utilise the issue of land reform to preserve his control that decisively alienated Mugabe from his UK backers, and this became the basis for the reactionary press to start getting dewy-eyed about the wisened old white supremacist Ian Smith. But there should be no illusions about the nature of the land grabs. They have not been carried out in such a way as to engender substantial improvements in social justice. The process has been largely determined by local and national political agendas, and has predictably led to the enrichment of Zanu-PF loyalists. In fact, Mugabe had made a rapprochement with veterans by allowing them to lead the process of 'redistribution'. Even while doing this, Mugabe has continued to push through privatization and cuts to social expenditure, while resuming payments to the IMF. By a combination of deft dodges, realignments, the occasional vociferation of 'left' rhetoric, and the use of the repressive apparatus to attack opponents, Mugabe has consistently outwitted the MDC and thus far prevented his regime from imploding at several points where it seemed as if the end was imminent. But as traumatised as Zimbabwean society is by economic crisis, hyperinflation, the breakdown of basic social services and infrastructure, and the violent lashing out of a state on its last lease of life, the basis of any post-Zanu PF regime is still going to have to come from below. You can't just import the model of colour-coded revolutions, in which the masses congregate at rock concerts and passively spectate. Apart from anything else, Mugabe et al won't fuck around: they army will kick the shit out of anyone who tries to stage that kind of thing, while cops will drag a few hundred people off to be tortured in one of the old jailhouses left over by Smith. And the idea that troops operating under an AU or UN mandate could possibly put a stop this suffering is absurd. The most likely result of any military intervention would be to galvanise a layer of people around Mugabe who would fight to defend him. (As Mahmood Mamdani has pointed out, Mugabe hasn't stayed in power without retaining a measure of support from significant layers of the population.) That would be the basis not of liberation but of absolute social catastrophe. Yet, of course, this is exactly what is being proposed in op eds throughout the West. The Washington Post wants neighbouring states to get stuck in, and the Kenyan Prime Minister is explicitly supporting such an idea. Paddy Ashdown, the former colonial High Commissioner to Bosnia, auguring a Rwandan-style genocide, has said he wants to see Britain get involved. Irene Petras, executive director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (whom Condi declared the winner of the first annual Freedom Defenders Award in 2007) has invoked the doctrine of a "responsibility to protect", urging some form of international intervention. At the moment, thankfully, military intervention looks unlikely. But the head of steam being built up around this idea ought to be regarded with deep suspicion, especially as it is progenerated in the main by those who are co-responsible for Zimbabwe's dire calamity.

Labels: colonialism, ian smith, mdc, neoliberalism, rhodesia, tsvangirai, US imperialism, working class, zimbabwe

An occupation I wholeheartedly support posted by lenin

Angry laid-off workers occupy occupy factory in Chicago.



ps: Teamsters announce a 40,000 increase in membership in 2008.

Labels: barack obama, factory occupation, strike, us working class

A few points on the crisis posted by lenin

I just wanted to outline some arguments gleaned from today's 'mini-Marxism' event. The gathering, featuring István Mészáros, Tony Benn, Moazzam Begg (who consistently impresses one with his erudition, wit and gravity) and a bunch of others, was an attempt to provide socialist answers to the current economic crisis.

1) The economic crisis expands the spectrum of political possibilities. A year ago, or even a few months ago, only the far left spoke of nationalising the banks. Now, Mervyn King - the governor of the Bank of England and free market ideologue - is suggesting that it may be necessary to do so. For years now, official neoliberal ideology has resisted intervention to defend jobs on the grounds that the state cannot afford such intervention. Now, it is a perfectly orthodox view that the state should intervene to defend jobs. Moreover, since the ruling class is in such flux (an ideological confusion reflected in the opinion pieces of the FT and The Economist), the greatest likelihood is of even more surprising developments in the future. The expansion of the financial sector and its current role in capital accumulation means that the credit crunch has a way of detonating unacknowledged and unseen charges. It does not simply affect 'speculative capital' - all capital is speculative, and those investors in the service or manufacturing industries who have borrowed heavily based on the strength of the financial sector are now severely exposed. As a result, we are seeing big job losses in consumer outlets like Woolworths, in service providers like Cable and Wireless, and in manufacturing sites such Tetley in Leeds, or GlaxoSmithKline in Durham.

2) The range of probabilities is somewhere between a crisis on a par with the 1970s (stats released yesterday show US unemployment rising at the fastest rate since 1974, with over half a million jobs lost in a month) or one equal to that of the 1930s. This means hard times for the advanced capitalist societies, but catastrophic times for everyone else. This occurred to me this morning while reading about the horrifying collapse of Zimbabwe's basic institutions of health and welfare and the dreadful poverty that people have been forced into. The dishonest attempt to reduce this to Zimbabwe's corrupt and authoritarian government (Gordon Brown appears to be calling for 'humanitarian intervention') both obscures any real understanding of how Mugabe has remained in power (Mamdani has performed a useful evisceration of liberal moralising on the topic), and neglects the most crucial point, namely the neoliberalism to which Mugabe and Zanu-PF committed themselves very early on. And of course, global economic trends can intersect with domestic political crises in much more deadly ways, as in Rwanda.

3) Partly as a corollary of the previous point, tensions between powerful states are likely to increase, and protectionism of an old-fashioned kind is once more on the agenda. The struggle between the US and Russia over control of energy supplies in Central Asia have recently been complemented by a new Sino-American contest over the devaluation of the yuan. China's rulers want to increase their exports since the American export market has shrank so catastrophically, causing the loss of thousands of factories in the Pearl River delta alone. Henry Paulson has consistently urged the Chinese to let the yuan continue rising against the dollar in order to help stimulate US exports, and the Chinese elite was prepared to go along with this for a couple of years. Not no more. This would seem, in the short term, to indicate a trade war. American capital has so far profited immensely from the surplus value produced by the expanding Chinese working class. This helped fund deficit spending and war, while providing a temporary illusion of abundance for many Americans. But it is no longer in the interests of the Chinese ruling class to just let that take place. And to add to this, there is the prospect of a confrontation between India and Pakistan, with the US implicitly backing India. Whoever carried out the slaughter in Mumbai, the beneficiaries have been those significant constituencies in both countries that favour war. South Ossetia showed that the largely illusory unipolar era was decisively finished. Kashmir may come to represent another lesson: that the era of proxy wars is far from finished. Within the EU bloc, there are now arguments between Germany, and France and the UK, with the former accused of beggar-thy-neighbour policies, refusing to take serious measures to address the crisis while relying on stimulatory policies elsewhere in Europe to support German exports. The whole world system becomes more chaotic and dangerous as a result of this crisis.

4) The argument (from Polly Toynbee, Ken Livingstone, et al) that 'New Labour is Dead', while appealing, is also misleading. The projected cuts in public spending following this curt stimulus are far more substantial than anything achieved by the Thatcher government. New Labour is banking on a quick resolution of the crisis and a recovery sufficient to fund such a huge contraction in public spending on pain of raising the national debt to incomprehensible levels. Economists speak of a V-shaped recession, in which the economy bounces back rapidly; a U-shaped recession in which the economy rebounds more slowly and with more difficulty; and an L-shaped recession, in which the economy stagnates for years on end. Few are betting on 'V' right now, and this means that either a New Labour or Tory government will subject the public sector to intense pressure to shed jobs, cut wages and reduce services.

5) Socialists must be flexible in their responses to this crisis. In the interests of maximum unity, one strategy is to find a minimum programme and try to interest a broad coalition in supporting it. However, the difficulty is that the crisis will impact in an uneven and unpredictable way. The traditional bases of the Left might not be the most militant sectors of society, for example. They may even be comparatively conservative, particularly if they are won over by the argument that it is time to defend the Labour Party. And such a minimal programme may end up lagging behind the needs of situations as they arise. Resistance is not necessarily going to flare up most along traditional trade union lines, or even as a direct response to economic crisis (it may be mediated in various ways). Flexibility is therefore essential.

That's enough montage. I'll get back to you in the morning.

Labels: 'globalisation', capitalism, economy, global economy, istvan meszaros, moazzam begg, neoliberalism, socialism, US imperialism, us working class

Press targets British Muslims posted by lenin

My brief article for Socialist Worker, alongside Muserat Sujawal arguing that Islamophobia is likely to increase as a result of the Mumbai attacks, and some detailed background to the attacks themselves.

ps: also, my review of Wolfgang Sofsky's 'Privacy: A Manifesto'.

Labels: india, islamophobia, kashmir, mumbai, muslims

Neocons love Obama. posted by lenin

"Conservatives should be cheering right now" - David Horowitz (Frontpagemag)
"I would say his administration already far exceeds expectations, and he hasn’t even taken office yet." - Max Boot (Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at CFR)

The neocons are in perfect tizzy over Obama's new administration. To be fair, this isn't completely new. Some neocons started to love Obama up long ago, back when Robert Kagan hailed 'Obama the interventionist'. Senior neoconservative Ken Adelman backed Obama for his 'temperament' and 'judgment'. Fukuyama, though not exactly a neocon any longer, went for Obama back in October. Hitchens, who was only ever a neocon in spirit (ie, drenched in spirit), ditto.

What does all this mean? Are the neocons simply swallowing mouthfuls of blood and running home to Dad? Or do they have something to be cheerful about? Actually, it's both. After all, the last time the neocons were so directionless and lost as a tendency was in the early 1990s, when the 'totalitarian' behemoth they said could never collapse from within duly collapsed from within. A great many of them initially supported Bill Clinton, who also appointed a Republican defense secretary and ran a hawkish foreign policy campaign. The neocons were in essence liberal nationalists, after all. They had broken with the Democratic Party after its failure to select Daniel Patrick Moynihan as their preferred presidential candidate, deriding the centre-right Carter administration as a 'New Left' one. The main issues that brought them to the Republican Party were Carter's failure to decisively support the Shah, and his occasional criticisms of the Somoza regime and eventual imposition of sanctions. That was essentially why they turned to the Reaganauts.

And so aside from those who were obsessed with restoring the cultural values of the 1950s (Kristol, Himmelfarb, Gingrich, Quayle), a rapprochement with official liberalism made sense. And Clinton went to some lengths to woo the neoconservatives, successfully getting Richard Schifter to resign the Bush administration and advise his campaign on foreign policy in April 1992. Joshua Muravchik also advised the 1992 Clinton campaign on foreign policy, during which time he may have had some role in persuading Clinton to campaign to the right of Bush the Elder on the issue of relations with China (although he was obliged to pursue a quite different course once in office, just as Bush the Younger has ended up making nice with North Korea). On a whole range of issues, Clinton advocated a 'human rights' imperialism that he said Bush Sr. had been remiss on, particularly in the Balkans. It was even hinted in private that he might be open to an attack on Iraq. And of course, when Bush applied financial pressure on Israel to get it involved in peace negotiations, furious neocons could read about Clinton accusing Bush of "ever so subtly" eroding "the taboo against overt anti-Semitism". The resulting swoons from some neocon pundits induced The New Republic to announce: "Neocons for Clinton: They're Back!" Long after the neocons fell out with the Clinton administration, Norman Podhoretz still declared himself astonished that the GOP's formal position on foreign policy was much less hawkish than Clinton's practise. This is an important point about the neocons that liberal critics often miss: far from being a bunch of doctrinaire fanatics, they are far more successful bipartisan operators than any other political tendency in the United States. (See chapter three of 'Liberal Defense' for background).

One intriguing novelty is that the traditional neocon disdain for realism is not at all to the fore here. Rather, there seems to be some relief that Obama is has constructed a 'Realpolitik' cabinet rather than a liberal one. But not much else about this is new.

Labels: barack obama, bill clinton, neoconservatism, right-wing, the liberal defense of murder

Sunny Hundal is not an Uncle Tom. He is an idiot. posted by lenin

How much of an idiot? This much. Censuring the "racist flip-side of anti-imperialism", the guru of New-Labour-revival-via-his-new-blog, asserts that Ralph Nader, John Pilger and Ayman al-Zawahiri have something in common. While Zawahiri (looking very lonely these days - wonder where his chums have gone?) referred to Obama as a 'house slave', both Nader and Pilger, describing Obama's inevitably disappointing policies, have fallen back on the epithet 'Uncle Tom'. You know what that means: Radical Left = Al Qaeda.

Before proceeding with Hundal's trashy diatribe, let's pause and meditate on that term 'Uncle Tom'. Although the epithet originates in an abolitionist book written by a Northern white liberal, progressive for its era, it has come through usage to refer to a black person who purportedly collaborates with the white power system, and in general to refer to a sell-out. It was the latter sense in which Nader used the term. Ralph Nader was not, in fact, talking about foreign policy, but about Obama's support for Wall Street interests. He suggested that Obama had a choice between being an "Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or an Uncle Tom for the corporations". Obama is clearly not an 'Uncle Tom' in this sense, since - despite his carefully calibrated marketing campaign - he has not promised to be anything more than a centrist. He channelled an anti-racist vote while pandering to racist pieties about poor black people and pandering to racist contempt for Muslims. He channelled an anti-war vote while using the most hawkish language on Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He channelled economic populism while effectively championing the agenda of Wall Street, his most munificent backers. His sell was progressive, but his literally expressed agenda was moderately to the left of the Bush administration. Further, Nader's choice of words, contrasting a Frank Capra kind of patriotism with a racialised code for sell-out, is highly unfortunate. It does not, of course, make him a racist, and that splenetic charge is mainly a means by which Obama's more uncritical supporters discipline those who want to retain a more critical perspective. Nader, as always, is the whipping post for this crowd.

That isn't the only thing that is problematic about the term 'Uncle Tom'. It is always going to be the case that some of the oppressed collude with the agents of their oppression and are rewarded for doing so. They get praise for denouncing the group they are held to represent, and the more vitriolic and less nuanced they are, they more praise is heaped on them. It isn't hard to come up with examples of this, and it isn't hard to see why it is particularly infuriating when it happens. For example, when Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji attack Islam and celebrate US foreign policy, they provide Islam-bashing racists with a cover they are not entitled to. They are themselves participating in a racist discourse that is ascriptively humiliating for the vast majority of Muslims who are not prepared to consider that they belong to an inferior culture (even if it could be said, which it can't, that there is a distinctive, monolithic Muslim culture). Similarly, when Kanan Makiya in his role as a notable Iraqi exile commentator described bombs falling on Iraq as 'music to his ears' and participated in pre-war planning for the 'new Iraq', he was derided by another Iraqi exile as an 'Iraqi Uncle Tom' for having allowed his identity as an Iraqi to be rented out for such atrocious purposes. And there is clearly a desire to express the sense in which such actions provide a sort of 'decoy', just in the same sense that Zillah Eisenstein suggests that the integration of women into military life while progressive also helped provide a decoy for essentially masculinist ventures.

There is clearly a sense in which Obama is being used to rebrand the empire. This isn't only by tapping his race. It isn't only by tapping his 'Muslim' middle name, either. It is also his experience of growing up in Indonesia, a poor society where he was schooled alongside Muslims. He is sold as a man who, unlike the upper class twit from Midland, Texas, might be able to empathise with the poor and oppressed. He is sold as an intelligent, rational man quite unlike the vicious reactionaries he is replacing. He is sold as someone who worked in poor communities and therefore understands their problems. This is the sell that Pilger ironised about when he noted in a November article for the New Statesmen that Obama's aggressive foreign policy will see many "brown-skinned" children killed in Afghanistan. In the January article in which he referred to Obama as an "Uncle Tom" who would bomb Afghanistan, he also noted Hillary Clinton's sell as some kind of blow for women's liberation, though she is in fact an anti-feminist. It is the decoy that is the target here. Nevertheless, the trouble is that the insult 'Uncle Tom', even with the best intentions, can in fact reinforce a kind of identitarian essentialism. Depending on the context, it can imply that there is a particular standard of behaviour to which someone with such-and-such an identity ought to conform.

Hundal's diatribe, however, hardly escapes such essentialism. For a start, he presumes to speak on behalf of a "younger ethnic minority generation"™ that it is by no means clear he can adequately represent. He can no more say what this "we" believes than I can speak on behalf of a "thirty-something pinkish-yellow generation" because it is no more univocal than the "younger ethnic minority generation"™. This is not mere narcissism on his part, though as ever it is unmistakeably present. The things he puts into the mouths of that "younger ethnic minority generation"™ are boringly obsequious, and are precisely for the purpose of mandating Obama as a terrific guy. In other words, having railed against the (entirely confected) supposition that all black people must think alike, he then mobilises an entire generation of imaginary black people to support his case. Having done that, he places a critique of Zionists (a political category) in the same rank as a paranoid whinge about Muslims (an ethnic/religious category). In its best light, this is just myopic. In its worst, it regurgitates the baseless claim that opposing Zionism is a form of racism.

Of course, Hundal doesn't even remotely begin to grapple with the seriousness of the problems that both Pilger and Nader raised. Nor does he seem to grasp that the commitment to increased aggression in Afghanistan and the fervent support for Israel (to whom Obama has already awarded Jerusalem as its capital) isn't actually negated by the various saving graces that Hundal raises (and breathlessly exaggerates). To be concerned about the slaughter entailed by an intensified 'war on terror', and to be disturbed by the efficacy of the repackaging that will make it more palatable and therefore allow more people to be killed, isn't some personality quirk or weird obsession of lefties. The vast majority of people on the planet are opposed to this war, including the majority of Americans, and it is a legitimate basis for criticism. He clearly understands that "the world has changed", although it might be argued that such a phrase is so vague as to be meaningless. Technically, the world changes every time one sheds a few skin cells or pees in the shower. Of course, if this just means that the "younger ethnic minority generation"™ "don't see everything as a fight between black and white, but rather about looking forward to a shared history", then it is hard to see where the change is. After all, when was it ever simply a "fight between black and white"? When was it not fundamentally about social justice? What makes him conclude that either Nader or Pilger think social justice a "black and white" issue today, other than his own admittedly impoverished imagination? However, all Hundal has done is demonstrated that he doesn't understand the critiques whose language he professes to be offended by, and in the process contributed to a spurious rumour-mill about the leftists that liberals love to hate. Next week: how liberal bloggers made the Obama presidency.

Labels: 'obamamania', anti-imperialism, obama, racism, red-baiting

Packed meeting to hear glorious leader expose petit-bourgeois intelligentsia posted by lenin

Well, I don't know, I suppose slightly more people were gathered into Pollard room in the Institute of Historical Research than usual this evening. I mean, it might have even been in the double figures. And thank you to those who attended. The good news for this lucky sodality was that I had typed up a reasonably coherent speech, distilling down some of the contents of my book that would easily come in under 45 minutes. It would be like a spoken word version of the blog. The bad news was that my printer is on the blink, my PDA no longer works, and I had no means of conveying the bastard speech to the meeting. No problem, I can wing it. Oh, sorry, the other piece of bad news is that I was hungover in a bad way. Still, I've got the book. I can read my own written work and make it look sexy and alluring with some fast editing. Oh, but wait, I forgot - I can't do fast-editing. And also, when I opened my cherry cola to get some desperately needed caffeine into my veins, the bottle gushed and frothed over and spilled inside my bag and all over my jeans. So now on top of being sticky, hungover and without a prepared talk, I realise the publishers have come along to view my performance. Now, on top of this, the topic is the 'pro-war Left since 1989', and that means talking about the intricate details of Yugoslavia in a semi-coherent way while trying to include all relevant matter in a concise fashion. Trying to sum up Yugoslavia in a quarter of an hour is like trying to summarise the complete works of Shakespeare on the back of a postage stamp. Nonetheless, despite all that, and several scrotum-tightening moments in which I floundered hopelessly, it all sort of worked out. The Q&A was far better than the bit where I talked for 45 minutes, and I even had a couple of dissidents (naturally, they were taken out and shot behind the chemical sheds). And on my estimate, about half the people there bought a copy of Liberal Defense. If that pattern holds globally, it means at least 3 billion people will buy my book. And that means the other 3 billion will have some serious fucking explaining to do.

Labels: pro-war 'left', the complete and utter works of richard seymour, the liberal defense of murder