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Showing posts from March, 2016
" Majority of Americans now agree with banning all non-citizen Muslims from the United States, according to a new poll..." Congratulations!
Chicago, US. " The strike will only last a day , but it’s the kind of mass political action that rarely seen in American labor history. It’s also one that isn’t without risks; CPS has declared the strike illegal."

Profit and Balance of Forces

The Obama administration is paralyzed over whether to sell dozens of advanced U.S. fighter jets to the tiny kingdom of Qatar, a Persian Gulf ally that houses a strategic American air base but has alarmed Washington by maintaining ties to an array of Islamist militant groups. The potential deal for up to 73 F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets, worth billions of dollars, has been on the table for more than two years. The White House has come under fire for the unusual delay from some U.S. lawmakers, who accuse the administration of dithering and breaking its promise to speed up arms sales to Gulf allies anxious about the threat posed by their regional rival Iran — especially as Tehran emerges from economic sanctions and inks arms deals with countries like Russia. Israel has privately expressed reservations about the deal because of Qatar’s relationships with Islamist groups like the Taliban and Hamas and because of concerns that Israel’s military superiority in the region could be underc
Creating the “Land of Israel”:  Agitprop in the Cause of Nation-Building "[...]Zionist propaganda had to rally European Jewry to immigrate to Palestine in the name of “redemption” and then indenture the Jewish settler community, the Yishuv, to lay the groundwork for an eventual state. Its colorful posters presented a hardy people tilling the soil (“making the desert bloom”) and encouraged a self-sufficient economy of so-called “Hebrew labor” and “Hebrew produce” necessary for constructing a proto-state that was independent of the Palestinians and eventually confident enough to subjugate them. Anchored in a powerful story, Zionism enlisted Western benefactors and molded a discrete community whose only commonality was a shared faith tradition into a linguistically and culturally unified nation capable of establishing a cogent state."
 .كل ما في الأمر إنني إنسان غير مندمج كثيرا - تصب القهوة. زنداها عاريان. زغب أصفر ينام هناك على مسيل الزند المعصفر. كانت ترتدي «الغندورة» الشعبية الملونة -   ولكن ما معنى غير مندمج؟ -     لا اجتماعي. أشعر بالقصور عن الاندماج مع الآخرين -   هل سألت نفسك لماذا؟ -   .بلى. دائما أسأل -   وهل حاولت الاندماج؟ -  . حياتي كلها محاولات -   والنتيجة؟ -   .الإحباط -   ومن الممتنع؟ -  لست أدري. أحيانا أفكر أنني ربما كنت أحمل أفكارا ضارة. أفكار متطرفة، قاسية، صعبة التحقيق. إنهم يقولون: عليك أن  تكون واقعيا. لماذا لا تجري مع التيار؟ وأسأل نفسي إن كنت حقا أسبح ضد التيار؟ ولكن إذا اندفعت مع التيار إلى أين سأصل؟ فيقولون: إذا بقيت هكذا عليك أن تقبل العزلة. أحد ما ليس معك. لكي تحيا مع الآخرين عليك أن تتنازل. أمي كانت تقول: يا بني الأرض الواطئة تشرب ماءها وماء غيرها من الأراضي العالية. وكنت أرد عليها وأنا صغير: ولكنني أكره الأراضي الواطئة لأن الناس جميعا يطؤونها يا أمي وأنا لا أريد أن أشرب إلا مائي. وتقول أمي يائسة: ستموت وحيدا ولن تجد من يكفِّنك ويمشي وراء جنازتك. أريد أن أموت عار

How a Gangster, Imperialist, Criminal Regime Operates

" In truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start.  The threat posed by the Libyan regime’s military and paramilitary forces to civilian-populated areas was diminished by NATO airstrikes and rebel ground movements within the first 10 days. Afterward, NATO began providing direct close-air support for advancing rebel forces by attacking government troops that were actually in  retreat  and had abandoned their vehicles. Fittingly, on Oct. 20, 2011, it was a U.S. Predator drone and French fighter aircraft that  attacked  a convoy of regime loyalists trying to flee Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. The dictator was injured in the attack, captured alive, and then extrajudicially  murdered  by rebel forces. The intervention in Libya shows that the slippery slope of allegedly limited interventions is most steep when there’s a significant gap between what policymakers say their objectives are and the orders they issue for the battlefield. Unfortunately, duplicity
 "Hungaru head towards a general strike..." "... Neoliberalism, which has characterized much of the left-centre Hungarian opposition’s rhetoric, is not a winning ticket in Hungary. The second half of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s second, consecutive term in office may be significantly more difficult for him than the first."
"Molenbeek's Ganster Jihadists" " Certainly, many of those who joined IS from the area did not come from particularly religious backgrounds. There is certainly a sense of disaffection among many in Molenbeek. I spent an evening on a street corner talking to one young Muslim man who had been accused of attempting to travel to Syria.  He alternated between fixing me with an intense stare, and refusing to make any eye contact - exuding an air of slight volatility. Initially when I told him I wanted to understand why someone would commit an attack like the one in Paris - he told me I should travel to Raqqa, and ask people there. For him Western air strikes against IS were the answer.  But then he changed his mind. It was the fault of domestic conditions. He railed against the Belgian government - against white Belgians, who hated those of Arab descent, he said. And he would repeat "there is no democracy here" - a feeling that you can't express any
The endless war of who gets what [Note: there is some inaccurate figures on the South Korean War and the massacre]
Eros and Civilization for a Jobless Future: Herbert Marcuse and the Abolition of Work " Surplus-repression and the performance principle compel people to internalize the constant drive to work, compete, and produce. They are also evident in the vehement hostility directed against individuals who refuse to work, appear to be lazy or unproductive, or seem generally free of social constraint. Surplus-repression and the performance principle are most apparent in conservative attacks on the welfare state, and they are well known to protesters who have been yelled at by passersby to “GET A JOB!” Social anxieties about pleasure and freedom proliferate, demanding submission to authoritarian forces of repression: “As the reality principle takes root, even in its most primitive and most brutally enforced form, the pleasure principle becomes something frightful and terrifying; the impulses for free gratification meet with anxiety, and this anxiety calls for protection against them” (Marc
" This is the country where toddlers shoot their mothers and the police wage a murderous war against black Americans. This is the country  that has attacked and sought to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and bombed from Asia to the Middle East, causing the deaths and dispossession of millions of people.  No country can equal this systemic record of violence. Most of America's wars (almost all of them against defenseless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama." In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the paramount aim of American foreign policy as a world substantially made over in America's own image. The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. Heretics would be converted, subverted, bribed, smeared or crushed. Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the i
Scenario for a Wonderful Tomorrow What  about Europe? And why dwell so long on the refugee crisis when I’m supposed to be discussing a book on the euro crisis? The answer is that Merkel’s immigration policy offers an object lesson in what other countries can expect from Germany acting European. Just as the United States sees the world as an extended playing field for its domestic political economy, Germany has come to consider the European Union as an extension of itself, where what is right for Germany is by definition right for all others. There is nothing particularly immoral about this; indeed Germans think it is supremely moral, as they identify their control of Europe with a post-nationalism understood as anti-nationalism, which in turn is understood as the quintessential lesson of German history. Very much like the US, German elites project what they collectively regard as self-evident, natural and reasonable onto  their  outside world, and are puzzled that anyone could po
A headline on foreignpolicy.com " THE ROTTEN HEART OF EUROPE:   Belgium’s political dysfunction and economic marginalization of Muslim communities put us all in danger, FP’s Leela Jacinto writes." What a surprise! " But while Europe offered the sort of economic opportunities for which the 1960s generation of migrants was grateful, their children have been not so lucky. The economic downturn since the late 1970s saw the closure of Belgian coal mines and heavy industries, leaving areas of urban blight. Belgium’s national unemployment rate, hovering around 8 percent, climbs to   more than 20 percent among the youth population . Among Belgians of Moroccan or Turkish origin, that figure can double to around 40 percent. Add high unemployment to the mix of poor policing, fuddled administration and services, and you have the perfect breeding grounds for marginalization and radicalization. Tiny Belgium today has the dubious distinction of being the country with the highe
Here’s What a Man Who Studied Every Suicide Attack in the World Says About ISIS’ Motives This is a partial take on the issue... One needs to delve into the cities and neighbourhoods ( see, for example the study on Jihadism in Daouar Hicher in Tunis) to identify sociological and psychological motives. In addition, there is a bigger picture: local and Western state terrorism, repression, economic and financial terrorism by local and international agents, decades of marginalizations and humuliation...
Contradiction, Systemic Crisis and the Direction for Change: An Interview with Wang Hui " The transition in China’s form of development is currently framed in terms of “upgrading and updating” and industrial transfer. From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, many people—from the standpoint of very different political aspirations—have predicted that a similar situation would occur and even encouraged one to occur in China. But, disappointingly for these people, this expected “revolution” has not yet appeared in China, while street revolution is already widespread in Euro-America. Why? It is not because social contradictions and conflicts do not exist in China or because there are no problems with China’s mode of development. It is rather due to two reasons: First, the fact that China is vast and regions are unevenly developed has ironically acted as a buffer in the context of the financial crisis. Regional disparity, rural–urban disparity, disparity between the rich and poor
From Illusion to Empire: Chuang on the Creation of the Chinese Economy “China” was very much a product of the Occidental imagination. The people Pereira asked had trouble even understanding the question of what “country” they were from, as there were no clear indigenous correlates to the concept. Ultimately they explained that there was one ruler, but many countries, which still used their ancient names. The combination of these countries composed the “Great Ming,” but each retained much of its local specificity. This detail was a mere curiosity when the account was published in Europe, which had established “China” as its arcane, ancient counterpart—less the name for a country than a designation for the external limits to early capitalist expansion and colonization. Such projects tended to run aground on the East Asian mainland, which proved capable of massive trade in goods and silver but resistant to true incorporation into the new global economy. China designated an obstructio

Obama’s Imperialist View

Obama's imperialist view In 1881, the British journalist Edward Dicey wrote of the great democratic revolt in Egypt, led by Ahmed 'Urabi against the British Empire and its puppet regime of the Khedivate:

"In Egypt - as, for that matter, in any Mussulman country -parliamentary government is an impossibility, as incomprehensible to the Oriental mind as the differential calculus would be to a ploughboy." 
In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, Obama made the following comments regarding "the Middle East":

 "You have countries that are failing to provide prosperity and opportunity for their people. You've got extremist… ideologies. You've got countries that have few civic traditions, so as autocratic regimes start fraying, the only organising principles are sectarian.  

 "Contrast that with Southeast Asia, which still has huge problems… but is filled with… ambitious, energetic people who are every single day clawing
Primo Levi's Heartbreaking, Heroic Answers to the Most Common Questions He Was Asked About "Survival in Auschwitz" "And yet varied sources of information were available to most Germans. Knowing and making things known was one way of keeping one’s distance from Nazism. But most Germans didn’t know because they didn’t want to know. Because, indeed, they wanted not to know. It is certainly true that the German people, as a whole, did not even try to resist. In Hitler’s Germany a particular code was widespread—those who knew did not talk; those who did not know did not ask questions; those who did ask questions received no answers. Shutting his mouth, his eyes, and his ears, the typical German citizen built for himself the illusion of not knowing, hence of not being an accomplice to the things taking place in front of his very door... "...  Everybody must know, or remember, that Hitler and Mussolini, when they spoke in public, were believed, applauded, admire
Saving capitalism from Donald Trump and the extreme left "The imminent triumph of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate in the upcoming US presidential election is really worrying mainstream economists. Adair Turner was head of the UK’s financial regulation authority where he was a great success in stopping UK banks engaging in reckless speculation (joke!). He is a former vice-chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe and lectures at the London School of Economics. He has now published a book, Between Debt and the Devil, in which he argues that to get the global economy going, central banks and  governments must opt for ‘helicopter money’  i.e. central banks should credit every household bank account with several thousand dollars, euros or pounds, so that they can directly spend the cash and restore aggregate demand, boost output and encourage companies to invest for higher growth. I have discussed before  the nature of helicopter money and its likely success  in meeting Adair
Hasan Al-Turabi "Turabi’s concepts of an Islamic state have aroused significant criticism, not because of  his concepts but rather, because of his practices as a political activist working with military dictators. When he described the nature of an Islamic State, he argued that such a state could take different forms, depending on the specific conditions of particular time and place. However, in accord with the principle of  tawhid , the state would not be secular – separating religion from public life. In whatever form the Islamic state took, it would emphasize justice and avoid oppression. The criticism of Turabi comes from the fact that, in practice, he supported oppressive military dictatorships that claimed to be implementing Shariʻa."
"Reconciliation no longer a taboo?" Sooner or later, and this did happen before, the two reactionary forces, will sit and work together to maintain the status quo, to absorb parts of the crisis.
"... Capitalism for the 150 or so years [sic] of it's existence was based on production of material goods from which surplus value derives that in turn was divided between industry profits, interest payments and rent...The  heyday of this economy in terms of its employment of labor forces in manufacturing (production centered) activities was between 1940 and 1980. Today production centered economies have been dissembled with manufacturing in the US employing at best 10 percent of the workforce...Japan and Germany around 20 percent...top Asian tigers like South Korea about the same...even China overall has never seen manufacturing employment rise above 25 percent of employment. And the rest of the world is experiencing what has been dubbed "premature deindustrialization".  The current economy, if you want to call it that, is based on money games, Himalayan sized debt, leverage, and extraction of "pounds of flesh" from the bones of humanity. It operates
Brazil on Edge "In spite of a founding platform that emphasizes ethics in politics, the party has engaged in the same appalling behavior as the country’s other capitalist parties. From phony contracts and mob connections in PT-ruled cities in the 1990s to bribes for votes at the federal level in the 2000s, the party has been transformed into a business-as-usual operation... However, " the treatment the PT has received is hypocritical and unfair, even by capitalist democracy’s shallow standards."
" Europe’s silence in the face of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hostile takeover of two of his country’s independent newspapers over the last weeks is being chalked up to the need to avoid jeopardizing Ankara’s finger in the dike of even more massive waves of Middle Eastern migration into the continent. But Europe’s cavalier attitude toward this kind of rising authoritarianism on its eastern border is more than just strategic indifference — it’s symptomatic of a steady erosion of core civil liberties within the EU itself. Government encroachments on free speech are an attempt to tighten control and consolidate power in the face of political stress and rising dissent . Absent an underlying sense of threat or insecurity in the system, even the most revolutionary speech is only words, scarcely menacing and unworthy of a reaction that would attest to its significance. Restrictions on speech meet with least resistance when populations at large feel buffeted by the same an
Amilcar Cabral, Imperialism and Neo-colonialism "The postcolony is an illusion, reinforced and spurred by native elements controlling political or state power. The postcolony is an illusion because this class is subjected to the whims and impulse of imperialists (Fanon 1961; Cabral 1979). This pseudo bourgeoisie, however, strongly nationalist, cannot fulfil a historical function; ‘it cannot freely guide the development of productive forces, and in short cannot be a national bourgeoisie’. (Cabral 1979:129)."
Crisis in Brazil - centre left government could fall "Brazil was teetering on the brink of a constitutional crisis on Thursday after a judge blocked President Dilma Rousseff’s appointment of her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to her cabinet, prompting clashes in Congress and on the streets. Just as Mr Lula da Silva’s swearing-in ceremony drew to a close, a federal judge issued an injunction, suspending the ex-president’s appointment on the grounds that it prevented "t he free exercise of justice" in corruption investigations. Opposition politicians hailed the decision as a triumph for Brazilian democracy, while the government vowed to appeal, lambasting the order as part of a “coup” by the country’s elite, reminiscent of Brazil’s period of military rule. Brazilian assets rallied as investors bet on the government’s collapse. “Since the end of the dictatorship and the transition to democracy over recent years, this is our most dramatic political mo
Optimism about a revolution aside ... Speakers' Corner, London
Surnames and Social Mobility: England 1230-2012 "The relative constancy of the intergenerational correlation of underlying social status across very different social environments in England from 1800 to 2012 suggests that it stems from the nature of inheritance of characteristics within families. Strong forces of familial culture, social connections, and genetics must connect the generations. There really are quasi-physical “Laws of Inheritance.” This interpretation is reinforced by the finding of Clark in work with other co-authors that all societies observed – including the USA, Sweden, India, China and Japan - have similar low rates of social mobility when surnames are used to identify elites and underclasses, despite an even wider range of social institutions (Clark et al. 2014)."
The Egyptian Counterrevolution Despite the best efforts of Egypt’s elite, the struggle for democracy has not been extinguished. "It’s important when discussing counterrevolution to understand what exactly we are talking about. The role played by the Muslim Brotherhood towards the Egyptian Revolution was one of betrayal, was a classical betrayal by a reformist, non-revolutionary movement. It attempted to broker a deal with the old regime to get a place at the table and to share power with the old regime. Yet it failed to do so. The Muslim Brotherhood was not a central part of the counterrevolution. You could say that it was understandably the first beneficiary of the revolution, in the sense that it was the first freely elected political force that came to power — in formal terms, at least — in the wake of the revolution. But it was also  the first victim  of the counterrevolution. It’s important to understand this because some people blithely talk about “two wings” of th
“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”  –Assata Shakur
On the Violence of Politics "'Violence has no place in politics.’ People might have legitimate grievances, but they can only be resolved by legitimate means. It is never acceptable to start attacking other people. I want to suggest something different: that in the end, it’s precisely  this  impulse, the horrified rejection of any violence within politics, the keening appeal to legitimacy in all things, which is ultimately capable of bringing about the most horrific forms of repression."
Foreign Policy, foreignpolicy.com, sometimes publishes good analyses, but they can be funny as well:  " Obama is right to engage with Cuba — as long as he doesn't leave human rights behind, Christopher Sabatini writes." (14 March 2016)  The biggest violator of "human rights" at home and abroad should lecture poor, little Cuba about "human rights".
تونس لاشك أن الأمر لا علاقة له بالوعي أو الفهم لكنني كنت منذ طفولتي لا أحب "تحية العلم" أو ما يسمونه "النشيد الوطني" باستثناء ذلك البيت الشهير (اذا الشعب أراد الحياة....) حين كان يخرج من حناجرنا زمن المظاهرات والمصادمات مع البوليس. كما أنني بصراحة لا أحب الوطن (وطني) إلا بالقدر الذي يرتبط فيه هذا المكان أو ذاك بذكريات وأشخاص أعزاء. ومنذ نعومة أظافري ،كما يقولون ،كنت أشعر أن كلمات مثل الوطنية وحب الوطن ليست سوى كذب ونفاق (أو بلهجة "شعبية" حشوات). والعلم ، الوطني هو أيضا، لم يكن ي عني لي سوى رمز لمؤسسات السلطة، المتسلطة كما هو اسمها.... وهكذا فالتشوه الأخلاقي الذي أعانيه في علاقة بالوطن والوطنية لا علاقة له بطبيعة الوعي الذي راكمته خلال كل هذه السنوات بل أظنه تشوه يتعلق بالجينات والكروموزومات التي تتجول في أعماق جسدي، أو ربما الأمر يتعلق بما يسميه فرويد اللاوعي الذي يخضني بدون حتى أن أعلم بوجوده...... لذلك ليس غريبا أن كل العقارات التلفزيونية لم تعالج تشوهي الأخلاقي ذاك. فقط أصبح الأمر يتعلق بقناعة: الوطنية هي العبودية الطوعية والتحرر الفعلي ليس تحر