General, Your Tank is a Powerful Vehicle

Even more Socialism 2009

2009-07-26T20:57:00.001-05:00

The Decline of California, Mike Davis and David Bacon Part 1 - Socialism 2009 from International Socialist on Vimeo.

The Decline of California, Mike Davis and David Bacon Part 2 - Socialism 2009 from International Socialist on Vimeo.

Social Unionism: Putting the Movement back in the Labor Movement - Socialism 2009 SF from RedReel on Vimeo.

"Real Americans": the new far right?

2009-07-22T15:59:00.003-05:00

Remember, crazy McCain rally woman? Meet the sequel.

This is a continuation of the not-so-thinly-veiled racism of the McCain-Palin campaign. However, it also reflects a serious crisis in the Republican party. As Lance Selfa argued in February

SINCE THE mid-1970s, when the ruling class took a decisive turn toward neoliberalism and employers launched a three-decade-old offensive against organized labor and the working class, the Republican Party was their chosen vehicle for delivering, enforcing and building a social base for these policies.
After largely accomplishing these goals, the Republicans have come up against the limits of their strategy.

The success of the conservative program--tax cuts for the richest Americans, cutting government spending on programs to benefit working Americans, and exposing more government policies to "market forces"--has produced an ideological fallout in the population, the majority of whom have not benefited from this agenda.

Like the capitalist system as a whole, the Republicans must be reorganized in order to continue. Within the party there are competing schools of thought. On the one hand, John McCain's former campaign manager wants the Republicans to embrace gay marriage, and on the other hand you have 10 Republican congressmen demanding Obama's birth certificate. The Republicans need an new rallying point, and hardcore nativism is not out of the question.

Like McCain and Palin's accusations of socialism against Obama, these attacks of "not a real American" will fall flat. But if the Republicans were to turn that epiphet on more vulnerable people, Muslims, immigrants, we would be looking at an ugly new turn in American politics.

What should public education look like?

2009-07-21T19:22:00.000-05:00

This blog is all Socialism 2009, all the time

What should public education look like: Radical Pedagogy or Charter Schools & Teaching to the Test from Alex Fu on Vimeo.

Prop 8 is Going Down

2009-07-20T22:26:00.002-05:00

A panel on the new civil rights movement from Socialism 2009

Eyewitness to Iran demonstrations

2009-07-20T10:32:00.005-05:00

Saman Sepehri is an Iranian-American socialist who was in Tehran after the elections. This interview is from WORT in Madison, Wisconsin.

Actual interview starts at about 2:00.

U2, Iraq, Cronkite

2009-07-19T11:30:00.003-05:00

Eamonn McCann on U2

The withdrawl that wasn't

Never in the history of Iraq have there been elections established on sectarian and ethnic platforms, thus further reinforcing the birth and growth of "militias," and paving the way to U.S.-backed mercenary groups. The concept is "foreign" in Iraq's modern history. Even when the people of Iraq voted, a large majority believed that by voting, they were expediting the process of U.S. troop withdrawal. Sadly not.

Ali Abunimah on Obama and Israel

Glenn Greenwald on Walter Cronkite

Obama's popularity sinks

2009-07-17T17:50:00.003-05:00

Obama's popularity has started to come down off its euphoric high.

Since the beginning of the administration, Americans have overwhelmingly supported Obama, but they also support EFCA, single-payer health care and government intervention in the economy. Obama has been more popular than his own policies. Given the scale of the economic crisis, that could not last long.

ABC censors Obama's former doctor on single-payer

2009-07-17T11:14:00.001-05:00

Details here

Joel Geier: The economic crisis- How bad will it get?

2009-07-16T15:47:00.000-05:00

More Socialism 2009

Marxist Economist Joel Geier on "The Economic Crisis: How Bad Will It Get" 2009 SF from Silver Persinger on Vimeo.

Sharon Smith at Socialism 2009: A new left for a new era

2009-07-14T21:58:00.000-05:00

Picks of the week

2009-07-11T16:01:00.003-05:00

A new feature?

Michael Schwartz on the Obama occupation of Iraq:

As a result, the crucial thing you can say about the Obama administration's military and civilian planning so far is this: ignore the headlines, the fireworks, and the briefly cheering crowds of Iraqis on your TV screen. Put all that talk of withdrawal aside for a moment and -- if you take a closer look, letting your eyes adjust to the darkness -- what is vaguely visible is the silhouette of a new American posture in Iraq.

Bob Herbert on McNamara.

"The Tragedy of the Left's Discourse on Iran":

The most bizarre case is the on-line journal MRZine, the offshoot of Monthly Review, which in some instances even publicized the propaganda of the Basij (Islamic militia) hooligans and criminals. The website has given ample room to pro-Islamist contributors; while they can hardly be considered to be on the left, their words are appreciated by the leftists editing the site.

Ali Abunimah on Hamas (see also: Haidar Eid in Socialist Worker)

Forget Shorter Showers: Why personal change does not equal political change:

People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

David Whitehouse on the new challenges to the Chinese ruling class

What Obama knows about colonialism

2009-07-10T18:17:00.001-05:00

"I'd say I'm probably as knowledgeable about African history as anybody who's occupied my office. And I can give you chapter and verse on why the colonial maps that were drawn helped to spur on conflict, and the terms of trade that were uneven emerging out of colonialism... And yet the fact is we're in 2009... The West and the United States has not been responsible for what's happened to Zimbabwe's economy over the last 15 or 20 years... It hasn't been responsible for some of the disastrous policies that we've seen elsewhere in Africa. And I think that it's very important for African leadership to take responsibility and be held accountable."

Slavoj Zizek and Alex Callinicos on what it means to be a revolutionary today

2009-07-07T16:04:00.002-05:00

Hossam el-Hamalawy on Obama's visit to Egypt

2009-06-03T21:38:00.002-05:00

Egyptian socialist Hossam el-Hamalawy wrote articles for the New York Times and Huffington Post on Obama's visit to Egypt.
When's the last time an International Socialist was in the NYT? Not bad.

Markets and the State

2009-05-15T16:03:00.002-05:00

The latest issue of New Left Review is really worth checking out. It has Zizek on Left strategy (on which Lenin has a good commentary), Wallerstein with reflections on Fanon, a really interesting looking article about imperialism and art history in China, and a good piece from Leo Panitch about the roots of the crisis. Here's an extended quote from the latter.

Financialization functioned in a number of different ways to drive forward the American-imperial expansionism of the 1990s and early 2000s. The development of securitized markets and the internationalization of American finance provided risk-insurance in a complex global economy, without which accumulation would have been significantly restricted. In addition, the global predominance of us financial institutions helped to mobilize cheap international credit for the American economy and so sustained its role as the world’s prime consumer, even as us capital flowed out in the form of fdi and military expenditures. The dollar served as the key store of value and medium of exchange, while us Treasury bonds became the standard for the calculation of value in the world economy at large. As we shall see, financialization also played a vital domestic role, both by integrating subordinate classes into a web of financial relations through private pensions, consumer credit and mortgages, and through facilitating consumer demand in an era of stagnating wages and limitations on the welfare state.

But for all the functionality of financialization for imperial power, it also brought new contradictions. While asset inflation was considerably more in line with the purposes of American capital than the consumer-price inflation of the previous decades, it was also a deeply uneven process that was responsible for enormous volatility. The emergence and bursting of financial bubbles became a common feature of the system, and successful state interventions to contain them reinforced the notion that future bubbles could be managed. Washington’s highly pro-active role in containing domestic and international financial crises from the 1980s on was perhaps the most concrete demonstration that the alleged withdrawal of states from markets was an ideological illusion. If neoliberal policies engendered a great deal of financial activity, the effect of this was not to subordinate state capacities to market forces but rather to make political interventions all the more necessary—not least in fighting fires sparked by financial volatility—as well as more feasible. Financialization enlarged the American state’s role both directly and multilaterally, even as it extended the strategic leeway available to capital. The result was the step-by-step construction of a too-big-to-fail regime, whereby intermediaries that were so large and interconnected that their failure would bring down a significant part of the system could count on the us state, and especially the Treasury, to come to the rescue.

The repeated economic interventions of the American state, while driven by the exigencies of the moment, were never as incidental or exceptional as they were often portrayed. On the contrary, they were part and parcel of the distinctive policy practices of the neoliberal era. Both the Fed and the Treasury, faced with constant financial volatility and intermittent crises, developed a range of institutional capacities to cope with this. But such institutional capacities should not be seen as standing above the financial world that they regulated; rather, they were embroiled in its contradictions. The increasingly enhanced role of the state, including the discriminatory practice of showering liquidity on crisis-hit banks in the North while imposing discipline and austerity in the global South, built up ‘moral hazard’ even as it generated financial innovation and expansion. Although too-big-to-fail policies are often portrayed as a last resort, indicative of neoliberalism’s essential lack of coherence, instances when the us government led the way by stepping in to contain financial crises were hardly exceptions to the rule. In that sense, the massive interventions by the Bush and Obama Administrations in the course of the current crisis are merely the culmination of the long series of interventions that marked the neoliberal era.

Ya gotta love the Pope

2009-05-11T20:19:00.003-05:00

Pope condemns Holocaust denial, walks out of conference over criticism of Israel. Seriously.

Single Payer in the Senate

2009-05-05T19:52:00.003-05:00

I love the look on the faces of congresspeople when they are forced to sit there and listen to protesters denounce them.

Documentary on Matzpen- Israeli Socialists and Anti-Zionists

2009-05-03T18:02:00.003-05:00

A Matzpen member, Moshé Machover, will be speaking in Chicago with Gilbert Achcar on May 16. Machover is the co-author of "The Class Character of Israel", for my money, THE Marxist analysis of Israeli society.

Pirates and Emperors

2009-05-01T19:09:00.001-05:00

Come to Socialism 2009: A New Left for a New Era

2009-04-24T12:46:00.003-05:00

Socialism 2009; A Weekend of Revolutionary Politics, Debate, and Entertainment from RedReel on Vimeo.

Building a New Left for a New Era
Socialism 2009
Revolutionary politics, debate and entertainment
June 18-21, Chicago
July 2-5, San Francisco
http://www.socialismconference.org

The world economic crisis has shattered the free-market consensus that has dominated politics for the last generation. Meanwhile, the end of the conservative era and the election of the first African American president have raised expectations among working people that long overdue change is coming. With capitalism in crisis, even some in the corporate media are admitting that Karl Marx was right.

There has never been a better time for those who want to see fundamental change to get together to debate, to discuss and organize for a new society—a society based on the needs of the many instead of the whims of a few. In other words, there has never been a better time to organize a new socialist left to meet the challenge of this new era.

That’s the purpose that Socialism 2009—expanded to two sites this year—has set for itself. Gather with activists from all over to take part in dozens of discussions about changing the world: How can we stop the economic madness? Can we end racism? What kind of organization do we need? What would a future socialist society look like?

Yes we can organize for socialism in the 21st century! Si se puede!

Featured Speakers:

MICK ARMSTRONG, Socialist Alternative, Australia;
ROSE AGUILAR, host, Your Call, KALW,91.7FM;
IAN ANGUS, editor, Climate and Capitalism;
DAVID BACON, author, Illegal People;
NORA BARROWS-FRIEDMAN, co-host, Flashpoints Radio, KPFA;
BARBARA BECNEL,director of Stan Tookie Williams Legacy Network;
ROBERT BRENNER, author, The Economics of Global Turbulence;
DENNIS BRUTUS, longtime anti-apartheid and global justice activist;
PAUL D’AMATO, author of The Meaning of Marxism;
NEIL DAVIDSON, University of Strathclyde, Scotland;
MIKE DAVIS, author, In Praise of Barbarians;
SAM FARBER, author, Origins of the Cuban Revolution;
LAURA FLANDERS, host, GRITtv;
JOEL GEIER, associate editor, International Socialist Review;
TIKVA HONIG-PARNASS, co-author, Between the Lines;
DR. JESS GHANNAM, Al-Awda Right of Return Coalition, Free Palestine Alliance;
ANAND GOPAL, Kabul correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor;
JAMES GREEN, author, Death in the Haymarket;
DAHR JAMAIL, author, Beyond the Green Zone;
BRIAN JONES, performing Howard Zinn’s play Marx in Soho;
CLAUDIO KATZ, author, Las disyuntinvas de la izquierda en America Latina (the challenges of the Latin American Left);
NATIVO LOPEZ, president, Mexican American Political Association;
ALAN MAASS, editor, Socialist Worker;
DAVID McNALLY, New Socialist Group, Canada;
MARLENE MARTIN, Campaign to End the Death Penalty;
ANURADHA MITTAL, director, the Oakland Institute;
CHINA MIEVILLE, author, Un Lun Dun and Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law;
DERREL MYERS, Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation;
CHRISTIAN PARENTI, The Nation, on Afghanistan;
JOHN RIDDELL, co-editor, Socialist Voice (Canada);
HEATHER ROGERS, author of Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage;
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, co-editor of CounterPunch.org and author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Green to Me: The Politics of Nature;
MARTIN SANCHEZ, consul general of Venezuela, San Francisco;
LANCE SELFA, author, The Democrats: A Critical History;
AHMED SHAWKI, editor, International Socialist Review;
CINDY SHEEHAN, founder, Gold Star Families for Peace;
BARRY SHEPPARD, author of The Party: the Socialist Workers Party, 1960-1968;
SHARON SMITH, author of Subterranean Fire and Women and Socialism;
LEE SUSTAR, labor editor, Socialist Worker;
SHERRY WOLF, author, Sexuality and Socialism;
KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR, editorial board of International Socialist Review;
DAVE ZIRIN, author, A People’s History of Sports;
SOCIALISTS from France, Greece, Venezuela, Brazil, and many more!

What you’ll find at Socialism 2009: More than 100 meetings, a bookfair, films, entertainment, and parties.

Check out http://www.socialismconference.org to register and for more information about schedule, housing, and childcare.

Sponsored by:
The Center for Economic Research and Social Change
Publisher of the International Socialist Review and Haymarket Books.

Co-sponsored by:
The International Socialist Organization
Publisher of Socialist Worker

David Simon on Moyers

2009-04-20T11:33:00.000-05:00

The Wire's creator David Simon gives a GREAT interview on The Journal.

Report from the Left Forum

2009-04-20T10:16:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I managed to crawl out from the book cave otherwise known as my apartment to spend the day at the Left Forum in New York. The Left Forum, for those of you who don't know, is a huge academic/activist conference held every year in the city. It's absolutely massive, with the leading lights from the national and international left presenting. While I've heard that it's been different in previous years, this year there was a strong youth activist presence that balanced out the old balding white guys nicely.

I managed to get to three of the seemingly numberless panels: David Harvey, Doug Henwood, Nomi Prinz, and Fred Moseley's "Nationalize the Banks! What Does it Mean?", Richard Seymour (aka Lenin), Samuel Moyn, and John McArthur's "Liberalism and Human Rights," and Adolph Reed, Jr., and Walter Benn Michaels' "Diversity in the Age of Obama." The first two were excellent, the last was a travesty.

The presentations on banking were extremely interesting. Doug Henwood began by noting that two years ago if the Left Forum had a panel on banking, very few people would have showed up (there were approximately 250 yesterday). He proceeded to argue that, contrary to common sense, booms are often more conducive to radicalism than busts. The antiglobalization movement came after four years of job creation in the 90s, the 60s came on the tail-end of the postwar boom, etc. At the same time, the crisis of the 1970s failed to produce any major radicalization in the US.

Therefore, given the weakness of the Left in this crisis, Henwood argued that we should be putting forth a minimalist program based on nationalizing finance, bringing it under more democratic control, and channeling credit towards more socially responsible projects like affordable housing and green energy. While it's obviously good to argue that crises don't automatically produce radicalization, I think Henwood misses the dynamic in which this crisis, combined with the discrediting of conservatism by the Bush regime, actually is producing a major shift to the Left right now. If we're to have any long term persuasiveness in giving this shift organized form and expression, we need to do more than articulate a minimalist program and talk seriously about our long-term goals for changing society altogether.

Fred Moseley, an exceptional Marxist economist, largely agreed with Henwood. He argued that the demand for a bailout should be used as an argument against capitalism, as it demonstrated both that the system is inherently unstable and that when it does collapse it places the burden on ordinary taxpayers. Somewhat incongruously, he hitched this rather large-scale argument to Henwood's assertion that the Left should busy itself at the moment with articulating a minimalist program based around the democratization of finance.

Nomi Prins, who I hadn't heard of before, provided a somewhat refreshing counterweight to Henwood and Moseley. She delivered an angry presentation about the bankruptcy of the concept of "too big to fail." Interestingly, she argued that the state shouldn't nationalize institutions like AIG, but instead work on breaking them up.

David Harvey went last, and basically delivered a polemic against his fellow presenters. He began by noting that "Economics is a discipline that is dominated by people who have no idea what the fuck is going on." He then went on to argue that it was foolish to talk about "speculation" as a bad activity or to separate finance from the "real economy." Speculation and finance have played a crucial role in capital's development since its beginning, and it couldn't exist without them. Therefore, any move towards addressing the financial crisis would have to come to terms with its role in capitalism. He also argued that there's always been a "state-finance nexus," but that it has undergone multiple revolutions since its establishment, from the gold standard to neoliberalism. With this emphasis on the long term tendencies of capitalist development, Harvey described crises such as the current one as "irrational rationalizers of an irrational system," a brilliant description in my opinion.

The forum then opened t Q&A, but I left when six people wearing Revolution t-shirts bum rushed the mics all at once. Seriously RCP, you give the rest of us a bad name.

I had been looking forward to the next session for some time, having been a big fan of Richard Seymour's writing for some time now. The first presenter, however, gave Seymour a hard act to follow. I hadn't heard of Samuel Moyn before yesterday, but his presentation made it clear that he's one of the best people out there currently thinking about rights discourse, imperialism, and capitalism. Moyn argues that appeals to rights are divided by a fundamental discontinuity between human rights and the rights of man. The latter, arising out of the crucible of the American and French revolutions, were always articulated in an appeal to sovereignty and nationality. Despite this entwinement with some rather nasty formations, insurgent movements, such as the Black Jacobins of Haiti, were able to use the Rights of Man as a framework with which to push some very progressive things. The shift to human rights, in the aftermath of WWII (though crucially, not originally a response to the Holocaust), severed rights from an appeal to a specific polity to the supposedly more universal "human rights." The early codification of human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while including a number of economic and social rights which are often elided today, crucially lacked any discussion of self-determination. In the context of decolonization, this was not an innocent silence. Moyn went on to argue that appeals to human rights have more often than not been an excuse to violate a given nation's sovereignty (Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc etc). Thus human rights, while supposedly more universal, have often played a more reactionary role than the rights of man.

Seymour gave an excellent presentation on the history of liberalism's relationship with empire, interspersing it with the great jabs at pro-war leftists anyone who reads the Tomb knows and loves. Since I've read his book and read the Tomb religiously, there wasn't much new for me in his prepared remarks. He closed, however, with a compelling argument that a renewal of Marxism is absolutely necessary if liberal interventionism is to be combated. Simply put, no other framework/movement has been able to combine a militant insistence on self-determination with a broader program of human emancipation. Fabianism lacked the former, while anticolonial movements too often papered over the latter.

John McArthur's presentation was what one would expect from the publisher of Harpers. Lots of really interesting anecdotes that don't necessarily add up to anything convincing. In the discussion, McArthur tipped his hand and argued that he thinks foreign policy is almost wholey determined by domestic politics, an analytically worthless argument that reveals nothing so much as McArthur's demoralization.

I would take McArthur's resignation anyday, however, over the next panel. Adolph Reed is a smart historian and political commentator. His writings on Du Bois, the Black academy, and contemporary politics are sharp and deserve wider reading. He has hitched himself to a rather shoddy star, however, in Walter Benn Michaels. WBM is the author of a book called "The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Forget About Inequality." A promising title, no? Unfortunately, it's little more than a screed that argues that antiracism is a right wing, neoliberal politics. WBM makes this argument by arguing that people who talk about racial disparities in things like income imply that if proportionate numbers of Blacks and whites were in the various income quintiles, that everything would be fine. This, of course, leaves class inequality itself untouched. Therefore, it's neoliberal to talk about racial disparities in income. Any questions?

Of course, WBM's argument is little more than sleight of hand. For one thing, it's hardly impossible to argue that it would be better if the lowest income brackets weren't stuffed with people of color and that we should abolish class society. For another, the argument presumes that the only serious way to talk about racism is to talk about income distribution (a curious proposition in the age of Sean Bell, Adolph Grimes, and Oscar Grant). WBM argued that such blatant bigotry is no longer the rule, and Reed rather cavalierly dismissed the importance of such events.

During the Q&A, I asked what the speakers thought the left attitude towards Islamophobia should be. Since Islamophobia is a major justification for US capital's designs on the middle east, and since it helps to bind US workers to US capital by convincing them that their major enemy is scary Moslems, it seems to me that it's fairly self-evident that a politics of antiracism around Islamophobia is hardly neoliberal. Adolph Reed responded by assuring me of his personal abhorrence of Islamophobia, and then moving on to another subject. WBM, in an evasion charming for its naivete, responded by saying that Obama, raised by a Muslim, obviously wasn't an Islamophobe, and that neoliberals wanted to see more Muslims in the billionaire's club. As if Obama needed a personal fear of Muslims to promote racism against them.

WBM's ideas are nothing less than poison to the worker's movement. I used to think that academic accusations that the left doesn't want to talk about racism were based in little more than caricature and fantasy. Unfortunately, this panel proved me wrong. Apparently there are some walking fossils who think that Eugene Debs was right to say that the Socialist Party has nothing to offer Black folks.

All in all, though, the forum was a huge success. It brought the best of the academic left into contact with some of the most vibrant young activists in the city. If the seriousness with which people were grappling with theories and strategies is any indication, the US Left is laying the foundations for some major growth.

Obama, Chavez and Castro: Who's leading who?

2009-04-18T20:03:00.008-05:00

This weekend at the Summit of the Americas, Barack Obama unexpectedly greeted and shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Although the encounter was brief, it defied the expectations of some observers who predicted "verbal pyrotechnics" and anti-US rhetoric from Chavez.

Obama also said he wants "a new beginning with Cuba." Raul Castro has invited closer relations with Washington, saying "We have sent word to the US government in private and in public that we are willing to discuss everything - human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners, everything."

On the face of it, this appears as a welcome development in US policy towards Latin America. However, Obama, Chavez and Castro are not interacting as peer heads of state, but as heads of state in a competitive capitalist system. The US, despite the recession and two quagmires, is the still the most powerful country on Earth and still capable of calling the shots in its traditional "backyard".

The US embargo of Cuba never succeeded in toppling the Castros, but it has deprived Cuba of a major market for its goods. As Sam Farber points out, the end of the embargo would be a major boon for the Cuban economy:

During the last several years, Cuba has been allowed to import agricultural and processed goods from the U.S. under a "humanitarian" exception to the blockade established in November 2001, making the United States the main supplier of food to the island. Cuba, however, is not allowed to export anything to the U.S. to pay for these imports. While these imports have amounted to 1.5 billion dollars, they have been a financial drain that would be greatly alleviated if Cuba could sell things to the U.S., or if, more likely, several hundred thousand U.S. tourists could travel to the island.

The U.S. on the other hand, needs nothing from Cuba.

Raul Castro has spoken favorably of market-liberalization. On a 2005 trip to China, he told his hosts, "it was truly encouraging everything that you have done here…there are some people around who are preoccupied by China’s development; however, we feel happy and reassured, because you have confirmed something that we say over there, and that is that a better world is possible." It remains to be seen whether Raul while follow the Chinese road, and if the US will drop the embargo.

In Venezuela, the pace of events seems to have slowed since the defeat of Chavez's 2007 referendum on the constitution. Since then, Venezuela has suffered from high foods prices, as capitalists try to punish Chavez for his social programs, and a serious crime problem.

In July 2008, Chavez has made amends with Columbian President Álvaro Uribe, Washington's closest ally in the region. Todd Cheriten wrote

Chávez's kind words for Uribe are a dramatic reversal and raise serious questions about how the left-wing government in Venezuela will relate to the U.S.-backed regime on its border--a country with a long record of human rights abuses committed by its military and the paramilitary death squads associated with it.

It also raises the question of whether Chavez is more willing to make concessions to Washington, and if fear of another coup and economic trouble have dampened Chavez's enthusiasm for socialism. (Chavez and Uribe met again just last week.)

It is important to remember that Chavez began his presidency as a moderate, ex-military officer. Only after the popular uprising against the attempted 2002 coup did Chavez begin to buck the Washington consensus and embrace socialist rhetoric. If the only force acting on Chavez is from the right, there is no reason Chavez could not slide back to the center.

Assuming these overtures between the US, Venezuela and Cuba are more than a flash in the pan, it will be a major change in US relations with Latin America. But if there is going to be reconciliation, we should ask, "reconciliation on what terms?" and "who has the power to set them?"

Breathe deeply, you can still smell the sulfur.

Yar: In Defense of Piracy

2009-04-12T08:46:00.001-05:00

Johann Hari on why the pirates aren't the bad guys.

Angry Arab versus the Zionist

2009-04-06T13:21:00.002-05:00

Lukacs/Althusser

2009-04-01T11:23:00.002-05:00

Now that I'm a PhD student I have an excuse to write at least twice as pretentiously as before. Thus, I present you with a short paper I wrote last week:

Lukacs/Althusser: Ideology, Interpellation, Reification

Though all aspects of Marxist theory and practice have had ample opportunity to read of their demise, from Benedetto Croce's 1907 declaration that “Marx is definitely dead for humankind” to Philippe Van Parijs' 1980 “rational reconstruction by way of obituary” of the Marxist theory of crisis, the theory of ideology seems today to receive more than its fair share of opprobrium. In the “post-epistemological” environs of the American academy, supporters of a Marxist theory of ideology appear as Dr. Frankensteins, laboring away in the dead of night in a demented effort to sew the monster together and give him life. That this intellectual attack has coincided with, and is indeed incomprehensible apart from, a thirty year ruling class offensive in the United States which has decimated revolutionary organizations has meant that the efforts of the academic spinners of ghost stories have had considerable effect on the state of Marxist theories of ideology.

While this state may not appear substantially different from that of Marxism as a whole, the vitality of the theory of ideology is central to any revival of the Marxist intellectual project. There are two primary reasons for this. First, a vibrant theory of ideology is the sine quo non of any rebirth of Marxism in the contemporary American academy. Since the cultural turn, historical materialists can no longer justify their methodology merely through rigorous historical work. The debate is no longer over the making of the English working class, but its representation. The ability of Marxists to engage with such questions depends on a theory of ideology. Secondly, and more importantly, the revival of the Marxist political project, to which the vitality of academic Marxism has always been linked, depends crucially on the ability to comprehend and counteract the influences of ruling class ideology. Obviously, some theory of ideology is necessary if such an endeavor is to be successful.

Fortunately, attempts at rebuilding a Marxist theory of ideology need not begin from scratch. Twentieth century Marxists left behind an incredible corpus of writing on ideology. Within that tradition, two poles stand out, between and around which subsequent theorists have largely located themselves: Georg Lukács and Louis Althusser. Indeed, the debates over ideology of the past thirty years could be simplified to a contest between varyingly strident Lukacsian and Althusserian positions. This is at least partially due to the radically different philosophical traditions from which each writer emerged. Lukács, a Hungarian philosopher and literary critic, owed his greatest intellectual debts to classical German idealism and the new sociology exemplified by Max Weber. Althusser, on the other hand, was trained as a philosopher of science and drew heavily from the structuralist milieu so dominant on the French intellectual scene at the time of his writing. Writing later than Lukacs, Althusser would actually develop some of his key theoretical positions through a critique of what he called “historicism,” a variant of Marxism of which he held Lukacs to be a key exponent.

Despite the depth of the conflict between Lukacsian and Althusserian positions, I believe that a rigorous Marxist theory of ideology can only emerge from a deep engagement with both writers (among others, to be sure). My purpose in this paper is to stage a confrontation between the two texts I believe are most central to theories of ideology in both Althusser and Lukács: the former's “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” and the latter's “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat.” It is my contention that the most significant aporias of each text are the sites at which a dialogue between the two can occur.[1]

Lukács' essay is above all a development of the theory of commodity fetishism found in Chapter One, Section Four of Capital Volume One. In contrast to the preponderance of contemporary academic interpretations, Lukács argued that the transformation of “definite social relation[s] between men [sic]” into “relation[s] between things” takes place not primarily on the grounds of ideology but in the structure of capitalist social reality. For Lukács, this reality is rooted in the commodity form, “the central, structural problem of capitalist society in all its aspects.”[2] As the production of commodities becomes the dominant mode of social production, the logic of the commodity is imposed on society as a whole. Lukács begins his investigation of this imposition with the commodity's most immediate environs: the place of production. Commodity production subjects the labor process to an entirely different logic than earlier forms of production, as there is “a continuous trend towards greater rationalisation, the progressive elimination of the qualitative, human, and individual attributes of the worker.”[3] While marks of individual craftsmanship may have been signifiers of worth under artisan production, under capitalism they are marks of impurity. The labor process itself is “progressively broken down in abstract, rational, specialised operations.” Lukács' analysis of the impact of this rationalization on the individual experience of time is nothing short of poetic :

“Thus time sheds its qualitative, variable, and flowing nature; it freezes into an exactly delimited, quantifiable continuum filled with quantifiable 'things' (the reified, mechanically objectified 'performance' of the worker, wholly separated from his total human personality): in short, it becomes space.”[4]

The commodity form's manic imposition of a rational metric does not stop with the need of capitalists to extract maximum surplus value from their workers. It is reflected in the economic theory by which the capitalist class apprehends its own mode of production. For the rationalization of production, its subjection to scientific regimes of production, produces nothing so much as a false concrete, a horizon of analysis whose immediacy masks its superficiality. The vast assemblages of data with which commodity production can be analyzed, thanks to its rationalization, do nothing to penetrate beyond the abstract form production assumes. Bourgeois economic theory fails to examine the concrete content of capitalist production.

This failure is, for Lukács, the symptomatic failure of bourgeois ideology. The reification he describes consists in the partial, limited truth of a certain facet of capitalist society assuming the form of an independent, concrete truth, instead of an aspect of a more complex social totality. Though Lukács develops this theory most fully through a critique of bourgeois economic thought, his rooting of it in the commodity form, along with his assignation of that form to a central location in capitalist society, allows him to cast reification as the dominant mode of bourgeois thought.

Lukács' analysis of reification is tremendously powerful, but it is not without problems. The most important of these is the relationship of reification to the proletariat. Though Lukács argues in great detail that the working class has the capability and interest to develop a theory which goes beyond reification, he does not offer any reasons that the proletariat should have accepted it in the first place. Simply because the bourgeoisie seeks to impose rationalization on society as a whole does not imply that subaltern classes should be compelled to accept it in their theoretical practice[5]. As Terry Eagleton argues, “For Lukács...it would sometimes appear as though each social class has its own peculiar, corporate 'world view,' one directly expressive of its material conditions of existence; and ideological dominance then consists in one of these world views imposing its stamp on the social formation as a whole.”[6]

The problem of how the bourgeoisie is able to force its ideology on the proletariat is precisely the problem Louis Althusser takes up in “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” His stated goal is to investigate the “the reproduction of the conditions of production.”[7] Of these conditions, Althusser regards the reproduction of labor power as among the most unexamined. He observes that part of the reason for its obscurity is that the reproduction of labor power takes place “essentially outside the firm:”[8] that is, outside of the site on which both bourgeois and Marxist theories of capitalism have focused. Althusser argues that not only does labor power have to be reproduced with the basic skills necessary for any job (under late capitalism, skills such as literacy, computer literacy, social skills, etc), but also “its submission to the rules of the established order”[9] must similarly be reproduced.

Since Althusser has argued that this reproduction takes place primarily outside of the firm, he introduces the state as its primary agent. The state accomplishes its task by making use of two different tools: repressive states apparatuses (RSAs) and ideological state apparatuses. (ISAs) The RSAs are constituted by the everyday symbols of state power: the army, the police, the prisons, etc. Though these are crucial organs of class rule, Althusser argues that “no class can hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses.”[10] As examples of institutions that function as ISAs, Althusser lists the following (among others): the family, the educational system, trade-unions, and political parties.

Following this, Althusser moves through a broader discussion of what exactly ideology is. Here he puts forth his famous definition of ideology as “the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence.”[11] Drawing upon the “theoretical anti-humanism” he developed in earlier texts, Althusser argues that the chief such “imaginary relationship” is the individual's conception of herself as a subject. The idea of human beings as individual, self-forming, rational agents is for Althusser both the most profound effect and most important function of ideology, for it is through the construction of such free, rational subjects that individuals are able to freely submit to “the posts which the socio-technical division of labour assigns them in production, exploitation, repression, ideologization, scientific practice, etc.”[12]

This subjection is able to operate so efficiently precisely because it is based on concrete individuals recognizing themselves as free subjects, rather than the domination implied in Lukács' account. Althusser describes the process by which individuals are invited to so recognize themselves as “interpellation,” or hailing. Thus he compares the structure of ideology to a mirror, built with the purpose of individuals recognizing themselves within it. Importantly for Althusser, this interpellation is not a temporal phenomenon, but one always-already completed. The material rituals of ideology, its lived practice, ensure that “an individual is always-already a subject, even before he is born...it is certain in advance that it will bear its Father's Name, and will therefore have an identity and be irreplaceable.”[13] Ideology's ability to maintain itself throughout time in this way is, for Althusser, based on its eternal nature. Contrary to a thinker like Lukács, who identifies bourgeois ideology with the specific commodity form of capitalism, Althusser argues that ideology is eternal, for every society has a need for individuals to freely submit to a division of labor. Thus, every society secretes ideology as part of its nature.

Like Lukács' theory of reification, Althusser's account of interpellation and subjection is an ambitious and systematic attempt to account for the functioning of ideology. As should be clear from the above exposition, Althusser's theory has the considerable merit of identifying a sophisticated means by which ideology should be able to secure its dominance over subaltern classes. However, as with Lukács, his account is not without problems.

I believe Althusser's theory of ideology suffers from two, related problems: functionalism and a separation of ideological production from economic production. Briefly described, functionalist explanations are those that explain a phenomenon “by its beneficial consequences...without the mechanism for this process being specified.”[14] Thus cause and effect are reversed, so that the effect which a phenomenon produces becomes its cause. Ideology is produced because the reproduction of labor power is a social necessity, not, as in Lukács, as an effect of the process of commodity production. The functionalism in Althusser's theory is not unique to him; it is a general feature of the Parisian structuralism from which he drew. However, Althusser's consistent emphasis on anti-humanism, his persistent denial of human agents any causal role in his theory, leaves him more cornered than most, with little recourse but to functionalist explanations for the phenomena he describes. Ultimately Althusser's functionalism disfigures his system not only theoretically, as the source of ideology is vaguely located in society's needs, but also politically. For if agents are superfluous to the production of capitalist stability, it is unclear how they are to become relevant to the ultimate production of capitalist instability: proletarian revolution.

Althusser's functionalism is related to his second primary defect: the separation of ideological production from economic production. As we saw above, Althusser is insistent that the production of ideology takes place “outside the firm.” He even goes so far as to identify economic activities which take commodity production as their primary purpose, like literature and television, with the state, because their function is that of the state: the production of ideology. For Althusser, the production of ideology is an extra-economic activity.

This radical separation of commodity production from ideological production is unsatisfactory on both an empirical and theoretical level. Empirically, it is quite easy to demonstrate that extra-state, primarily economic actors play an immense role in the production of ideology in late capitalist society. David Harvey, for example, cites the example of all 247 newspapers around the world owned by Rupert Murdoch all “independently” supporting the American invasion of Iraq in their editorials[15]. As most of these newspapers operate in capitalist democracies, they are subject to minimal interference by the state. The ideology they produce and disseminate is directed not through the state, but through a capitalist whose control over the means of production allows him to dictate what is said and who realizes the importance of the Iraq adventure for his class. By effacing the role of capitalists themselves in producing ideology, Althusser not only forces himself to rely on vague functionalism, but he also obfuscates an important aspect of capitalist class rule.

On a theoretical-political level, Althusser's excision of ideology from the economic realm leads him to identify struggles in the ISAs, such as in the schools or in literature, as an important aspect of the class struggle. However, because of his insistence that ISAs are indeed state apparatuses leads him to conceive of struggle in these areas not as a class struggle of workers to seize control of the means of production, but as the political struggle for state power. This theoretical move was inspired at least partially by Althusser's sympathy with the Chinese Cultural Revolution. As Ralph Miliband has argued, it ultimately wreaks havoc with a theory of capitalist class rule:

To suggest that the relevant institutions are actually part of the State system does not seem to me to accord with reality, and tends to obscure the difference in this respect between these political systems and systems where ideological institutions are indeed part of a State monopolistic system of power. In the former systems, ideological institutions do retain a very high degree of autonomy; and are therefore the better able to conceal the degree to which they do belong to the system of capitalist power.[16]

Working classes have paid dearly at various points in the twentieth century for confusing the differences between liberal democracies and totalitarian societies.

Can Althusser's theory be salvaged? I believe it can, by rigorously integrating it into a Lukacsian framework of reification. While Lukács surely benefits from the tremendous explanatory power of interpellation, Althusser's theory is equally in need of precisely the kind of basis in economic reality that Lukács always maintains at the center of his problematic. This basis can ultimately be found in Marx's “double freedom” of the proletariat.

In Chapter Six, Volume One of Capital, Marx famously argues that

For the transformation of money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must find the free worker available on the commodity-market; and this worker must be free in the double sense that as a free individual he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that, on the other hand, he has no other commodity for sale, i.e. he is rid of them, he is free of all the objects needed for the realization [Verwirklichung] of his labour-power.[17]

In order for industrial capital to achieve the hegemony that constitutes full-scale capitalist production, it is necessary that the originally peasant working class be forcibly dispossessed. Once workers have nothing to sell but their labor power, their ability to work, capitalists are able to secure their free, voluntary efforts to be hired, and thus exploited.

This process mirrors exactly that described by Althusser in his description of subject formation by ideology, and indeed it constitutes the material basis of that process. While Althusser is properly insistent upon the materiality of ideology, his functionalism leads him to bypass any systematic exploration of subject formation's material base in favor of descriptions of social needs. In a fashion homologous to Lukács' description of reification, the position of workers as free subjects is indeed a “true” part of capitalist society. As Marx argues, it is necessary to capitalist production. At the same time, it is an unavoidably partial truth. The freedom to sell one's labor power is a false concrete, developing only out of the brutal violence of dispossession; in the same way, the rationalization of capitalist production is a partial truth, developing as it does out of the anarchy of the market.

Properly subsumed under a Lukacsian framework of reification, both of the problems identified above with Althusser's analysis are resolved. A functional explanation of ideology is no longer necessary, as the task of creating workers who are free in Marx's double sense is one clearly undertaken by the capitalist class[18]. Similarly, the production of ideology is no longer once removed from the structure of social relations, but on the contrast, stems directly from them.

It is on this solid materialist ground that the reconstruction of a Marxist theory of ideology can begin. Both Lukács and Althusser are necessary to such work, but as I have argued, the two cannot stand equally tall. If Althusser can only survive on Lukacsian life support, so much the worse for him, but so much the better for the revival of the Marxist project.

[1] In this paper I shall restrict myself to what Lukács and Althusser have to say about ideology as such, and refrain from engaging their theories on how it can be overcome. At this point I will confine myself to saying that I find Lukács' answer of proletarian revolution to be more attractive than Althusser's “theoretical practice,” although the former is certainly not without problems.

[2] Lukács 83.

[3] 88

[4] 90

[5] I use the term here in the Gramscian sense, rather than Althusser's more technical meaning: “Each man, finally...carries on some form of intellectual activity, that is, he is a 'philosopher,' an artist, a man of taste, he participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought.” Gramsci. Prison Notebooks pg 9.

[6] Terry Eagleton 101.

[7] Althusser 1

[8] 3

[9] 5

[10] 14

[11] 24

[12] 37

[13] 33

[14] Callinicos 297.

[15] Harvey 35.

[16] Qtd in Anderson 1976 pg 36

[17] Marx 272-273.

[18] A clarification is necessary here. Enclosure as described by Marx in his section on primitive accumulation was undertaken by the state. However, Marx is clear that the bourgeoisie was the primary actor behind it. See Marx 884-885.

Awakening Councils vs. Iraqi Government and U.S.

2009-03-30T13:10:00.003-05:00

A blind man could have seen this one coming. Sudarsan Raghavan and Anthony Shadid:

The struggle, which played out in fierce weekend clashes, pits two vital American allies against each other. On Sunday, Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. combat helicopters and American troops swept into a central Baghdad neighborhood, arresting U.S.-backed Sunni fighters in an effort to clamp down on a two-day uprising that challenged the Iraqi government's authority and its efforts to pacify the capital.

Thomas Ricks:

If the Awakening fighting spreads, I wouldn't be surprised to see Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia re-emerge. I've always thought the Sunni Awakening forced him to go to ground, because he didn't want to be the only guy taking on American forces. But if the Sunnis are on the attack again, it might be game on for him as well.

Maliki never trusted the Awakening and vice-versa. As Ashley Smith wrote in the International Socialist Review in November:

The greatest conflict that threatens to undo the fragile stability is most likely not between the United States and the Shia government, but between that government and the Sunnis, especially the Awakening Councils.

On October 1, the Iraqi government was charged with integrating the Awakening Councils into the Iraqi security forces. But Maliki has promised to hire only 20 percent of the fighters. Leila Fadel reports that Shiite “officials are making clear that they don’t intend to include most of the rest. ‘We cannot stand them, and we detained many of them recently,’ said one senior Iraqi commander in Baghdad, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue. ‘Many of them were part of al-Qaeda despite the fact that many of them are helping us to fight al-Qaeda.”

Maliki has indeed ordered the arrest of hundreds of Awakening Council fighters, the Iraqi security forces have moved against some of the Councils in Anbar and Baghdad, and Shia militias have already carried out assassinations of key Sunni leaders they consider to be insurgents and separatists.

Hey out-of-work college grads, economy got you down?

2009-03-27T20:35:00.004-05:00

Well fear no more, because Obama's got your back.

The legislation would triple the size of the Clinton-era AmeriCorps and broadly expand incentives for students and seniors to give back to their communities, at a cost of $5.7 billion over five years...

The legislation would increase AmeriCorps to 250,000 from its current 75,000 positions over eight years, its largest expansion since the program was launched in 1993...

Some AmeriCorps participants get a living stipend while they are working for 10-12 months. The stipend ranges from $11,400 to $22,800 for the year. Most participants, who are predominantly ages 18 to 26, get $11,800.

Now, if you can't find a job, you can at least earn a poverty wage serving your country. This Washington state website has some helpful hints for surviving on such an income. As even AmeriCorps' website will tell you, you're not going to create any savings on $12,000 a year.

Something like this has been coming for a while. After thirty years of class attacks, young workers today are earning "10% less than did their counterparts in 1979" despite being better educated. College-educated workers have struggled to find jobs befitting their level of education, but now are lucky to grab a job at all.

Students endure a level of poverty to pay their tuition, with the expectation that it will pay off in the long run, but recently we've seen more student shopping at food pantries and even sleeping in the street. Students are putting up with more to get much less.

What exactly will happen when college-educated, young workers find out that the future isn't what it's cracked up to be?

Hey Paul Krugman

2009-03-23T09:51:00.002-05:00

This is for all the Krugman junkies out there.

“The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective.”

2009-03-23T09:43:00.001-05:00

Uri Avnery on Counterpunch reports on a startlingly frank admission from the Israeli Supreme Court.

Mike Davis on Bill Moyers

2009-03-21T01:26:00.001-05:00

Socialist historian Mike Davis talks socialism and the economic crisis with Bill Moyers

"The Most Moral Army in the World"

2009-03-20T18:30:00.001-05:00

Click the picture for the story.

We'll Give Them Their Bonuses..In the Form of Full Metal Jackets

2009-03-20T10:43:00.001-05:00

The Nation's website accepts anti-EFCA advertising

2009-03-18T23:26:00.004-05:00

I know the Nation has a spotty political record on the big issues over their history, but this is pretty low. A link on nation.com takes you to an anti-Employee Free Choice Act website.

The site, run by the "Workforce Fairness Institute" claims EFCA would eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing (not true). In fact, EFCA would be a historic boon for labor, which is why so many CEOs are sponsoring Orwellian organizations like "Americans for Job Security, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace" and now the "Workforce Fairness Institute" to spread misinformation about EFCA.

Hey nation.com, what the hell?

BONO WATCH: Bono is a craven horse's arse, part 203

2009-03-18T13:32:00.004-05:00

In the fall, Rap Rock Confidential editor Dave Marsh announced that Bono had agreed to publicly debate him on "celebrity politics and how ineffective they are."

In the latest RRC: Bono backs out

I don’t know why Bono spit the bit on debating these issues in a public forum with a well-informed antagonist. Maybe he decided that he’d fucked up and was about to lower himself by going head to head with a journalist. Maybe he doesn’t want to deal on the spot with descriptions of his repeated appearances at the conferences of the leading capitalist nations where he’s yet to ask his first hard question about anything but Africa; about his settling for promises from world leaders that patently weren’t going to be kept, and never doing more than mewing when they weren’t; about why it is that Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo, by no means an anti-capitalist, observes that she met him “at a party to raise money for Africans, and there were no Africans in the room, except for me,” or why so many other Africans have complained that he claims to speak for them but has never so much as asked their permission. In regard to the last, I did receive more courtesy than Andrew Mwenda, the Ugandan journalist Bono cursed for raising such questions at an economics conference. (But then, I’m white and Celtic-American.)

RRC subscriptions are available free of charge by emailing "rockrap@aol.com"

Call and Response

2009-03-17T21:52:00.004-05:00

My copy of Adrienne Rich's The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 finally arrived today, and as I thumbed through it I discovered a poem that reminded me of Bertolt Brecht's "To Posterity." After checking the two against each other, I'm quite sure that Rich is responding to and updating Brecht in some interesting ways. Here the two poems are:

Bertolt Brecht "To Posterity"

1.

Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?

It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)

They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil --
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!

2.

I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

3.

You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think --
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.

For we went,changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.

For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do no judge us
Too harshly.

Adrienne Rich "What Kind of Times Are These?"

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light -
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.

LA Teachers take over school board meeting!!!

2009-03-11T21:07:00.001-05:00

More coverage here.

Naomi Klein at Israeli Apartheid Week

2009-03-09T21:34:00.001-05:00

Seeing the counter-protestors at the beginning of this video brought back memories...I really hate those people.

Naomi Klein speaks on Israeli Apartheid Week from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.

'Waltz with Bashir' animated short on Gaza

2009-03-06T13:27:00.003-06:00

Yoni Goodman, animator of the film Waltz with Bashir, recently put out this short describing Israeli treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. While he mistakenly (in my opinion) avoids the sheer brutality of occupation, he definitely makes a good point.

Sherry Wolf Speaks Out!

2009-03-03T11:50:00.000-06:00

15 year-old girl beaten by police

2009-03-01T00:46:00.001-06:00

Pigs strike again.

Tortured for reading satire

2009-02-26T14:44:00.002-06:00

No words for this:

Just ask Binyam Mohamed, who was released from Guantanamo to his home in Britain this week after nearly seven years of detention. His lawyers believe that he was suspected of being a terrorist, in part, because he confessed to having read my mother's article.

According to his lawyers, he was then subjected to brutal interrogation by Pakistani and U.S. agents, who seemed convinced that he was a top Al Qaeda figure in possession of nuclear secrets. They say he was beaten and threatened with death, then "rendered"-- apparently with CIA cooperation -- in July 2002 to Morocco, where interrogators repeatedly slashed his genitals with a scalpel.

This is called extraordinary rendition kids, and despite Obama's soaring oratory, it is still kosher under the new administration.

Sherry Wolf on the fight for Gay liberation

2009-02-25T20:49:00.002-06:00

Sherry Wolf's book, Sexuality And Socialism, is forthcoming.

"The 'Americans Want Bipartisanship' Myth"

2009-02-25T20:38:00.002-06:00

I must say, Glenn Greenwald has been one of the better liberal commentators lately, as his latest shows. Read this and then check out "Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability -- resoundingly and disgracefully." The Nation he ain't.

Yahoo for the Rebirth of Liberalism!

2009-02-21T15:26:00.002-06:00

This is great. It's tinged with racism ("third world peasants"), but nonetheless it's wonderful to see liberals regain some backbone and some anger. Note how thick the Fox interviewer is: he cites a $70 per hour figure for worker compensation, then denies asking anything about healthcare pensions. Obviously autoworkers don't make $70 an hour; the kind of cooked numbers Fox presenters use include all future costs for the worker. The guy could at least have the courtesy to understand how his numbers are distorted.

We need more Take Back NYUs

2009-02-21T14:51:00.004-06:00

Who will defend the right to affordable education during this recession? Anyone who thinks Obama will would benefit from reading Paul Krugman's column from yesterday's NYT. Krugman explains that while Obama is trying to soften some of the rougher edges, he is mostly going to let the recession end the old-fashioned way: letting the working class sink into destitution

To be sure, the Obama administration is taking action to help the economy, but it’s trying to mitigate the slump, not end it. The stimulus bill, on the administration’s own estimates, will limit the rise in unemployment but fall far short of restoring full employment... given time, the current slump will end itself, the way slumps did in the 19th century. As I said, this may be your great-great-grandfather’s recession. But recovery may be a long time coming.

For the ruling class, the way out of the recession is to restore profitability by forcing concessions from the workers. A higher unemployment rate is extremely helpful in doing this. The corollary of this is lower tax revenues, slashes to state budgets, and more students who are unable to afford a college education.

We need two, three, many TBNYUs. Keep the solidarity coming.

E-mail and call NYU officials and call for the student occupiers to be given amnesty and not suspended. Call President John Sexton at 212-998-2345 or e-mail him at john.sexton@nyu.edu. Email the Office of the Provost at provost@nyu.edu and the Office of the Vice President at evp@nyu.edu.

Urgent: Demand amnesty for NYU student occupiers

2009-02-20T14:57:00.001-06:00

Today New York University has shown its true face more than ever. Claiming to be a "private university in the public service," it is clearly not even in the service of those students whose tuitions allow it to exist.

Earlier today, NYU cut power to all outlets in the occupied space and turned off the wireless internet. Obviously this was an attempt to silence and intimidate the occupiers who have broad-based support.

Then, NYU said it would negotiate and instead detained and suspended the student negotiators when they showed up. Security has now broken through the barricade and people are being detained and suspended.

Instead of dialog and negotiation, the NYU administration has shown they prefer the authoritarian, dissent-quashing, dictator route. It is a true reflection of how they run their university. Nothing but thugs with suits on, interested in getting rich under the guise of "education."

Be prepared to defend any individual or group that is targeted academically or legally for their role in the occupation. Widespread support for the occupation and its demands will not be extinguished by NYU's hypocritical, tyrannical behavior.

Come out to 60 Washington Square South if you can.

Email NYU Administrators. Demand amnesty and no suspensions:

NYU President John Sexton: john.sexton@nyu.edu

John Beckman, NYU Spokesperson: jhb5@nyu.edu

Office of the Provost: provost@nyu.edu

Office of the Vice President: evp@nyu.edu

Here is John Sexton, NYU President, so people can call as well as email:
(212) 998-2345

Occupied NYU

2009-02-20T02:47:00.007-06:00

I was a little incredulous when the Take Back NYU blog said they had hundreds of supporters outside, but lo--check out the above video. As usual, the police are doing the brutality thing.

Contrary to the claims of the narrator, the occupation continues.

Thanks to The Sitch for passing along the video.

Missing the Racist Forest for the Trees

2009-02-19T15:35:00.005-06:00

I imagine by quitting time today most people will have heard about the NY Post cartoon that ran yesterday. It depicted two police officers with guns drawn and a bullet-riddled monkey. One cop is saying "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." I don't believe I've seen such as racist cartoon since the publication of the anti-Muslim Danish cartoons of a few years back.

CNN's Roland Burris and Al Sharpton have called out the cartoonist and the Post for the vile history in the US of referring Blacks as 'monkeys' and the vigilante and state terror that have gone hand in hand with it. A relatively unreported fact has been that hate crimes against Blacks has INCREASED after the election. Sean Delonas, the cartoonist, claims that it is standard practice to mix two current events in a political cartoon. We all know about OBAMA's stimulus bill (many defenders of the cartoon point to the fact that the 'kill Obama' implication is patently false because the legislature, not Obama wrote the bill. Pure bollocks.) But, who the fuck has heard of the other story, the Connecticut monkey attack incident? I surely haven't.

My biggest beef with the backlash against the cartoon (and admittedly I have not done a wide survey of the responses online) is that no one is calling out the implication of police brutality!!! Police have ramped up their killings and shootings of young Black men. Look at Oscar Grant. Delonas and his 'freedom of speech' defenders are apologists for the very real racism that continues to exist despite the historic election of Obama and are actively contributing to the climate where cops get off scot free for murder.

Great Russian Chauvanism: the comeback continues

2009-02-19T12:10:00.006-06:00

The U.S. denied it would happen, but here it is. Kyrgyzstan's parliament has voted to close its US air base, a key to the supply route for the US occupation of Afghanistan. At the same time, Kyrgyzstan will be accepting $2 billion in aid from Russia. The Kyrgzy government denies any connection.

Russia has been trying to re-establish its traditional sphere of influence for the past ten years, openly asking the US to recognize its "privileged interests" in Central Asia. The US has consistently rebuffed.

However, with the US flailing in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia gained a window of opportunity to reestablish its sphere of influence. The Russian invasion of Georgia and the lack of US response finally proved the US can no longer protect its own allies in Central Asia.

What can we expect from the return of the Prison-house of Nations? Hopefully more hilarity like this

"I'm interested in good relations between the United States and Russia," [McCain] said. "But in the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations.''

Yes.

More: Pepe Escobar on the fallout

the price for the US and NATO to have their Afghan supplies arrive via Russia is clear: no more encirclement, no more NATO extension, no more anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland for protection against non-existent Iranian missiles.

NYU under student occupation

2009-02-19T12:02:00.002-06:00

They're demanding an end to rising tuition and aid for Gaza among other things.

In case you haven't heard, this is the latest in a string of occupations in the UK and US.

Attention Democrats: Word to Your Mother

2009-02-19T10:54:00.004-06:00

This is the funniest shit I've seen in a long time. The GOP, in a bold move to rebrand itself as the dopest thing this side of LL Cool J, has launched an 'off the hook' (their words) marketing campaign. Perhaps they hope the youth will 'get jiggy with' fiscal conservatism and find the 'flyness' in family values. Either way, I suspect hilarity shall ensue from this campaign.

Also, demonstrating how with the times the party is, Chairman Michael Steele made a 'midget' joke.

Towards a Marxist Understanding of American History

2009-02-17T19:18:00.002-06:00

Or, books I want read this summer. After two semesters of having my head filled with cultural studies nonsense, I plan on spending this summer dancing with the dialectic and getting gritty with materialism. Here's a few of the classic Marxist works on American history I plan on reading. If you're so inclined, hit me up with suggestions.

Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made - Eugene D. Genovese

The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 - Charles Sellers

Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century - Harry Braverman

The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America - Leo Marx

The White Pacific: US Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War - Gerald Horne

Popular Fronts: Chicago and African American Cultural Politics, 1935-1946 - Bill V. Mullen

James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928 - Bryan D. Palmer

Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-1921 - Brian Kelly

BONO WATCH: This isn't exactly a review...

2009-02-17T17:11:00.003-06:00

... because there's no way I'm spending good money on one of their shitty albums, but I just noticed this.
"Get Your Boots On" lyrics:

someones left to blow it up
the wear weeds are growing up
women are the future whole of big revelations
i’ve gotta a submarine you’ve got gasoline
i don’t wanna talk about war between nations

That last line, "I don't wanna talk about war between nations" is repeated several times.

Is this real?

Anyone whose followed the career of "political activist" Bono has noticed his craven failure to challenge his allies Bush and Blair on the war in Iraq. Even his own bandmate has called him out on it. So what the hell is he yammering about in this song?

My guess is there is no intentional connection, and Bono has unwittingly written a brilliant tribute to his own weak-kneed liberalism.

More capitalist madness

2009-02-16T14:42:00.003-06:00

Hundreds of thousands of America's dairy cows are being turned into hamburgers because milk prices have dropped so low that farmers can no longer afford to feed the animals.
Dairy farmers say they have little choice but to sell part of their herds for slaughter because they face a perfect storm of destructive economic forces. At home, feed prices are rising and cash-strapped consumers are eating out less often. Abroad, the global recession has cut into demand for butter and cheese exported from the U.S.
Prices for milk now are about half what it costs farmers to produce the staple, and consumer prices are falling. Unless the market can be bolstered, industry officials project that more than 1.5 million of the nation's 9.3 million milking cows could be slaughtered this year as dairy operators look to cut costs and generate cash.
"This could destroy our dairy infrastructure," said Mike Marsh, CEO of the United Western Dairymen trade association.

I'm sure there's some pithy quote from Marx about what's happening here, but I can't find it at the moment. No matter, there'll be plenty more where this came from.

Mark Ames on Going Postal

2009-02-15T13:47:00.001-06:00

Radio Interview: Mark Ames on Recession Murder/Suicide Rampages from Team eXiled on Vimeo.

Dubai is Sinking into the Sea!!

2009-02-15T13:44:00.002-06:00

Actually, only part of it is. But it's still something to celebrate. Nothing like some good old biblical style punishment being hurled down at Ground Zero for global opulence.

Justice for Loretta Capeheart!

2009-02-09T10:14:00.000-06:00

To: Sharon K. Hahs, President, Northeastern Illinois University
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, support Northestearn Illinois University professor Loretta Capeheart in her suit against NEIU's president, vice-president, and provost for violation of her free speech rights and retaliation against her for exercising these rights in defense of labor, minorities, and academic freedom.

After playing a leading role in her union (University Professionals of Illinois-AFT) during a strike, defending students arrested for protest of a CIA recruitment event, and contradicting her provost on the matter of recruitment and retention of Latino/a faculty, Professor Capeheart was

-denied appointment to her duly elected post as department chair,
-denied merited awards, and
-defamed in a faculty council meeting by NEIU's vice president,
who maliciously charged her without basis with stalking a student.

We are outraged at these serious and malicious attempts to silence one of our fellow academics, unionists, and anti-war activists. We cannot allow NEIU administrators to get away with these attacks on academic freedom and workers' rights. Their actions should be chilling to all workers, activists, and scholars. Her case is a perfect example of the stakes of the ongoing struggle for academic freedom—for labor, for inclusion and equality of minorities, and for the right to protest war and injustice on our campuses.

Capeheart seeks an injunction against further violations, for her rightful appointment as chair, and for monetary damages for defamation.

We stand with her.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
Sign the petition here.

The Limits of Liberalism

2009-02-06T13:50:00.000-06:00

Terry Eagleton on the Limits of Liberalism.

Life Imitates Comedy

2009-02-04T09:47:00.002-06:00

A few months ago Dennis Perrin wrote a satirical ad for John McCain:
NARRATOR: Barack Obama's friend Bill Ayers once belonged to a group that bombed public buildings. But how many people did Ayers actually kill? Based on the evidence, the answer is ZERO. That's right -- not a single dead body. Sorry Senator Obama. If you want to be president, you'll have to find a more violent group of friends.

John McCain. He's killed before, and he'll kill again.

Now, we have Ehud Barak campaigning against Avigdor Lieberman on precisely those grounds: 'When has he ever shot anyone? When has he ever held a rifle?'

Smart People Support Palestine

2009-02-03T19:47:00.001-06:00

Tony Benn Tells the BBC How it Is

2009-02-01T09:09:00.000-06:00

This is so gangsta.

Finkelstein on Gaza in Context

2009-01-31T10:46:00.000-06:00

Norman Finkelstein has an excellent article that puts the invasion of Gaza in context of forty years of Israeli history. Highly recommended.

A Look Back at the Good Old Days of the Miracle Economy

2009-01-30T18:12:00.001-06:00

More Ridiculous Sexism from PETA

2009-01-29T09:07:00.003-06:00

I don't take the animal rights movement seriously. There is something profoundly disgusting about a movement that consistently values the lives of chickens above those of humans. This is one more example. The article's subtitle says it all: "The animal-rights group doesn't want people to eat meat, but they don't mind treating women like it."

Mark Ames Agrees with Me on SWPL

2009-01-28T22:15:00.000-06:00

Those who strive can be saved; those who are content to chortle at themselves cannot. There is more honor and courage in the smelly, fat carcasse of a science-fiction nerd than in this vast horde of people who are proud not to take themselves too seriously. We say to you again: yes, even Chad Castagana is more worthy than you, chroniclers of wasted life. We say to you: The road to Hell is paved with old issues of The New Yorker.

< / capitalism >

2009-01-28T13:13:00.001-06:00

Human costs of an economic meltdown.

Taibbi on Friedman

2009-01-27T09:15:00.004-06:00

If Thomas Friedman had any sense of honor, integrity, or human decency, he surely would have committed seppuku by now. But since there is a void in Mr. Friedman's soul where those qualities reside in the rest of us, he continues to degrade the written word with machine-like consistency. Fortunately, Matt Taibbi has his tanto sharpened. Enjoy.

Iceland's Government Collapses!

2009-01-26T13:50:00.004-06:00

Huzzah! The ruling Independent Party in Iceland has been forced to resign by massive protests in response to the country's economic devastation. The Social Democratic Alliance, which had been a minority partner in the government, looks poised to win the early elections scheduled for May 9th.

There are also massive protests in Eastern Europe, where many countries face the same kind of debt trap more commonly associated with the Global South. All this coming in the wake of the continent-wide protests over Israel's assault on Gaza. Which came after the "Greek Intifada." Just a few months ago the victory of the fascists in Italy and the routing of the Left in the London mayoral elections had many convinced that continent was on a rightwards drift. Things are looking up.

Does Anyone Else Find the Right Wing's Hard-on For Jack Bauer Creepy?

2009-01-23T19:51:00.008-06:00

National Review's Jonah Goldberg goes in for a hug.

I don't get it. I guess Kiefer Sutherland is OK looking, but he's certainly no Christian Bale. Yet the right wing seems to have a dual obsession with him. First, he really puts the dill in their collective pickle. Second, they seem to think that he, a fictional character, is the best possible argument for torturing people. It reminds me of those people in college who, when I told them I was a socialist, would tell me that Lord of the Flies had shown why I had it all wrong. I liked to respond that Star Trek had proven Marx was right.

So today we have the Wall Street Journal crying JB at Obama's executive order restricting intelligence service interrogation techniques to those specified in the Army Field Manual. The Journal sniffs that the CIA would "now be required to give prisoners gentler treatment than common criminals. The Field Manual's confines don't even allow the average good cop/bad cop routines common in most police precincts." The Journal seems willfully unaware of what goes in some police precincts, but that's beside the point.

The article's main argument is same tired ticking bomb scenario. Alfred McCoy dissected the scenario expertly in 2006, and the argument hasn't changed since then. Here McCoy recounts the rather improbable sequence of events involved in the scenario:

—First, FBI or CIA agents apprehend a terrorist at the precise moment between timer’s first tick and bomb’s burst.

—Second, the interrogators somehow have sufficiently detailed foreknowledge of the plot to know they must interrogate this very person and do it right now.

—Third, these same officers, for some unexplained reason, are missing just a few critical details that only this captive can divulge.

—Fourth, the biggest leap of all, these officers with just one shot to get the information that only this captive can divulge are best advised to try torture, as if beating him is the way to assure his wholehearted cooperation.

David Rose has updated McCoy's argument recently in Vanity Fair. Rose interviewed a whole host of intelligence operatives, who uniformly told him that torture did not produce good intelligence. In fact, it tended to produce bad intelligence that caused investigators to waste resources following. Of the much hallowed waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one Pentagon analyst said “K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were.”

The WSJ article is useful in one respect, however: it disproves the self-righteous laments from Democrats who angrily shake their fist and cry "This never would have happened but for NADER!" Observe:

An anecdote former Clinton counterterror czar Richard Clarke recounts in his memoir "Against All Enemies" is instructive. In 1993, White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler was horrified by Mr. Clarke's proposal for "extraordinary rendition," where our spooks turn over prisoners to foreign countries like Egypt so they can do the interrogating.
While Mr. Clinton was still chewing his fingernails and seemed to side with Mr. Cutler, Al Gore arrived late to the meeting. "Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides," Mr. Clarke writes. "Gore laughed and said, 'That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.'"

British MP on Israel and Palestine

2009-01-19T14:15:00.001-06:00

One of the best statements by a politician I've heard.

Getting to Know Dr. King

2009-01-19T13:14:00.003-06:00

It's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and, for the first time I can remember, the holiday isn't being greeted with an avalanche of cant. Yahoo News ran a good story about Dr. King's frequently forgotten commitment to economic justice, and CNN has an article interviewing SCLC leaders and King's sister. The right wing, meanwhile, which never wastes an opportunity to hijack King's legacy, has been curiously silent, with the exception of Michelle Malkin, who wants to paint King as an enemy of teacher's unions (right. he supported sanitation workers but drew the line at educators.)

Clearly, this has something to do with Obama's election, which has helped make clear the drastic changes in American racial attitudes over the past few decades. Viewing this sea change, I am reminded of Marx's appropriation of Hamlet: "Well grubbed, old mole!"

Given the reprieve we've been granted from right wing idiocy about King, now is a perfect time to familiarize yourself with the radical Dr. King.

Brian Jones - The Martin Luther King They Won't Celebrate

FAIR - Martin Luther King and Affirmative Action

Kai Wright - Dr. King, Forgotten Radical

Brian Kelley - Unfinished Business: Martin Luther King in Memphis

Stevie Wonder also has something to say:

Epic Fail in Zionist Apologetics

2009-01-16T10:07:00.003-06:00

Elizabeth Wurtzel's piece today in the Guardian is the single worst defense of Israel I've read this time around. I'm actually glad she's a Zionist, because frankly I'd be embarrassed to have someone writing this drivel for my side. Apparently the only possible reason people are upset with Israel is antisemitism (the "purest antisemitism since the Nazi era," in fact). Just read the piece, and revel in the fact that Israel's defenders have reached rock bottom, intellectually (they've been there morally for decades).

Zionist Thuggery in the US

2009-01-14T14:56:00.002-06:00

And you thought Zionists only hated Arabs. Turns out they're more than willing to use violence against American Jews who speak out against them. Adam Shapiro, founder of the International Solidarity Movement, has received death threats against him and his family from the Jewish Defense League. JDL threats are not to be taken lightly, as they have a history of following through with them.

While Haaretz and other Israeli outlets raise a tremendous hue and cry over every mean thing an Arab says about Israel in Europe, they are silent on the very real crimes of their supporters.

Max Blumenthal: My Kind of Asshole

2009-01-14T08:55:00.004-06:00

After seeing Max Blumenthal's excellent coverage of the pep-rally for ethnic cleansing in New York, I decided to look him up on youtube and see what else he's done. Turns out the guy is hilarious. Lots of very funny stuff skewering the right wing.

However, he does occasionally get too big for his boots. Watch Nader stuff Blumenthal's blame game down his throat. (Yes I know Ralph gets wierd around immigration)

Civilizing the Brutes in Afghanistan

2009-01-13T15:03:00.002-06:00

Ethiopian Troops Leave Mogadishu

2009-01-13T11:55:00.003-06:00

A glimmer of good news amidst the carnage: Ethiopian troops are finally leaving the capital of Somalia. The Ethiopian occupation has been incredibly brutal, overthrowing the only stable government the country had seen in decades and causing more than a million Somali's to become refugees. Though there has been fighting between al-Shabaab, the main resistance group, and other groups fighting the occupation, al-Shabaab controls the entire country outside Mogadishu, and now that the Ethiopians have left will probably take that quickly as well.

Protesting Police Executions

2009-01-13T09:46:00.003-06:00

Here is a demonstration of how little they care about our lives: when the Bay Area Rapid Transit directors had a meeting with the public to discuss the murder of Oscar Grant, Director Lynette Sweet complained that the meeting was keeping people from watching the NFL playoffs. Fortunately, both San Francisco and New Orleans (responding to the murder of Adolph Grimes) residents have begun organizing to ensure that these executions will not fade quietly from public view. SF has set up the Coalition Against Police Executions, and is regularly organizing protests. In New Orleans, a group of ministers and the NAACP are pushing for an FBI civil rights investigation into the shooting. The FBI, of course, with its own illustrious history of murdering Black leaders, will probably do nothing, but it will at least keep the killing in the press.

Young Black Man Killed by New Orleans Police

2009-01-11T15:30:00.003-06:00

Again. Did cops all around the country get a memo or something? Is this some kind of sick civilian corollary to what Jon Stewart described as Israel's "civilian carnage Toyotathan" before Obama comes to office? Are police departments all over the country getting their fill of murdering young Black men before the inauguration?

Anyway, here are the details. Adolph Grimes III was in New Orleans visiting his family for the holidays. He was waiting to meet his cousin in a rented SUV, when a narcotics force out on a sweep found him. The police claimed he fired at them, and they released a hail of 48 shots in response. Perhaps they've been watching the news and learned to follow Israel: when you shoot an innocent person, claim they shot at you first! Here's some excellent coverage of the protests Grimes' murder has sparked.

Israeli Use of Palestinian Human Shields

2009-01-11T08:42:00.003-06:00

We hear a great deal about Hamas' use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. It is the IDF's favorite explanation for why they have butchered so many Palestinian civilians. In the fantasy world of Israeli hasbara, even those killed by IDF bombs belong in the category of "victims of Hamas." While it is undoubtedly true that Hamas' weapons are often stored in mosques, and that Hamas fighters do take shelter in civilian homes, it is nonetheless striking that the human shields claim should be offered so frequently without the slightest bit of evidence. An IDF spokesperson will somberly explain that they had to drop a one ton bomb on an apartment, and the only reason civilians died was because of Hamas using human shields.

But what of the use of human shields by Israel? The practice is widespread enough that, in 2005, the Israeli Supreme Court was forced under pressure from human rights groups to issue a ruling that banned the practice. However, the IDF has a long history of ignoring Israeli Supreme Court rulings when they conflict with the colonization of Palestine (these rulings are outliers; most of the time the court is quite happy to provide a legal rationale for whatever is needed to consolidate the occupation).

The legal status of the use of human shields has not been an exception. Indeed, here the IDF has had it both ways. As the MERIP report makes clear, the court delayed hearing a case about human shields as long as it could, even though evidence of both the practice's use and its status in international law were ample. Then, after the ruling was issued, the IDF simply adopted a lower profile in using Palestinian human shields. However, examples abound that the practice continued, see here, here, here, and here.

In 2006, the IDF used the human shields excuse with great abandon during its invasion of Lebanon. However, the hasbara took a hit when Human Rights Watch published its August report, which reported that they had found "no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack." Then in November Amnesty International published its report on the war, which confirmed the main points of HRW's.

Despite the beating the human shields excuse took in the Lebanon invasion, it is back with a vengeance in 2009. This time, apologists for Israeli terror have made a concerted effort to give the myth a scholarly veneer with the publication of "Hamas Exploitation of Civilians as Human Shields." Reading the 81 page report, one is struck by just how weak the evidence is. For example, the report repeatedly points out the placement of government buildings in densely populated areas, as if this signified some diabolical intent. More significantly, from the outset the report writes off any possibility of solidarity between Gazan civilians and Hamas. Every time civilians are found near fighting, it is an example of Hamas 'exploiting' civilians. However, Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, and its support has increased throughout the Israeli assault. It is unsurprising, therefore, that ordinary Gazans would put themselves in danger to protect Hamas fighters.

The situation is similar to that of Vietnam during the American war. Fighters from the National Liberation Front enjoyed broad support in the countryside, often taking refuge in villages. Seeing this, the American military quite logically concluded that its war was against the entire population of Vietnam, and conducted the war accordingly. The same is happening in Palestine.

In addition to the genocidal logic of the assault, Israel has continued its practice of using Palestinian civilians as unwilling human shields. According to Amnesty International, Israeli fighters regularly take refuge in a civilian occupied building, and order the inhabitants to remain in the building to discourage Hamas from attacking. I wonder if we'll soon see a congressional resolution decrying this practice?

Africa Protests Israel's Slaughter in Gaza

2009-01-10T13:28:00.004-06:00

Check out Pambazuka's round up of African protests against Israel's invasion, from Algeria to South Africa. Given Israels history of backing settler states like South Africa and American-backed dictators like Mobutu, it's not surprising that Israeli propaganda is falling on deaf ears.

George Ciccariello-Maher on Oscar Grant's Murder

2009-01-10T10:41:00.002-06:00

You might know George Ciccariello-Maher for his excellent writings on Chavez and Venezuela. Here he has a truly necessary piece on Oakland and Oscar Grant's murder. He goes through Oakland's foul history of police executions, and also the magnitude of outrage the murder has sparked. Well worth reading.

Joe the Plumber's First Dispatch From Israel

2009-01-10T10:29:00.001-06:00

From Somethingawful.com:

When Pyjamas Media asked me to be a reporter on the war in Israel my immediate reaction was "yes." But my fool mouth has got me in trouble before, so I told them I would sleep on it.

After some extra thinking I said "hell yes." You know why? Because one voice has been lacking in the midst of all this war. That is the voice of the average man.

The elites in the world think they run everything, but if I learned one thing about global politics from my 17 years as an unlicensed plumber, it's that elites just mess everything up.

Think about it. When was the last time you heard of an average guy messing up the economy? Or an average guy starting a war? Never happened. Only elites have the time to think about that stuff.

Average guys just wanna look out for their family. They don't have time for starting a war.

What would they even want to start a war about? Things are looking fine to me here in America. As long as you don't come for my guns or one red penny more of my hard-earned money or to make me join a union or get my plumber's license I got no gripe with you.

So I boarded a jet to Israel to find out the real story of the war between Israel and Gaza. It was a long flight and they served chicken with something called rice pilaf. Very interesting stuff. I will have to see if we can get it back home.

I got off the plane and my guide was a very nice guy named Moshe Ben-David. You pronounce it "moy-she." Moshe said that first he would take me to ground zero where the Gazans have been shooting rockets at Israel. Then he would drive us to a hill where I could see the fighting in Gaza.

"The attacks are frequent," Moshe said.

"How many people died?" I asked him.

"A lot of people over the many years it has been going on and recently one," Moshe said back.

I nodded sadly to him.

"So it's sort of like your 9-11?" I asked him.

"Hmm," Moshe said as he thought about my question. "I think you could say that. Yes."

Israelis struggle to recover from brutal Hamas rocket attacks.
The tragedy of the attacks for people like Moshe is that they come so suddenly. No one expects the rockets. Imagine a 9-11, only the planes could land anywhere. They could land among the family of the Israelis.

"A siren sounds and you have one minute," Moshe said. "You have to get to the shelter or your basement."

Moshe took me to a neighborhood not far from the border with Gaza and showed me some buildings that had been damaged by rockets. He pointed to a room where the rocket had blasted into the floor.

"A baby was sleeping only two rooms away and a few hours before this rocket hit. If he was still sleeping he could have been slightly injured by debris."

Moshe showed me pictures. One picture was of a child who was dusty. Another picture was of a man making a very upset face.

"What happened here?" I asked and pointed to the face.

"Oh," Moshe said sadly. "He is upset because a rocket hit his yard."

After the rocket attacks became too much to handle the Israelis were forced to act. With their airforce they used precision guided bombs to attack the rocket launchers. Some of these were situated in mosques and inside of the houses of families and at weddings and UN hospitals.
"The Hamas are monsters," Moshe said. "They use everyone as human shields. We have no choice. There are, unfortunately, some civilian casualties."

Nobody wants Gazan civilians being killed or injured, especially not the Israelis.

"We care so much," said Moshe. "We never want to hurt anyone, but we have to defend our settlements."

The hundreds of women and children killed by Israeli air strikes, artillery, tanks, and machine guns are a tragedy.

"And the UN ambulance the tank shot," Moshe added to the list.

These are all tragedies, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made in the name of security. If a serial killer grabs your wife and your baby and uses them as human shields you have to do what needs to be done.

You have to use your brain in situations likes that. You have to shoot the baby because it can't take care of itself without a wife, but with a wife you can make a new baby.

"That's a good metaphor," Moshe complimented me.

I smiled and we walked out to go to Moshe's truck. On the way out two kids and an older man with those little hats came running and said they were settlers.

"Like pioneers in America," Moshe told me.

The one teenager was named Abraham and another was named Tzabar. They were brothers. Their mother had been wounded badly by a rocket.

"Shrapnel hit her in the foot," Tzabar said in a foreign accent. "She was sitting on the couch and BOOM the rocket hit outside and shrapnel hit mama in the foot!"

They were very excited and upset. I asked them about their mother.

"She is okay now, but she is at the Marriott in Tel Aviv now."

The older man was Sol Rozen. He lived near the boys and he saw another rocket hit a dog.

"One second it was standing there just fine," Sol described to us. "The next second there was no dog. I looked around and around and then I saw him up in the tree. He was okay, but he was very scared. He did not know how he got up in that tree. Damn them!"

It was good to meet with the average Israelis I had requested. I shook their hands and wished them luck.

Moshe drove his truck to a hill. From the hill we could see explosions in Gaza. There was smoke and helicopters. I could also see some tanks driving around.

"Watch there," Moshe said.

I took this one with my camera phone. Surprisingly, Sbarros in Israel look similar to those in malls in America. The pizza tastes just as delicious too!
He handed me some binoculars and pointed. I heard a jet overhead and then there was this big flash of light and then like a full second later there was this boom that shook my head.

"Wow!" I shouted. "That's a huge fireball!"

There was a huge fireball forming. It looked like a mushroom cloud it was so big. It wasn't a nuke though, just a really big bomb.

We had to go after a little bit because the tanks were driving into a school for the deaf and Moshe said he didn't want me to get stressed out.

"Come on, bro-heem," he said. "I'll buy you a slice of pie."

He meant Sbarro pizza. They call pizza "pie" in Israel. We went to the Sbarro and I got a pepperoni pizza slice and Moshe got one with black olives.

I wanted to talk to some average Gazans about what was going on, but Moshe said it was too dangerous.

"Maybe after all the rocket launchers have been destroyed," Moshe said. "Then it will be safe to go to Gaza."

That is my report from Israel. Stay strong America.

The End.

- Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher

Spotlight: Attempted Smear on Pro-Palestinian Doctor Mads Gilbert by Fox News

2009-01-08T15:40:00.010-06:00

If you've been watching the international media coverage of Israel's assault on Gaza for the last week or so, you've probably seen some clips of Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician working in Gaza City's beleaguered Shifa Hospital. Dr. Gilbert has been an outspoken and courageous voice in the Anglophone media for Palestinian rights and humanity during the slaughter.

Apparently, the Fox News apparatchiks decided that something must be done. They turned to NGO Monitor, a right wing Israeli group that specializes in putting out press releases explaining why Amnesty International is full of anti-semites. (The liberal Zionist magazine the Forward has a pretty devastating take down of NGO-M's disregard for anything factual, available here.) NGO Monitor has done some digging and discovered that Dr. Gilbert is - horror of horrors! - a Marxist activist with the Norwegian "Red" party, a Maoist group.

Besides this, NGO Monitor has unearthed some statements Dr. Gilbert made about Sept. 11th, which assert that terrorism is justified in the context of oppression. Given Fox News' strident cheerleading of terror by those aren't oppressed (Israel and the US), I'm not sure what they're complaining about.

My favorite part of the article is the last part, where the head of NGO Monitor, Gerald Steinberg, pontificates on Dr. Gilbert's supposed violations of the Hippocratic Oath (Dr. Steinberg is a professor of political science). Then an actual medical ethicist informs us that having a political viewpoint does not necessarily disqualify one from practicing medicine.

If this is the best they can do, our side is doing better than I thought.

*UPDATE*
Harry's Place has also taken up the cudgels against Gilbert. They add nothing to the Fox News article besides copious baiting for his Maoism.

Great Footage of Israeli Protest in Tel Aviv

2009-01-08T11:33:00.000-06:00

Police Executions

2009-01-08T11:00:00.001-06:00

With the spate of recent attempts on Black men's lives by police officers, I thought I'd post a few songs on the subject.

Another (!!!!!!!) Young Black Man Shot by Police

2009-01-08T10:56:00.002-06:00

Thankfully, Robbie Tolan survived the assault. He will live the rest of his life with a bullet embedded in his liver, however. Tolan, 23, was shot in his driveway in Bellaire, Texas, by a police officer who accused him of stealing a car. Bellaire is a mostly white suburb of Houston. Get this: the officer who shot him is named Jeffrey Cotton.

Riots and Demonstrations in Oakland Over Oscar Grant's Murder

2009-01-08T09:12:00.003-06:00

Oscar Grant's murder has sparked some serious outrage in Oakland against police brutality. Socialist Worker has excellent coverage of the demonstration, while the Oakland Tribune has surprisingly good coverage of the riot:

The protesters were "calling attention to something that is a systematic problem, which won't go away with an apology," said a 29-year-old who identified himself only as B. Rex. He was arrested and taken by police in a squad car soon after.

The Murder of Oscar Grant

2009-01-07T14:34:00.000-06:00

There is no reasonable doubt here.

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Jon Stewart on Gaza

2009-01-07T11:19:00.002-06:00

Jon Stewart with a very funny and quite savvy bit on Gaza and Israel. The guy is on a roll.

Amira Haas on Gaza

2009-01-07T10:59:00.001-06:00

Amira Haas has been an incredibly courageous voice for humanity in the face of Israeli barbarism. Check out her latest column.

Racist Cops in Oakland Execute a Black Man

2009-01-07T10:17:00.002-06:00

From Socialist Worker:

ON NEW Year's Eve, as scores of horrified people looked on, Oakland transit police forced 22-year-old Oscar Grant to the ground, kneeled on his head and then shot him in the back.

Grant, an African American father of a 4-year-old daughter and an Oakland grocery story worker, died several hours later. The bullet entered his back, ricocheted off the concrete floor and punctured his lungs.

Police attempted to confiscate cell phone videos taken by Bay Area Rapid Transit passengers and initially claimed that security cameras didn't record the incident. However, in the last two days, they have been forced to admit that the security cameras did capture the assault.

Additionally, one especially graphic video taken by a passenger was released by the Bay Area television station KTVU. It shows an unarmed and unresisting Grant, lying face down, shot at point-blank range by an officer as his horrified friends and onlookers watch.

Thomas Friedman is a Raging Fucktard

2009-01-07T08:37:00.003-06:00

A raging, monumental fucktard. I first became acquainted with Friedman in my capacity as a shelver at a library where I worked. I liked to read reactionary books while on the clock, because I was less likely to lose the track of the argument if interrupted than with serious books. I remember reading one of his books (the World is Flat, maybe?) and coming across the phrase "I thought the Second Intifada was a dumb idea." I closed the book, secure in my knowledge that this man could not possibly have anything useful to say.

Yet here we are, years later, and his pie-hole still flaps. Once more, Friedman has turned his gaze to the Palestinians. As is his wont, he has employed an asinine metaphor to explain the situation to us.

The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?”

650 Palestinians are dead, and Friedman is playing Max Bialystock.

That is, Gaza is a mini-version of three great struggles that have been playing out since 1948: 1) Who is going to be the regional superpower — Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Iran? 2) Should there be a Jewish state in the Middle East and, if so, on what Palestinian terms? And 3) Who is going to dominate Arab society — Islamists who are intolerant of other faiths and want to choke off modernity or modernists who want to embrace the future, with an Arab-Muslim face? Let’s look at each.

The great struggle for hegemony over the middle east hasn't been between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It's been between the United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. The 1956 Suez War? England, France, and Israel against the United States. 1967? The US vs. the Soviet Union. The struggle for national self-determination in mideastern countries has, in the twentieth centuries, been waged in the context of imperialism. Egypt's rise under Nasser was less about Egyptian hegemony than Arab nationalism and anticolonialism. Erasing the history of colonialism in the Middle East allows Friedman to construct a ridiculous mythology in the rest of the column.

WHO OWNS THIS HOTEL? The struggle for hegemony over the modern Arab world is as old as Nasser’s Egypt. But what is new today is that non-Arab Iran is now making a bid for primacy — challenging Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iran has deftly used military aid to both Hamas and Hezbollah to create a rocket-armed force on Israel’s northern and western borders. This enables Tehran to stop and start the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at will and to paint itself as the true protector of the Palestinians, as opposed to the weak Arab regimes.

This first sentence is a typical Friedmanism. It is either nonsensical or utterly banal. The struggle for control over "the modern Arab world" was going on long before Nasser arrived on the scene. What was the Balfour Declaration but a means by which the British sought to assert their dominance over the Levant? Dating the struggle to Nasser simply allows Friedman to forget that hegemony requires a hegemon. On the other hand, one could be charitable and say that Nasser signaled the rise of the modern Arab world. In this case, Friedman is simply being banal and saying that the struggle over the modern Arab world started when the modern Arab world did.

“The Gaza that Israel left in 2005 was bordering Egypt. The Gaza that Israel just came back to is now bordering Iran,” said Mamoun Fandy, director of Middle East programs at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. “Iran has become the ultimate confrontation state. I am not sure we can talk just about ‘Arab-Israeli peace’ or the ‘Arab peace initiative’ anymore. We may be looking at an ‘Iranian initiative.’ ” In short, the whole notion of Arab-Israeli peacemaking likely will have to change.

Another typically Friedmanesque attack on rational thought. The man can barely contain his boundless euphoria every time he is allowed to utter something to the effect that "everything has changed!!!!!" In this case, it's a rather bizarre assertion. Iran has pointedly remained quiet on Israel's slaughter in Gaza. In fact, Lebanese politicians are saying that Iran has pledged that Hezbollah will not interfere.

CAN THE JEWS HAVE A ROOM HERE? Hamas rejects any recognition of Israel. By contrast, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, has recognized Israel — and vice versa. If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one, with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.

"Hamas rejects any recognition of Israel." Or is it the other way around? After all, as Avi Shlaim reminds us, it was Israel that rejected recognition of a Hamas-Fatah unity government in March of 2007. Moreover, what does recognition actually mean? Jonathan Cook argued lucidly in 2006 that recognition is a trap. Israel refuses to determine its borders, so recognition of the Israeli state means recognizing the territorial claims of a nebulous entity bent on seizing control of as much of the West Bank as possible. It means, in effect, abandoning those parts of the West Bank currently under Israeli control. So while avoiding "recognition," Hamas has repeatedly signalled its willingness to agree to peace within the pre-1967 borders.

Why? Because nothing has damaged Palestinians more than the Hamas death-cult strategy of turning Palestinian youths into suicide bombers. Because nothing would set back a peace deal more than if Hamas’s call to replace Israel with an Islamic state became the Palestinian negotiating position. And because Hamas’s attacks on towns in southern Israel is destroying a two-state solution, even more than Israel’s disastrous and reckless West Bank settlements.

Here we have nothing more than a paragraph of mythology. Death cult? As lenin points out in his excellent book, when you construct a subject as totally irrational, it means you don't have to aim very high in your explanations of its actions. And if Israel really wanted to stop the rockets, all they would have to do is agree to another ceasefire.

Israel has proved that it can and will uproot settlements, as it did in Gaza. Hamas’s rocket attacks pose an irreversible threat. They say to Israel: “From Gaza, we can hit southern Israel. If we get the West Bank, we can rocket, and thereby close, Israel’s international airport — anytime, any day, from now to eternity.” How many Israelis will risk relinquishing the West Bank, given this new threat?

Hamas has proven that it can and will stop rocket attacks, even in the context of a ceasefire whose agreements Israel refuses to honor. This talk of the West Bank is also bizarre. Given that, in the context of a ceasefire, virtually no rockets were launched from Gaza (those that were launched came from groups like Islamic Jihad, which Hamas has tried to stop), a similar approach would seem to be apt for the West Bank.

SHOULDN’T WE BLOW UP THE BAR AND REPLACE IT WITH A MOSQUE? Hamas’s overthrow of the more secular Fatah organization in Gaza in 2007 is part of a regionwide civil war between Islamists and modernists. In the week that Israel has been slicing through Gaza, Islamist suicide bombers have killed almost 100 Iraqis — first, a group of tribal sheikhs in Yusufiya, who were working on reconciliation between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and, second, mostly women and children gathered at a Shiite shrine. These unprovoked mass murders have not stirred a single protest in Europe or the Middle East.

This last sentence is one of the worst Friedman has ever penned. What on God's green earth does he expect a European protest against suicide bombing would accomplish? Who is the target of such an action? Global protests against Israel's slaughter have clear targets; they encourage whatever country they are in to side with Palestinian self-determination in the "international community." Suicide bombers don't exactly look for legitimacy the way Israel does. Basically, Friedman is wagging his finger at Europeans and asking them why they are not as ineffectually self-righteous as he.

Gaza today is basically ground zero for all three of these struggles, said Martin Indyk, the former Clinton administration’s Middle East adviser whose incisive new book, “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Diplomacy in the Middle East,” was just published. “This tiny little piece of land, Gaza, has the potential to blow all of these issues wide open and present a huge problem for Barack Obama on Day 1.”

Just one thing here. The provenance of Indyk's book title is Mark Twain's 1869 travelogue "Innocents Abroad" (clearly Indyk is a very creative man). "Innocents" was a fairly typical American travelogue of the nineteenth century, when the "holy land" became an object of wild fascination among Americans. However, Twain would soon became a principled anti-imperialist, who wrote scathingly about American and European efforts to dominate the globe. That the work of a sterling anti-imperialist such as Twain can be appropriated by an imperialist like Indyk is just gross.

Obama’s great potential for America, noted Indyk, is also a great threat to Islamist radicals — because his narrative holds tremendous appeal for Arabs. For eight years Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda have been surfing on a wave of anti-U.S. anger generated by George W. Bush. And that wave has greatly expanded their base.

No doubt, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are hoping that they can use the Gaza conflict to turn Obama into Bush. They know Barack Hussein Obama must be (am)Bushed — to keep America and its Arab allies on the defensive. Obama has to keep his eye on the prize. His goal — America’s goal — has to be a settlement in Gaza that eliminates the threat of Hamas rockets and opens Gaza economically to the world, under credible international supervision. That’s what will serve U.S. interests, moderate the three great struggles and earn him respect.

Dear god, when will it end?! Here, thankfully. Friedman concludes his piece on the typical imperial liberal note that they brought this on themselves. Friedman's tone is different, however, in that he apparently believes that Arab leaders enjoy being bombed by bellicose Westerners, since it allows them to stoke anti-Western feelings among "the masses." It's worth noting, in passing, the perversity of Friedman blaming Bush for hatred of the West, when he was an enthusiastic cheerleader for virtually all of Bush's major initiatives in the region.

Friedman is a clown, a court jester in the imperial thrown room. He deserved this.

Israel Rearms

2009-01-06T11:39:00.005-06:00

One of the most familiar canards used by imperialist running dogs to explain the futility of ceasefire with Hamas is that the eeeeeeeeeeeevildoers will only use the opportunity to rearm. As if during the ceasefire Israeli generals were out picking daisies.

Quite the opposite, as we now know. In fact, Israeli generals were planning the current attack on Gaza over six months ago, at the very time they were negotiating the ceasefire of June 19th. Haaretz reports:

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well. Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip.

This intelligence-gathering effort brought back information about permanent bases, weapon silos, training camps, the homes of senior officials and coordinates for other facilities.

It is one thing for Hamas to build more qassams; it is quite another for Israel to construct detailed plans for invading Gaza and assassinating political leaders. We hear so much about Hamas' duplicity in rearming itself. Why nothing about Israel's deep cynicism in agreeing to a ceasefire while planning for war?

Israel also did more than plan. It was busy rearming as well. Here's a summary of press releases from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which must make public notice of every arms sale by a US corporation to a foreign state:

July 15th - Four Littoral Combat Ships - 1.9 billion dollars. Littorals are a next generation surface engagement vessel. They are meant to engage ground targets from the sea - precisely the kind of ships attacking Gazan fishing boats and attacking civilians on beaches.

July 15th - 1.5 billion dollars of jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline. "The proposed sale of the JP-8 aviation fuel will enable Israel to maintain the operational capability of its aircraft inventory. The unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel will be used for ground forces’ vehicles and other equipment used in keeping peace and security in the region."

July 30th - 9 Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Hercules Transport aircraft. 1.9 billion dollars.

Sept. 9th - 1,000 GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs (SDB1), 150 BRU-61/A SDB1 Mounting Carriages, 30 Guided Test Vehicles, 2 BRU-61/A SDB Instrumented Carriages, 7 Jettison Test Vehicles, 1 Separation Test Vehicle, 2 Reliability and Assessment Vehicles, 12 Common
Munitions BIT and Reprogramming Equipment with Test Equipment and Adapters, 3 SDB1 Weapons Simulators, and 2 Load Crew Trainers. The GBU-39 has those braying for war with Iran creaming their pants. 77 million dollars.

Sept. 9th - 28,000 M72A7 66mm Light Anti-Armor Weapons. 89 million dollars.

Sept. 29th - 25 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Aircraft. 15.2 billion dollars.

Israel has certainly been a busy little 'peace loving country' during the ceasefire, no? Hamas can hardly be blamed for following its occupier's example in treating the ceasefire as a preparation for further fighting.

Jonathan Cook on Children in Gaza

2009-01-06T09:03:00.002-06:00

We hear a lot about the traumatization of children in Sderot. What about Palestinian children? Jonathan Cook provides an excellent survey of studies on children living in Gaza:
- Every child in Gaza has been exposed to at least nine "shocking events."
- 95% of heard explosions or shelling.
- 45% have seen Israelis beating or insulting relatives.
- More than 80% are suffering from moderate or major post-traumatic stress disorders.

Why should Gazans be forced to tolerate this?

Death Cults

2009-01-05T10:19:00.001-06:00

William Kristol says Hamas is a death cult. What do you think?

We All on Punk'd With No Ashton Kutcher

2009-01-05T09:33:00.003-06:00

Like Boots said. Only this time, it's Shinn Bet, the Israeli FBI, that gets punked. Someone from Electronic Intifada called in response to fliers asking for information on terrorists in Gaza. When asked to name the terrorists, he said Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, and Ehud Olmert.

Abortion in an Anti-Choice Culture

2009-01-05T09:03:00.003-06:00

The New York Times has an interesting article today on the growing use of ulcer medications to induce abortion. The article, which focuses on Dominican women in Washington Heights, is tinged with liberal racism, explaining that Dominican culture is socially conservative and pro-life. Two responses. First, American culture is socially conservative and pro-life (Knocked Up, anyone?). Particularizing this pathology to Dominican culture is absurd in a country that can barely say the word abortion on television. Second, it's worth questioning just how "socially conservative" Dominican culture actually is when women can walk into a pharmacy, say they need to bring down their period, and pharmacists will know they are asking for abortificants. This sounds to me like a widespread understanding and acceptance, on a subterranean level, of the practice of abortion. Maybe Dominican culture is actually complicated and can't simply be described as socially conservative?

This kind of essentialism aside, the article highlights a number of important facts. The first is that even in a culture which officially disproves of abortion and stigmatizes those that seek it, women will continue to terminate their pregnancies. It also shows that the stigmatization and criminalization of abortion hurts women, who, when denied safe medical care, will use other means, even at the risk of substantial self-injury. Finally, the article shows how abortion is a positive experience in many women's lives. The caption of the photo on the first page speaks directly to this - “It’s cheap but dangerous. Certain people are more delicate than others. But afterwards, I felt relief.” While liberals go on about reducing the number of abortions and how it's sad and tragic, they ignore the fact that for millions of women every year, an abortion is a victory in the struggle for control of their bodies.

The Gaza Ghetto Uprising

2009-01-04T13:38:00.002-06:00

Joseph Massad explains the relationship of Israel to Arab ruling classes:

While Hashemite-Zionist relations and Maronite Church-Zionist relations have always been known and documented, there has been less documentation of the services that Israel has provided and continues to provide to Arab regimes over the decades. It is now recognized that Israel's 1967 invasion of Egypt aimed successfully to destroy Gamal Abdul-Nasser, the enemy of all US dictatorial allies among the Arab regimes, whom the US and before it Britain and France had tried to topple since the 1950s but failed. Israel thus rendered a great service to Arab monarchies (and a few republics) from "the ocean to the Gulf," whose survival was threatened by Nasser and Nasserism. Israel's subsequent intervention in Jordan in 1970 to help the Jordanian army destroy Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas and its final crushing of that organization in its massive invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 were also important services it rendered to these same regimes threatened by the PLO's "revolutionary" potential and its sometimes recalcitrant positions. Israeli intelligence has also provided over the decades crucial information to several Arab regimes enabling them to crush their political opposition and strengthen their dictatorial rule. Prominent examples among recipients of Israeli intelligence largesse include the Moroccan and the Omani dictatorships.

Galloway on Gaza

2009-01-04T09:10:00.000-06:00