Friday, November 20, 2015

Mali Jihadis: The Spawn of Hillary's (And America's) War On Libya

Harouna Traore/Associated Press

Another horrific jihadi attack today, this time on a Radisson Blu hotel in Mali. 27 killed. Here’s an excerpt from the New YorkTimes coverage:
Mali has been crippled by instability since January, 2012, when rebels and Al Qaeda-linked militants — armed with the remnants of late Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s arsenal — began advancing through the country’s vast desert in the north and capturing towns.
In other words, the jihadi gangs in Mali are a direct result of American/French/NATO regime change in Libya, executed by the Obama administration, spearheaded by "We came, we saw, he died" Hillary Clinton.

In 2010, Libya under Ghaddafi had the highest standard of living of any country in Africa (UN Human Development Index). Ghaddafi's Libya employed many Malians. It was an anchor of stability in North Africa. The US/France/NATO put an end to that, under entirely phony pretexts, against fundamental international law, and in violation of the UN resolution they claimed as a justification. The executioners and beneficiaries of that US/France/NATO strategy where the jihadis who shoved a stick up Ghaddafi's ass and are now rampaging throughout Mali.


Ha, Ha. Maybe she can get a gig at the Comedy Club in the Radisson.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

“Good al-Qaeda’s” Air Force: The United States Is At War With Syria


 Fighters of al-Nusra front driving through Aleppo 26 May (AFP)
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation”
candidate Barack Obama, December, 2007
The United States has decided to allow airstrikes to defend Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. military from any attackers, even if the enemies hail from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials said on Sunday.
—  "U.S.to defend Syrian rebels with airpower, including from Assad," Reuters, August 3, 2015
The United States just went to war with Syria. With the confirmation today that American planes will shoot down Syrian planes attacking USDA-approved "rebels," the United States is now overtly engaged in another criminal attack on a sovereign country that poses no conceivable, let alone actual or imminent, threat to the nation. This is an act of war. 

Please don’t try any not-really-war “no-fly zone” or “safe zone” bullshit. As the Commander of NATO says, a no-fly zone is “quite frankly an act of war and it is not a trivial matter….[I]t’s basically to start a war with that country because you are going to have to go in and kinetically take out their air defense capability.” Or as Shamus Cooke puts it: “In a war zone an area is made ‘safe’ by destroying anything in it or around that appears threatening.”  Inevitably, “U.S. and Turkish fighter jets will engage with Syrian aircraft, broadening and deepening the war until the intended aim of regime change has been accomplished."1 

Does anybody doubt that this is exactly what’s intended? Perhaps Obama will soothe the discomfort of his purportedly peace-loving progressive fans with some assurance like: “broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” He’ll be lying, as he was four years ago when he said that about Libya.

As an aggressive, unprovoked war, this is totally illegal under international law, and all the political and military authorities undertaking it are war criminals, who would be prosecuted as such, if there were an international legal regime that had not already been undermined by the United States.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Syriza’s Final Charade



In my February post on The SYRIZA Moment (and in a revision of that piece, forthcoming in Canadian Dimension), I expressed great skepticism about the Syriza leadership’s commitment to the radical change the party promised to enact.

I pointed out that the leadership, as represented by Alex Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis, refuses on principle to have a strategy for “replacing European capitalism with a different, more rational, system.” In Varoufakis’s own words, they are “tirelessly striv[ing] in favour of schemas the purpose of which is to save” the current “indefensible …anti-democratic, irreversibly neoliberal, highly irrational,” European socio-economic system. All this, because, as he understands it, “it is the Left’s historical duty…to save European capitalism from itself.” Varoufakis’s whole negotiating strategy, I suggested, was centered on persuading the masters and mistresses of the Eurozone, through his brilliant “immanent critique” of their own capitalist economic theories, that it would be in their own, and capitalism’s, best interest to help Greece restore some semblance of social democracy.

Certainly, the left factions of the party sincerely wanted it to be an “anticapitalist,” “class-struggle” formation that would be unlike “any European social democratic party today,” and that would have “an agenda of really breaking with neoliberalism and austerity,” and the capitalist TINA (There Is No Alternative) consensus. These currents defined Syriza’s 40-Point Program and its Thessaloniki Program, upon which it ran for election, and which promised a “National Reconstruction Plan that will replace the [Troika] Memorandum as early as our first days in power, before and regardless of the negotiation outcome.”

But even the hopeful left militants recognized that the party leadership, under Tsipras, was increasingly prone to ignore the base, and cultivated a “creative ambiguity” about crucial issues. Tsipras’s message to the base was a rejection of illegitimate and unpayable debt, and a radical break with austerity; his message to the Eurozone ruling class was a firm commitment to staying in the Euro and playing by the rules of capitalist finance. The message to the electorate was: We can do both of those things. And if we can’t… Well, yes we can!

This was a deeply dishonest deception and self-deception. It was the worst kind of electoral evasion, promoting false hopes that so many wanted to hear, and burying the need to prepare for the inevitable fight that was coming—thus virtually guaranteeing that the fight would be lost.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Mad Cow Disease Blights Human Rights Festival



Je Suis Elsie Goldie

The Wanted 18 is a funny and serious documentary by Canadian filmmaker Paul Cowan and Palestinian multimedia artist Amer Shomali. It’s showing today at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York.

The film is about an episode of creative, constructive, and non-violent resistance in Beit Sahour, a Christian town near Bethlehem during the First Intifada.1 In 1988, activists in the occupied town wanted to boycott Israeli milk, and instead produce it on their own. They went to a “peacenik farmer” on a nearby kibbutz, and bought 18 cows, one of which was named Goldie. Then they sent a local student to the United States to learn the arcane techniques of dairy farming, and began to produce their own milk.

Which caused the Israeli occupation authorities to, yes, Have a cow.

Why? Because, for Israel, it is anathema for Palestinians to create any –  even the most elementary – institutions that would support their self-sufficiency and independence, and undermine their subjugation to Israeli authority. Think that’s an exaggeration? Here’s what the Israeli military governor said:
We had a strict directive on dealing with those who formed the neighborhood committees with all the necessary force, and all legal means at our disposal in order to control them so as to prevent the possibility of their setting up an administrative apparatus which was ultimately designed to replace our own.
And the cow project had indeed created a sense of accomplishment and energized the Beit Sahour community.  As Jalal Qumsieh, who bought the cows, said: “The moment I saw the cows at the farm, I felt as if we had started to realize our dream of freedom and independence.” The colonial authorities can’t have that. Qumsieh recalls, “word-for-word,” the Israeli military response: “These cows are dangerous for the security of the State of Israel.” 

Cut to today, where the Palestinian filmmaker, Amer Shomali, who had been to many festivals throughout the world, is prevented by Israel from getting a visa to attend the premiere of his film, because he, like the cows, is a “national security threat.”2  Gotta keep him penned in.

There are just so many security threats that must be denied to Palestinians, like 4G phone service and digging a well:
And it’s crazy, but 'til today, all of those insane things happening in Palestine under the label of security, security threat—for example, …we’re not allowed to have 3G network on our mobiles. The Israelis have 4G; we are not allowed to have 3G. … because they said having frequency for the Palestinians is security threat. So everything can be a security threat, like digging a well to water natural reserve in the Palestinian cities is security threat. Everything can be labeled as a security threat...
So Amer took a more circuitous route, going to Amman to get a visa from the American Embassy there. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get one there, either, because their “visa machine was broken” or something. Though Amer suspects “there’s a kind of coordination” between Israeli military and American diplomatic authorities regarding visas, he believes the Americans have the best intentions, and will give him a visa in time to get to Los Angeles for the next screening on June 19th. When asked what the “technical difficulties” in the Amman embassy were, he said: “I have no idea. Something with the system, system collapse. I don’t know. I have no idea. But they were smiling when they said that, so I have—I believe they have good intention.”

Amer does not think this “system collapse” is a cowardly and despicable ruse by the Americans to hide their connivance with Israel in preventing a real Palestinian from accompanying and amplifying the real story of creative resistance his film tells to American audiences.

Amer is a more trusting soul than I. We’ll see.


La Vache Qui Fait Rire

As Julia Bacha, Brazilian filmmaker and impact producer of The Wanted 18, says:
We really want communities, particularly here in the United States, to start thinking about what are the stories that we are hearing from the region and what are the stories about resistance that arrive to us. I think historically we have been told that Palestinians only used violence to achieve their aims, when in fact there’s a very long history of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance, which this film is one example of. And for Amer to be able to tell this story with some humor, we hope we’ll be able to attract more people to join.
That, the Israeli authorities and their American accomplices know, is a real threat to their ongoing enterprise of milking sympathy for Israel by demonizing and erasing Palestinians.

Did I mention it’s the Human Rights Watch Film Festival he was prevented from attending?

Cowabunga.



________________
Sources and Notes

The Wanted 18: Israel Blocks Palestinian Filmmaker from Making NYC Film Premiere About Intifada Cows | Democracy Now!

The 18 Palestinian Cows That Threatened Israel’s Security | The Nation



1 I hate to emphasize that word, but I think it’s unfortunately the case that many Americans need to be reminded that all Palestinians are not Muslims, and Muslims are not the only victims of, and fighters against, Israeli colonialsm.

2 He was actually refused permission to travel from Ramallah to Jerusalem, where he would get a visa from the American Consulate. Travelling from the West Bank is very complicated, and very strictly controlled by Israel.

Here's how Amer tells it: 
Basically, I applied for an American visa at the American Consulate in Jerusalem. And in order to get to Jerusalem, you need to cross a main checkpoint blocking the road between Ramallah, where I live, and Jerusalem, where the American Consulate is. And to get that permit, you need to apply for the Israeli army. And my permit was rejected for security reasons. And it’s not a special case, like there’s tens of thousands of Palestinians, young Palestinians, who are labeled as a security threat to the state of Israel. And it’s quite frustrating. Jerusalem is just 25 minutes away from here. From this studio, it’s like 10 minutes. But you still can’t reach there. The American Embassy in Jerusalem does not offer any facilities for Palestinians who can’t get there. And they even ask you, even if you thought of sneaking to Jerusalem illegally, without a permit, to attend your interview, they will ask you, "Where is the Israeli permit?" as if there’s a kind of coordination. Anyway, I missed my appointment—

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Saturday, May 2, 2015

The Invisible Woman: Dorothy Thompson Didn't "Quake in Fear"



  • Obama quoted her inspirational words about "the exercise of liberty" at the White House correspondents' dinner.
  • She was an early critic of the Nazis and the first reporter to be expelled by Hitler.
  • She was the second most admired woman in the US after Eleanor Roosevelt.
  • She was the model for the Katharine Hepburn character in "Woman of the Year."
  • She was one of the most respected and celebrated 20th-century American journalists, male or female.
  • She was married to well-known American author Sinclair Lewis.
  • She is a "fascinating woman who deserves to be an icon of the feminist movement." Yet today she is "unknown and unremembered... rarely, if ever, mentioned as an important female historical figure." 

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

The SYRIZA Moment:
A Skeptical Argument

Mehran Khalili/http://www.redpepper.org.uk

The victory of Syriza in Greece is an important moment.1 Indeed, I think it is going to be a historic turning point for Europe and the world, for better or for worse. Syriza defines itself explicitly as “as a party of the democratic and radical Left,” and radical it is. It’s comprised of “many different ideological currents and left cultures,” “has its roots in popular struggles for Greek independence, democracy and labour and anti-fascist movements,” and includes serious and influential socialist, marxist, and generally anti-capitalist currents.2 As Catarina Príncipe remarks: “The success of Syriza is the success of the Left that refused compromises with liberalism.”3 Thus the rise of Syriza corresponds to the collapse of Pasok [acronym for Panhellenic Socialist Movement], the Greek “Socialist”--i.e., liberal capitalist—party, which went from the largest party in Greece to 13% of the vote (2.6% among 18-24 year olds). It’s a sudden and dramatic shift of working-class voters to the left. To put this in American terms, imagine the Green Party winning the next election, with the Democrats reduced to 20% of the vote.

Everyone understands, then, that Syriza’s victory represents the Greek people’s rejection of the devastating austerity program that has been imposed on Greece and Europe by all the major capitalist-to-the-core political parties, no matter what name they go by.

In a wide-ranging interview with Jacobin (which I recommend to everyone), Stathis Kouvelakis, a member of Syriza’s Central Committee and its Left Platform, emphasizes Syriza’s radicalism thusly:
[W]hat Syriza is putting forward has very little to do with any agenda of any European social democratic party today. It is an agenda of really breaking with neoliberalism and austerity. Syriza appears as bringing a type of political culture that is linked to a social, political, and even ideological radicalism still very much inscribed in the DNA of the party….
Syriza is an anticapitalist coalition that addresses the question of power by emphasizing the dialectic of electoral alliances and success at the ballot box with struggle and mobilizations from below. That is, Syriza and [its component] Synaspismos see themselves as class-struggle parties, as formations that represent specific class interests.4
So there we have Kouvelakis’s portrait of the radical Syriza as a new type of political movement that will use a synergistic dialectic of electoral victories and popular mobilizations to break with neoliberalism and austerity.

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