“Getting rid of hope and faith”: Abe Osheroff on the struggle for a better world
February 28th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
by Robert Jensen
Abe Osheroff
After a recent talk about the struggle for social justice and the threats to the ecosystem, a student lingered, waiting to talk to me alone, as if he had something to confess.
“I feel so overwhelmed,” he finally said, wondering aloud if political organizing could really make a difference. The young man said he often felt depressed, not about the circumstances of his own life but about the possibilities for change. Finally, he looked at me and asked, “Once you see what’s happening — I mean really see it — how are you supposed to act like everything is going to be OK?”
I hear such concerns often, from young and older people alike. Perhaps the questions are rationalizations for political inaction for some people, attempts to persuade themselves that there’s no reason to join left/progressive movements. But most of the people I meet who struggle with this question are activists, engaged in all kinds of worthy projects. They aren’t looking for a reason to drop out but are trying to face honestly the state of the world. They want to stay engaged but recognize the depth of multiple crises — economic, political, cultural, and ecological.
Some organizers respond to such concerns with upbeat assurances that if we just get more people on board and work a little bit harder, the problems will be solved — if not tomorrow, certainly within some reasonable period of time. I used to say things like that, but now I think it’s more honest, and potentially effective, to acknowledge how massive the obstacles that need to be overcome really are. We must not only recognize that the world’s resources distributed in a profoundly unjust way and the systems in which we live are fundamentally unsustainable ecologically, but also understand there’s no guarantee that this state of affairs can be reversed or even substantially slowed down. There are, in fact, lots of reasons to suspect that many of our fundamental problems have no solutions, at least no solutions in any framework we currently understand.
Juan Cole and the Diminished Pachyderm
February 28th, 2010 § 3 Comments
by Stephen Sniegoski
Juan Cole, the respected scholar and university professor, performs an extremely valuable and courageous service in opposing US war policy in the Middle East. He dares to do what few of his peers are willing to do: present his views (most frequently on his weblog, “Informed Comment”) on current Middle East issues which necessarily touch the taboo topic of Israel and contradict the position of the Israel lobby. As a Middle East specialist, Cole is capable of writing very informative pieces on that region, which go into far greater depth than I have the expertise to do. It is certainly not in his view of the Middle East per se where I find flaws in his interpretation, but in his assessment of the United States policy, especially the role of the neoconservatives and the broader Israel Lobby, an area in which I have done considerable research (e.g. my book, ”The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel”), and where my Ph.D. background in US diplomatic history would be of some relevance.
Although mentioning the role of some American Jews in regard to shaping American Middle East policy, Cole still tends to downplay it. The flawed elements in his thinking on this crucial area are especially encapsulated in his recent article, “The Decline of the Israeli Right and the Increasing Desperation of the ‘Anti-Semitism’ Charge.” An erroneous assessment of the problem militates against the achievement of a just resolution. Professor Cole’s views on the U.S. Middle East policy, if taken at face value, illustrate these problems. Cole is obviously a sincere opponent of US/Israel wars in the Middle East and of the American-supported Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, but since he is operating from within the constraints of present discourse — which assumes Jewish powerlessness and universalistic Jewish beneficence — his analysis, despite his expertise and honesty on the Middle East developments, has significant flaws.
Behind the Scenes of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics
February 27th, 2010 § 2 Comments
As the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver come to a close, and people prepare for the greatest celebrations the city has seen yet, anti-homelessness activists continue to work to bring attention to their struggle which has been significantly intensified by the event. In addition to being considered among the top most beautiful cities in the world, Vancouver is also home to the poorest postal code in Canada. Activists who campaigned ardently against the 2010 Olympic bid foresaw the problems that would come with the event: people displacement, the decrease of funding to social assistance programs, a heightened private security presence and the introduction of anti-dissident laws. These are just a few reasons why they protested against the government’s intention to pour increased taxpayer dollars into a commercial event, rather than into programs and initiatives designed to care for local men, women and children who continue to go without proper housing, and in some cases, live in third world conditions.
According to activist and writer Harsha Walia:
Much like the failed financial commitments, the IOC and Vanoc have failed on their token social promises, which included protecting rental housing and ensuring that people are not made homeless. The reality is that Vancouver has experienced a 300-percent increase in homelessness since the Olympic bid, while approximately 1,600 new market housing and condominium units are being built around the Downtown Eastside.
Honduran newspaper discovers murder after 3 days
February 27th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
A headline in this morning’s edition of the Honduran daily La Tribuna, fervent defender of last year’s coup d’état against President Mel Zelaya, announces the search for the “gang member” that killed the daughter of veteran union organizer and anti-coup resistance figure Pedro Brizuela. The murder of Claudia Larisa Brizuela Rodríguez, which took place on February 24 in the Céleo González neighborhood in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, had not prompted any prior coverage in the mainstream Honduran press despite the papers’ usual predilection for homicide photographs.
Honduran journalistic traditions had also been disrupted in July 2009 by the murder during a demonstration at the Tegucigalpa airport of anti-coup teenager Isis Obed Murillo, whose picture appeared in the daily La Prensa only after his blood had been removed via the Photoshop program. La Tribuna refrains from erasing the pool of blood surrounding Brizuela Rodríguez’ body on her living room floor, or from explaining how it is that members of the National Criminal Investigation Directorate (DNIC) are “hot on the trail” of the alleged gang member when the only identifying information provided by witnesses is that he is short.
Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater in Afghanistan
February 26th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Jeremy Scahill, award-winning investigative journalist and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show on Wednesday after attending a hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee on their investigation of some of Blackwater’s (Xe’s) activities in Afghanistan.
The Assault on Illhem
February 26th, 2010 § 26 Comments
by Tariq Ali
Forgive an outsider and staunch atheist like myself who, on reading the recent French press comments relating to Ilhem Moussaid the hijab-wearing NPA candidate in Avignon, gets the impression that something is rotten in French political culture. Let’s take the debate at face-value. A young Muslim woman joins the NPA [New Anti-Capitalist Party]. She obviously agrees with its program that defends abortion, contraception, etc, i.e. a woman’s right to choose. She is then told that despite this she does not have the right to choose what she wears on her head. It’s astonishing. There is no Koranic injunction involved. The book says: “Draw their (women’s) veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty”, which can be interpreted in several ways but is disregarded most blatantly by hijab-wearing Egyptian women I see in Cairo and Karachi wearing tight jeans and T-shirts that contradicted the spirit of the Koranic message.
Patriarchal traditions, cultural habits and identity are what is at stake here and they vary from generation to generation. Pushing people back into a ghetto never helps.
Dissident Jews: Unwanted in Germany?
February 25th, 2010 § 2 Comments
by Raymond Deane
Norman Finkelstein
A European country that scapegoats a Semitic people, persecutes defenders of human rights by stripping them of employment, and denies freedom of speech to Jews: surely a description of Germany during the Third Reich?
Yes, but unfortunately also a description of Germany at the outset of the 21st century.
In the wake of German Chancellor Merkel’s craven speech to the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) two years ago, I wrote: “a penance is being paid for Germany’s past crimes… by the Palestinians to whose plight Merkel is so indifferent…. By scapegoating the victims of its former victims, Germany is compounding its past crimes.” (Scapegoat upon Scapegoat, Electronic Intifada, 20 March 2008).
Just one year later I described the case of Hermann Dierkes, forced to resign his position as representative of Die Linke (The Left Party) on Duisburg city council after tentatively advocating a boycott of Israeli goods. I commented: “It appears that freedom of speech, supposedly one of the proudest acquisitions of post-Fascist Germany, is readily suppressed when exercised to advocate positive action against the racist, politicidal institutions and actions of the Zionist state.” (A public stoning in Germany, Electronic Intifada, March 2009).
Equatorial Guinea: The good, the bad and the ugly
February 25th, 2010 § 1 Comment
by Agustín Velloso
The Obamas and the Mbasogos
The Bad
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea’s recalcitrant leader, is a very wealthy man. He has amassed such a fortune that he could only get rid of his bank notes by burning them.
He cannot use his money to buy power – he has, after all, enjoyed that in its absolute form for the last thirty years. His eldest son wants for nothing, and his family is wallowing in plenty. Global Witness published a report entitled ‘The Secret Life of a Shopaholic: How an African dictator’s playboy son went on a multi-million dollar shopping spree in the US’.
Neither does Teodoro Obiang need money to earn a place among the world’s most powerful. He is already a welcome member of this cabal, which often treats him with affection. Welcoming him in Washington back in 2006, erstwhile secretary of state Condoleeza Rice said, ‘You are a good friend, and we welcome you’.
He has been welcomed to Beijing six times by Hu Jintao, who said to him, ‘bilateral relations between our two countries have developed through goodwill’.
The Spinning Wheel
February 24th, 2010 § 3 Comments
This review was written for the Palestine Chronicle.
This is not what you expect: an accomplished and self-reflective work of history enclosed within a layer of war reportage – in comic book form. But Joe Sacco’s “Footnotes in Gaza” is just that, an unusually effective treatment of Palestinian history which may appeal to people who would never read a ‘normal book’ on the subject. The writing, however, is at least as good as you’d expect from a high quality prose work. Here, for instance, is page nine: “History can do without its footnotes. Footnotes are inessential at best; at worst they trip up the greater narrative. From time to time, as bolder, more streamlined editions appear, history shakes off some footnotes altogether. And you can see why… History has its hands full. It can’t help producing pages by the hour, by the minute. History chokes on fresh episodes and swallows whatever old ones it can.”
The pictures – aerial shots, action shots, urban still lifes, crafted but realist character studies – work as hard as the words. Sacco depicts fear, humiliation and anger very well indeed, and often achieves far more with one picture than he could in an entire newspaper column. The cranes at work on a Jerusalem skyline are worth a paragraph or two of background. So is the fact that almost every Palestinian male has a cigarette in his mouth. And when dealing with historical process – the changing shape of the camps, for example – the pictures are more than useful.
