The Voting Bloc: Obama and Change

Miss Kristia, of Doorknockers, blogs:

The most difficult contradiction to face is that even if Obama makes 1.5-2 things better for some people of color in America, we know that he is nothing but a flyer, better-dressed, younger face to the New World Order AKA the same ol’ American Empire that has been running shit for the past several hundred years.

Permanent Revlution in the Middle East

Farfahinne blogs on a speech she attended in London during the Marxism 2008 festival sponsored by the Socialist Workers Party:

Alex Callinicos, is a leading figure on the left internationally and a major Marxist theoretician. He is a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and has participated in every major anti-capitalist mobilization since Seattle.
his talk was very interesting, it was titled : the Permanent Revolution in the Middle East. one of the most important things he said, that the struggle of the Palestinian People is not limited to the Palestinians themselves. It’s a broader one that involves the struggle of workers against the Arab Local Regimes who are the agents of Israel and imperialism. the conflict’s way out is the permanent Revolution that breaks the bounderies of individual societies.

UnEmbeded!

Zoriah, who was an embeded photojournalist in Iraq, blogs:

A few hours after posting my story on the suicide bombing in Anbar Province, I was woken up by a young marine who took me to receive a phone call.  A high ranking Public Affairs Officer told me that they were requesting that I remove my blog post immediately.  I asked on what grounds, as media rules state that wounded and killed soldiers may be portrayed in images as long as their name tags and identifiable features are not shown.  I made very sure my images followed those guidelines, and questioned a large number of soldiers on base to see if they could find anything at all that would identify the dead.  I did this primarily out of respect for the families.

I truly labored with the decision to post these images and I still do.  But in my heart of hearts I know that people need to see and feel the reality of this horrible situation.  How can things change if all that comes out of Iraq are sanitized, white-washed images of war designed for mainstream media outlets who focus on making money, not on the quality and truth in what they report?

Intervention in Zimbabwe: Humanitarian and Otherwise

Pauly blogs a rebuke to the BBC’s Sir Ronald Sanders argument for intervention in Zimbabwe:

Take Sanders’ own Great Britain, for example. As James Fiorentino points out in Socialist Worker, British banks have been investing heavily in Zimbabwe, extending credit to members of Mugabe’s inner circle. Additionally, the British mining company Rio Tinto has been heavily involved in the diamond industry in Zimbabwe. Far from asking his government to intervene, Sanders should demand that his countrymen get the hell out.

Attacks in West Bank

Khalid Amayreh blogs:

Last week, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released video clips showing masked Jewish settlers ganging up on and severely beating elderly Palestinian peasants near the town of Yatta, southwest of Hebron. At least three Palestinians were wounded in the unprovoked assault, including a man and his wife, both in their early sixties.

The latest act of settler terror was not an isolated incident, as official Israeli spokespersons would often claim. It represents a disturbing and persistent phenomenon as young and usually heavily armed settlers continue to attack Palestinian farmers, peasants and shepherds and vandalize their property in an effort to drive them away from their lands and villages.

Students Stranded in Gaza

Haitham blogs about the aftermath of seven students getting their Fulbright scholarships revoked, then reinstated, yet still being stranded in the Gaza Strip:

For the mainstream press, this story “moved quickly” and has now concluded with a positive ending for the Gaza Fulbright seven. But hundreds of other Palestinian students remain stranded inside the Gaza Strip, and the number is expected to rise this summer. According to data from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), almost 700 Palestinian students are still waiting to leave Gaza in order to pursue studies, and scholarships, abroad. “This number will increase within the next month, after the schools announce their exam results and Gaza students want to move onto universities” says Khalil Shaheen, a senior PCHR researcher. “All of these students are stranded inside the Gaza Strip because of the Israeli siege and closure, and they are being denied their rights to pursue their education, and their futures.”

America’s “Good” War

Jo Swift blogs:

If you look more closely at what the U.S. has done in Afghanistan and plans to do in the future, it’s clear that the rhetoric about upholding democracy and making the world safer is – as in Iraq – a smokescreen to justify pursuing imperial ambitions.

Age of Empire

Bhupinder writes about Zinn’s new book and video on YouTube:

Unlike European powers, US imperialism has sought to create and maintain its hegemony via puppet regimes or via local elites (see the post below with an extract from David Harvey’s interview), leading to an impression that it is not a colonial power like, say, England or France that ruled their colonies directly and more visibly.

Shiraz Socialist on Tibet

Jim writes:

Listen, you Stalinists!

You have been systematically spreading lies about the ’Free Tibet’ movement, and offering uncritical support to the vicious, red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist ruling class in Beijing. Of course, you are no strangers to the art of grovelling to, and lying for,  a thoroughly reactionary, anti-working class regime in the name of “socialism”: you adopted that posture towards the so-called “Soviet Union” for sixty years, until the workers of Russia and Eastern Europe (literally) tore down the edifice of Stalinist totalitarianism.

No Olympics on Stolen Land

Verbena-19 reposts an article on her blog:

“By them choosing to have the Olympics here, it’s opening up our land, our sacred sites, our medicine grounds,” says Kanahus Pellkey. “We want investors to know our land is not for sale.” Pre-Olympic fever occupies the province of BC, and the economic excitement has massively accelerated gentrification and the building of highways, resorts, and condos. The construction of infrastructure for the 2010 Olympics itself is adding to extensive destruction of traditional homelands of the local Indigenous peoples.

Religious Fundamentalism and Imperialism

On the blog Red Diary, Vidrohi writes:

Imperialism succeeded in pushing back the Left through an expensive smear campaign against the Leftist forces trough out the world – a campaign that was not limited to mere words, but involved systematic suppression of Communist Parties. However, it could not eliminate the roots of the Left, which lie in the misery and poverty that Imperialism inflicts due to its inherent nature. Thus, in the absence of Left, it was all the more expected from the people to be attracted to any force that gives voice to their grievances, even if they do not provide a coherent program as an alternative to capitalism and Imperialism. This phenonmenon may not be the reason behind the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, for no one denies the working of Imperialism behind their birth, but it surely constitutes as a major cause in their continued existence (even without the enormous U.S. and Saudi funding that they received during the Cold War).

Turning Historical Materialism on Its Head

Marco blogs:

The brilliance of Autonomist Marxism, which began to emerge out of the revolutionary experiences in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, was that it turned historical materialism on its head. No longer was capital ironically seen as a progressive force; as the “motor of history”. Rather, desire came to be seen as primary, and capital came to be seen as merely reactive, and on the back foot. In other words, it is desire which becomes the engine of history, not capital or its a-social laws. So, according to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire, the neoliberal restructuring of capitalism, which we are currently experiencing, first began as a response to the revolutionary upheavals of 1968. Capitalism was forced to find new ways to contain the exploding lines-of-flight which threatened its very existence. Thus, sovereignty shifted from the national to the global level. So 1968 marked a real watershed, but I would add that the capitalist restructuring was also a response to all of the many victorious national liberation movements. This is what I argued in my honours thesis.

Nationality

No Snow Here blogs:

Earlier this week, I saw a commercial on TV. Several shots of people saying things like “I am American,” “I am Korean,” and “I am Indian.” When I heard the words, “I am Israeli,” I shouted some expletives at the screen. WTF!? And I shouted some more expletives when I learned that apparently the “right” to a nationality is Youth For Human Rights International’s 15th human right (just not for Palestinians, who have no rights, human or otherwise).  First, Israelis and Americans have no “right” to a national identity. Israelis and Americans have a national identity that exists on the backs and dead bodies of indigenous people, so I don’t even want to hear that bullsh#@. Second, most people in this world have a national identity that was entirely invented and forced upon them by colonizers. Who drew those lines on the map? Who constructed and named those countries? Uh huh.

National and Global Liberation

Jaguarito writes:

I contend that today, no liberation project can limit itself to the national terrain, and that our struggles must be global if we are to achieve true liberation. Key to this is an understanding that capitalist sovereignty no longer resides at the level of individual nation-states, but rather, at the level of the global. This new form of global sovereignty, which some understand as neo-liberalism, is being administered by such institutions as the World Bank and World Trade Organisation. Multinational institutions such as these, along with nation-states, and multinational corporations all comprise this new neo-liberal world order. If we limit our struggles to the national terrain, we are, in effect, leaving the wider problem of the neo-liberal world order unattended to.

Transracial Adoptees, Permanent Homes, Forever Families, and Their Home They Are Forced to Leave

Sume blogs about the intracacies of what is really home and family while being a transracial adoptee:

In the case of domestic adoption, can more be done to keep families in tact? What roles do racism and class play in creating and perpetuating environments that feed children into system? Have we as a society become too reliant upon adoption as a solution because of lack of a better one?

And let us not forget that adoption is an industry regardless of it’s mutually beneficial appearance. As an industry, adoption has created as many or more problems as it has presumably solved. On one hand, it gives children to parents who want them, but on another, it feeds and sustains a voracious baby market. As potential adoptive parents seek cheaper, quicker ways to acquire children those only too willing to provide that without much thought to ethics will appear. Adoption as an industry will do what’s necessary to stay alive.

Jose Maria Sison, Founder of Communist Party of the Philippines, Arrested

Carol P. Araullo, chair Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Patriotic Alliance, or BAYAN) comments on the recent arrest of Jose Maria Sison in the Netherlands and the Philippine’s government corrupt and deadly practices:

Simply put, the “peace” Mrs. Arroyo refers to would be the outcome of the projected defeat of the communist-led revolutionary movement through yet another “all-out war” effort with a supposedly much better trained and equipped military (courtesy of hiked US military aid and bigger budgetary allocations); resort to a dirty war that includes rampant violations of human rights as a means to terrorize the rebel movement’s mass base in the countryside and legal, unarmed activists in the urban areas; and forcing the NDFP panel to capitulate in the peace negotiations by agreeing to a purported “final peace agreement” that oversees laying down of arms by the NPA in exchange for illusory socio-economic and political reforms and some form of amnesty.

San Francisco Popular Struggles Mural

Martin Travers blogs about a mural he is designing in San Francisco and is asking for support:

I am a firm believer in the right to self determination of all peoples all over this wonderful world we all inhabit. To stand by the right to that self determination by Palestinian people or any other people is by no means supporting terrorism or senseless violence or racism, to say that is in itself an injustice. My painting which was recreated on the mural in question is about that right, breaking through the wall that separates the Israelis from Palestinians and the Palestinians from each other is symbolic of the breaking of the walls that fence in the marginalised and the “unwanted” people everywhere because to see them is to be reminded of where and how Europe, north America and Israel got its wealth.

Life in Gaza

Mona Elfarra, back from a tour in the U.S., writes:

Now it is my personal story, like the daily stories of 1.4 million people in GAZA under siege and occupation, poverty, lack of resources, killing, shooting, violence etc….

I cannot cross the borders, I cannot cross the Rafah crossing. I badly need to be next to my mother. I badly need to be there with her to help her, to do whatever I can for her. To say good bye mum.

Slavery, Capitalism, and the Sugar Plantations

Louis Proyect blogs:

The anthology “Working Slavery, Pricing Freedom,” edited by Verene A. Shepherd, includes an article by Veront Satchell titled “Innovations in sugar-cane mill technology in Jamaica.” The book evolved out of a series of seminars at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. Shepherd and Satchell are Afro-Caribbeans who are obviously much influenced by the work of fellow Afro-Caribbean Marxists CLR James and Eric Williams. This trend starts off on a completely different premise than Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood. Rather than seeing the forced labor and trade monopolies of the mercantile period as “pre-capitalist”, they see it as a necessary first stage in the development of capitalism, a period that Karl Marx referred to as “primitive accumulation.”

Canadian Independence Day

Thinking Girl blogs about Canada Day:

However, I can’t help but feel this year that, because I love my country, I should talk about what I consider to be the greatest and most serious blight on the face of our nation, and that is the ongoing brutal colonization of Canada’s indigenous peoples.  It’s something that I feel all non-indigenous Canadians should be extremely embarrassed by, and should be actively trying to correct. We have all benefitted from the brutalization, ghettoization, displacement, colonization, and genocide of First Nations people here in Canada, and we should be ashamed.

Porn and Liquor Made Them Do It!

Ridwan blogs about Prime Minister Howard’s latest attempt to “save” the Australian Aboriginal population:

Luckily, Australia is led by a ‘great-white’ leader who has a plan to save the Aboriginal from extinction. Prime Minister John Howard, the Grand-Wizard of Australian racism, wants Aboriginals to live beyond their pathological destructiveness.

According to the BBC, the benevolent Howard has decided to ban alcohol and pornography in almost all of the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal communities. And, to show that he is serious, he is going to use the police and the military to protect the Aboriginals from themselves.

What a great plan hey? Ignore all the destruction of racist colonialism and instead blame the Aboriginals for not living up to the wonders of white civilization. And, typically forget the fact that Australia stands on the backs of those who once walked everywhere without the paternalism that now reduces them to no more than children.

Hollywood, Iraq, and Darfur

Quuer Arab writes:

Vietnam had Jane Fonda… countless rock stars and actors spoke up… not this time. And I can’t help wonder wether it’s because Arab lives are the victim here. Arabs after all are supposed to be villains in the Hollywood mindset. Barbarians… Savages… Darfur was “cool” because Arabs were the bad guys… and Africans are the victims.. very chic.. nice contrast pics for Angelina and Oprah… not Iraq. No John Lennon benefit CD for the victims of US Occupation in Iraq…

Iraqi Union Comes Out Victorious

Robbin posts:

Which was a frustrating microtrend in politics once, frustrating like heat rashes and shoes with heels. However, good news everyone! The federation of oil worker unions in Iraq have won their battle with the puppet government. Despite having their leaders arrested on the charge of ‘sabotaging the economy’, despite being threatened with the army, the oil workers, it seems, have won.

Fighting for Fightings Sake

Will, over at KABOBfest, posts:

NOW Magazine in Toronto reports that Palestine solidarity activists from the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid have launched a boycott campaign against the chain of Indigo and Chapters bookstores, Canada’s largest bookseller. Its owners run a scholarship fund for Israeli soldiers without family in Israel — in other words, Zionuts who travel to Israel just to fight for the Zionut vision of an exclusive ethno-religious state that suppresses and dispossesses the native Palestinians. Which is, in a word, racist.

India, Africa, and Their Colonial Past

Diepiriye writes about his trip to Delhi and about the relationship between Indians and Blacks in his Myspace blog:

Just like in most of the colonial world, the whims and desires of the colonial masters determined which Indians would encounter which Africans- and this has unfortunately led to a great deal of conflict and mistrust amidst a people who ultimately must engage one another, even if only for commerce. Nonetheless, there is a lot of mutuality shown by the way that both African and Indian Diasporas lend and borrow cultural traditions, or in many cases, develop whole new cultural traditions.

Via Krish.