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"THE COLOR OF CORPORATE CORRECTIONS"

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It is prison Friday here at Scission.  I'm late, I know, I have been involved in an endless "argument on Facebook." Forgive me, such a waste of time.  I just don't have good self control.

Anyway, we all know about the Prison Industrial Complex and Mass Incarceration.  We all know about the racism and white supremacy behind both.  We all know about the private prison industry.  Here, below, is some research done on the incredible overrepresentation of People of Color in the private prison Industry.  You think the record of state and Federal prison systems are bad, get a load of this...from Prison Legal News (hardly a left wing, radical operation mind you).  It's a dry, academic read, but still worth a look see at one more way in which white supremacy and white skin privilege operate in this country known as the USA.

The Color of Corporate Corrections: Overrepresentation of People of Color in the Private Prison Industry

by Christopher Petrella and Josh Begley

by Christopher Petrella and Josh Begley


While data generated by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and state departments of corrections (DOCs) have long demonstrated persistent racial disparities in rates of incarceration, no comparative study until now has considered the racial composition of select state-contracted, privately-operated prisons around the nation. We selected California, Texas and Arizona for our examination because they warehouse some of the largest numbers of prisoners in private, for-profit prisons. Taken together, these three states account for over 30 percent of all prisoners held in privatized correctional facilities in the United States. 


Our research indicates that although people of color are already overrepresented in public prisons relative to their share of state and national populations, they are further overrepresented by approximately 12 percent in state-contracted correctional facilities operated by for-profit private prison firms. Not only is the overrepresentation of people of color in private prisons a matter of public concern, it also begs some previously unconsidered questions.


Our conclusions are based on the latest U.S. Census demographic figures available through the Prison Policy Initiative’s “Correctional Facility Locator 2010,” cross-referenced with prisoner population directories available on state DOC websites and statistical information procured through public records requests filed with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).


In order to avoid artificially inflating the over-incarceration of people of color in for-profit prisons we intentionally excluded figures from federal detention centers controlled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Marshals Service and detention facilities managed at the local level. For similar reasons, we strategically excluded data from transfer centers, work release centers, community corrections facilities, special treatment centers, reception centers and any facility with a population of under 500 persons.


The data revealed that 89 percent of California prisoners housed in private prisons are people of color, compared with 75 percent in public correctional facilities. In Texas, 71 percent of the prisoners held in privately-operated facilities are people of color, compared with 66 percent in public prisons. And in Arizona, 65 percent of the private prison population is composed of people of color, in comparison with 60 percent in public prisons.


Our findings help to underscore the notion that the private prison industry has represented an experiment in racialized profiteering from its very inception. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)—the nation’s oldest and largest for-profit prison company, which now controls 43 percent of the corrections market—received its first contract in 1983 from the now defunct Immigration and Naturalization Services, the agency primarily responsible for detaining immigrants, who are most often classified as people of color. Sadly, this trend persists today. 


According to stipulations set forth in a 2007 CDCR memorandum, the state of California prioritizes previously-deported prisoners and/or prisoners with active or potential ICE holds for transfers to out-of-state private prisons—a policy that disproportionately impacts people of color. This policy alone accounts significantly for the overrepresentation of people of color in out-of-state facilities operated by for-profit prison companies that contract with California.


The overrepresentation of people of color in private prisons indicates they are disproportionately siphoned away from public prisons—precisely the types of facilities that provide the greatest access to educational and rehabilitative programs and services. Such an overrepresentation suggests that the incarceration of people of color, compared to “non-Hispanic whites,” functions, in part, as a source of profit extraction. Whereas the primary objective of public corrections agencies is the promotion of public safety through rehabilitation (at least in theory), private prison firms are first and foremost accountable to their shareholders. Companies like CCA are legally obligated to generate profit and increase shareholder value—an imperative that inherently compromises any significant commitment to rehabilitation, re-entry or recidivism reduction.


Although research pertaining to the racial composition of private prison populations is still emerging, we hope that our findings will generate substantive discussion relative to the relationship between race and prison privatization in the United States. Above all, we are optimistic that this study, limited as it is, will inspire policies aimed at eliminating the for-profit prison industry—an industry that disproportionately commoditizes people of color. 


Christopher Petrella is a doctoral candidate in African American Studies at U.C. Berkeley. His dissertation is entitled “Race, Markets, and the Rise of the Private Prison State.” Josh Begley is a graduate student in Interactive Telecommunications at NYU. 



STATE OR REVOLUTION

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It is theoretical weekends here at Scission and today we take a look at the State, at the Bolsheviks, at Lenin, at Marx, at whatever happened to simply SMASHING THE STATE.  Right off the bat, I will tell you there are some things in the post below which I disagree with.  For example, I think Marx is let off the hook to easily.  Marx's views of the state were confused, contradictory and often just a plain mess.  However, thought there are many things I consider incorrect in the post, there are some things that I like, and anyway, as you all know this space, this theoretical weekends space isn't reserved only for things with which I agree, but is reserved for things with which I find interesting and useful and worthwhile.

I would suggest, if you really want to dig into the whole question of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all the rest of those folks, and  how they viewed the State in more  depth that you return to a work by an old comrade of mine, Tom Clark,  since passed, (and with whom I eventually split with for a number of reason), and a work of his which was first published here entitled State and Counter Revolution.  The easiest way to view it is by going to   http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1a/tom-clark/index.htm

The post below is from The Commune.


The State or Revolution



5082013The State and Revolution, (Lenin’s pamphlet – a polemic against Kautsky, Plekhanov and the Anarchists) was an apt title in the light of his view of the relationship between a revolution and the nature of a post-capitalist society. He and the Bolsheviks undoubtedly believed in Revolution, at least up to the overthrow of the Duma, the rejection of Constituent Assembly idea and achieving ‘all power to the soviets’. However, they also firmly believed in the need for a strong State.  Roy Ratcliffe puts his view on the state or Revolution.

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The workers, soldiers and peasants, from 1905 to 1917, progressively initiated uprisings and revolutionary episodes and then, riding an exceptionally high wave of activity and protest in October 1917, the Bolsheviks convinced workers, soldiers and peasants that for their own good, it was necessary to create a strong state apparatus. They created a state institution which they protected and strengthened by employing special bodies of (predominantly) armed men. As the effective head of that state, Lenin in 1919 declared the following;
“This new state organisation is being born in travail …” (Lenin. Complete Works. Volume 29. page 375.)
Later he added;
“The dictatorship of the proletariat does not fear any resort to compulsion and to the most severe, decisive and ruthless forms of coercion by the state.” (Lenin. Complete Works. Volume 31. page 497.)
Later still:
“We took over the old machinery of the state, and that was our misfortune. Very often this machinery operates against us…here at the top, where we exercise political power, the machine functions somehow…Down below, however, there are hundreds of thousands of old officials whom we got from the Tsar and from bourgeois society, and who partly deliberately and partly unwittingly, work against us.” (Lenin. Complete Works. Volume 33 page 428/429.)
This institution of ‘ruthless coercion’ (Lenin’s own words) was progressively directed against workers and peasants and anyone else who disagreed with the Bolsheviks sectarian project. However, well before the workers, peasants and soldiers could be convinced of the need for such a separate institution over and above them, the ranks of the Bolsheviks had first to be convinced – for it was by no means the opinion of all anti-capitalists at the time.
As the dominant political figure within the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party, it was down to Lenin to provide sufficient evidence for his belief in the necessity of a strong post-capitalist state. This task was crucially important in order to persuade the party and its supporters that those who opposed a post-capitalist state were entirely wrong. The evidence was carefully gathered, collated and then later presented to the party members in the above-noted pamphlet ‘State and Revolution’. Lenin, in writing this document, selected and assembled a comprehensive series of extracts from Marx and Engels, to support and back up his firm belief in the ‘instrumentality’ of a state after a workers’ revolution.
Lenin was able to interpret and mediate the thoughts and writings of these two revolutionary-humanists in order to confirm conclusions he already held. It is my contention that these were conclusions that – had they been alive – both Marx and Engels, would have disassociated themselves from. I have also no doubt they would have also been vigorously scathing about the reality of the post-capitalist social and economic forms promoted and defended by all Bolsheviks, and subsequent communists. For Marx it was; ‘State or Revolution; whilst for Lenin it really was ‘State and Revolution’ The material the latter used and how he used it in that pamphlet to justify his position continues below.
The material Lenin used.
In his polemic on the state against the Anarchists and others Lenin, correctly claims that Marx’s position on the state had been ‘distorted’. Indeed it has! And not just by Anarchists and opportunists – but also by his so-called followers.. Nor is it always done deliberately. Marx has often been simply misunderstood or insufficiently studied – even by those calling themselves ‘Marxists’. Despite this observation of distortion, Lenin uses Engels, more than Marx and indeed it is with Engels that he starts this pamphlet. Engels in the work Lenin first chose, observed that in the development of human societies from their earliest forms several distinguishing features emerge. One in particular is the establishment of a separate public power and relates to the question of a state;
“The second distinguishing feature is the establishment of a public power, which no longer directly coincides with the population organising itself as an armed force.” (Engels. ‘Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’ 1891)
Using this particular work by Engels Lenin correctly sketched out the emergence of a ‘public power’ (a state) as an organ of class oppression finally perfected under the capitalist mode of production. Engels, in line with Marx, argued that in a classless post-capitalist form of production, the state will be put into a ‘museum of antiquities’. But Lenin suggested something different. He proposed that the state will “turn the means of production into state property”.
This indeed, was an earlier position of Marx but that was before the Paris Commune. Later, in a preface to the ‘Communist Manifesto’ Marx of course famously declared his earlier view of the state needed substantial modification after studying the events of 1871. It needed abolishing! Lenin does in fact mention this! However, in the next offering, using Anti-Duhring – a later work by Engels – there is a clear suggestion by Lenin of an institution called the state which workers will use before it eventually withers away. Lenin goes on to add;
“..Engels speaks here of the proletarian revolution ‘abolishing’ the bourgeois state, while the words about the state withering away refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist revolution.” (Lenin. State and Revolution’ Chapter 1. part 4.)
Here we witness Lenin building upon an outdated formulation by Engels and introducing into the revolutionary process a two-stage and a two state progression. 1. Abolish the bourgeois state and 2. create a proletarian state. Lenin in Chapter 2, then turns to Marx and quotes from ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’ where Marx argues that in the post-capital ‘associations’ of workers there will be no more ‘political power groups’. In this view the overthrow of the bourgeoisie will lay the foundation for the sway of the working classes which Marx at that moment in time (1847- 48 ) termed the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. Lenin uses this early formulation by Marx to conclude that Marx proposed the existence of a state which was; ..”so constituted that it begins to wither away immediately”. Lenin in what amounts to sophistry then added;
“The proletariat needs state power, a centralised organisation of force, an organisation of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population – the peasants, the petty-bourgeoisie and semi-proletarians – in the work of organising a socialist economy. By educating the workers party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organising the new system.” (Lenin. State and Revolution Chapter 2, section 1.)
This is the classic Leninist and Bolshevik position on the state. It is a view in which a state controlled by a ‘vanguard’ carries through the post-capitalist revolutionary measures, pushing or dragging everyone else along with it. The wage-workers remain wage workers, while the state re-forges society. This extract also includes the perceived leading role of the ‘party’ in any post-capitalist reconstruction. Later Lenin recognises that Marx, in 1852, had not specifically raised the question of what was to take the place of the destroyed bourgeois state machine.
He then noted that Marx and Engels concluded that their earlier formulations had become outdated and workers could no longer use the bourgeois state for their own purposes but need to ‘smash it’. So far so good. The bourgeois state is to be destroyed, (that is the political aspect of the revolution) but the crucial question remains. What is to be put in its place to fully carry out the economic and social revolution in the mode of production? Another form of state power?
To be or not to be! (that was the question.)
This issue has long disturbed and divided many anti-capitalists. The later Engels along with Lenin, Trotsky and the majority of Bolsheviks proposed a strong state which would – for an undetermined period of time – seize control of the major economic assets, guide the economy and lead or coerce the population into the correct paths as they saw them. Eventually this state, they suggested, would wither away. Those who opposed such a position (anarchists, Marx and other anti-capitalists) argued that taking over or setting up another state – no matter what its stated intentions – would have a momentum of its own becoming a separate force standing above society. This debate, often heated, obviously predates Lenin and the Bolsheviks and was seriously taken up by Marx, who called for the state’s abolition.
Yet Lenin – after the October revolution – only considered it a misfortune that; “We took over the old machinery of the state….”. In other words according to Lenin, under the Bolsheviks, the state with its bourgeois and aristocratic elements, had not even been smashed! Indeed, it had been taken over, along with many of the existing officials and bureaucrats – ”who work against us”. In other words, part 1 of Lenin’s two-state theoretical solution had not even been implemented! As we shall see, this reveals a serious discrepancy between Lenin and Marx. In section 2 of this sustained polemic, Lenin reproduces a few extracts from Marx’s ‘The Civil War in France’ and concludes from them that;
“The Commune therefore, appears to have replaced and smashed the state only by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this ‘only’ signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type. (Lenin. ibid.)
The verbal hinge ‘but’ in this further sentence is an interesting sophist-style insertion by Lenin of Engels’ and his own position. It adds to the first sentence the need for a special post-capitalist ‘institution’ and confirms his earlier (asserted) two-stage process. After the dismantling of the bourgeois state, the creation of another organ of coercion and suppression. A state which as Lenin later stated would not fear to enact “ruthless forms of coercion”.
It would be an institution that would become an employer of workers and would have the power to reduce “the remuneration of all servants of the state to the level of workman’s wages”. Clearly, remuneration, as with other important economic and social issues, would not be decided by the workers, but by the state officials. Here we have a the unequivocal proposal for a replacement ‘state’ institution which enacts ‘measures’, employs workers at average wages and has officials who are supposed to be subject to recall. Lenin continues;
These measures concern the reorganisation of the state, the purely political reorganisation of society.” (Lenin. State and Revolution. Chapter Section 2.)
So again according to Lenin, the state is to be reorganised not smashed and involve the ‘whole population without exception’ in discharging its functions. Supervising these functions will be wage-working officials on average wages. This is an extremely confused and confusing proposal and is undoubtedly idealistic if not oxymoronic. A state, by definition is a separate public power from that of the armed people. Also it is not what transpired at any stage in the Soviet Union under the Bolsheviks. Lenin at that point in State and Revolution (ie the call for ‘the purely political reorganisation of society.’) was also ignoring Marx on the limitations of politics and the need to cast off politics in all its forms. Marx for example notes that;
“Where political parties exist, each party sees the root of every evil in the fact that instead of itself an opposing party stands at the helm of the state. Even radical and revolutionary politicians seek the root of evil , not in the essential nature of the state, but in a definite state form, which they wish to replace by a different state form……The political mind is a political mind precisely because it thinks within the framework of politics. The keener and more lively it is, the more incapable it is of understanding social ills. (Marx in Marx/Engels. Collected Works. Volume 3. Page 197/199. Emphasis added RR)
This and other cogent observations of politics by Marx are well worth considering for those who think that politics are ‘the’ solution to the problems facing the working and oppressed classes. There can be no doubt that Lenin had a keen and lively political mind. He certainly demonstrates its use in this polemic with those who disagreed with him on this and other issues. Using selected excerpts from Marx and mainly from Engels, Lenin, in State and Revolution, presents an apparently convincing theoretical argument for what was to transpire in the Soviet Union, after the October Revolution. Convincing, only if one fails to understand Marx’s general revolutionary-humanist position on the self-activity of the working class. Before considering Marx further a few additional extracts from Lenin are worth noting to indicate his consistency on this question.
“It follows that under communism there remains for a time, not only bourgeois law, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie.” (Lenin. S & R. Chapter 5.)
And:
“The point is whether the old state machine (bound by thousands of threads to the bourgeois and permeated through and through with routine and inertia) shall remain, or be destroyed and replaced by a new one. Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this machine and commanding, governing with the aid of a new machine.” (Lenin. S & R. Chapter 6.)
It is clear from these somewhat self-contradicting extracts, that Lenin adopted as a firm principle the creation of a post-capitalist machine, institution or state which would be the engine driving the revolution forward. At this stage in his pamphlet he also argued that this state would be administered by everyone and that the whole working people would be armed. Yet it is well documented that what transpired in reality was a ‘special’ state and a corresponding bureaucracy along with a special armed force (the Red Army) and a secret police (the Cheka) along with numerous planning and implementing Orgburea’s. We also know the whole project went disastrously wrong from very early on, despite or perhaps because of (among other things) the states “most severe, decisive and ruthless forms of coercion“ against reluctant workers and peasants. So much coercion in fact that the Soviet Union has long ceased to be an example that working people would seriously want to follow.
Sophistry – the use of plausible but unsound arguments.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks got it so wrong for so long because Lenin became a ‘revered’ ‘leader’ and the ‘State and Revolution’ became something of a sacred gospel that few bothered or dared to criticise – a gospel to be learned, not questioned. This was a reverence and deference which lasted well into the 20th century. The theoretical and practical mistake made by Lenin and his supporters was also compounded and gained inertia because the distinction between the formulation ’dictatorship of the proletariat’ made by Marx at one point and the ‘content’ of what he personally understood this to represent did not receive sufficient consideration.
The same problem exists between distinguishing the form and content of words such as ‘association’ and self-governance also used by Marx. Without further definition, ‘Governance’ can be separated from self – and it was under Bolshevism! The ‘soviets’ were indeed at first a form of workers and soldiers ‘association‘, but were then transformed into an organs of the state. The term ‘dictatorship’ by the whole proletariat can and was disconnected from the proletariat and became a dictatorship over the proletariat. These facts illustrate that the ‘content’ of terms is far more important than the particular descriptive labels used. For example, consider the following content of Marx‘s position on the term ‘emancipation of the working class‘.
“The emancipation of the working classes must be achieved by the working classes themselves. We cannot therefore co-operate with people who openly state the that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic persons from the upper and lower middle classes.” (Marx/Engels Selected Correspondence. Progress. Page 307
Yet it is clear from reading Lenin’s output, that as a middle-class trained lawyer, he did not think working people in general could be trusted with their own emancipation. See for example Lenin Complete Works, Volume 26 page 414 for a vivid example; (other examples to follow.) And one final extract from Lenin’s ‘State and Revolution:
“We are not utopians, we do not “dream” of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination…..No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and foremen and accountants. The subordination, however, must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and working, people ie to the proletariat.” (Lenin. S & R. Chapter 3, section 3.)
This polemical assertion by Lenin amounts to a typical sectarian type mocking of an alternative position. It is a type of fictional distortion of a potential opponents character – this time as ‘utopians’ and ‘dreamers’ – which is meant to undermine – in ‘loyal’ followers – an alternative theoretical and practical position. On top of that, Lenin also denigrates workers and peasants as ‘needing’ subordination and control. Marx considered workers and peasants even in the 19th century as capable of self-activity and self-organisation, whilst Lenin in the 20th thought they were not and should slavishly expect and accept subordination, coercion and control.
So in publishing ‘State and Revolution’, Lenin had set up his less critical followers to accept a stereotyped inadequacy of the working class and a stereotyped utopianism of opponents of a state. He then lulled them further into compliance with his view by adding that subordination should be to another abstract formulation – the proletariat. However, we know that by the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin meant the armed Communist Party State and its most loyal supporters. We know this because he unmistakably stated it when openly accused of operating a one party dictatorship.
“Yes it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we will not shift form that position.” (Lenin. Collected Works Volume 29 page 535)
And he just as plainly stated the reasons;
“…the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class……it can only be exercised by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels.” (Lenin. Collected Works. Volume 32, page 21.)
Vanguards and cogwheels – driving the revolution forward – or even backward as it turned out! That just about sums up Leninism and Bolshevism. By selecting certain statements and interpreting any literary ambiguity in Marx and mainly Engels in a particular way – in other words by sophistry – he was able in ‘State and Revolution’ to lay the ground for what he and his supporters were able to put into practice once they had assumed positions of power. Yet if we go back over the thoughts of Marx on this question it is possible to arrive at a different interpretation both of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the question of a special elite institution of coercion after the bourgeois state and its power has been physically closed down.
The differences between Marx and Lenin.
Marx was not a politician. Lenin was. Marx was scathing of all politics. Lenin lived for politics. That is one difference. However, this was not necessarily the deciding factor between them on this question. In ‘State and Revolution’ Lenin claimed that like him, Marx was a centralist – but he was definitely not. To correct this ‘centrist’ distortion a special footnote was made to the ‘Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League’ explaining that a reference to centralism was a mistake owing to ‘liberal falsifiers of history’. In fact in re-examining the organisational question both Marx and Engels considered ‘provisional and local self-government’ had become ‘the most powerful lever of the revolution.“ Lenin fails to recognise or even mention this in State and Revolution. Yet this theoretical and practical difference over ‘politics’ and ‘centralism’ is not the only one relevant to this crucial issue. The discrepancy on the question of the state goes much deeper.
Marx made his own direct study of actual working people in numerous revolutionary and non-revolutionary situations to arrive at his own independent conclusions on their ability, the nature of the commune and the dangers of substituting a state for the newly acquired collective power. Lenin on the other hand studied Marx and Engels to settle the question of the state. For this reason, Lenin’s conclusions on the state in ‘State and Revolution’ were dependent upon a particular reading of Marx and Engels – not on any directly observed reality. This ‘reading’ being perhaps also influenced by his desire to polemicize against Kautsky and the anarchists. In contrast, Marx, after extensive involvement alongside workers in the 1st International and elsewhere, made the following comment on the Paris Commune;
“From the very outset the Commune was compelled to recognise that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery used against itself, and on the other safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment.” (Marx. Class Struggles in France. Peking edition. Page 15. Emphasis added. RR.)
With regard to the first point we have already seen earlier that Lenin admitted that not all the previous repressive machinery was done away with. “We took over the old machinery of the state…” With regard to the second, safeguarding themselves against its own deputies and officials was something actually denied to the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union. Eg. “Yes it is a dictatorship of one party!”
Furthermore, safeguarding themselves against their elected and unelected party officials was also something denied to the rank and file Bolsheviks, let alone the ordinary workers and peasants. (On this question see Lenin. Complete Works. Volume 32 page 50). Party ‘appointments’ were the preferred method of choice under the leadership of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin (See Lenin’s ‘Better fewer but Better‘).
Yet such safeguarding against elected delegates is the most fundamental content of any descriptive term given to the post-capitalist structures which emerge after an anti-capitalist revolution. Marx on the post-capitalist reconstruction of society;
“Does this mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a new political power? No. The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of all classes…The working class in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.” (Marx ’The Poverty of Philosophy’ Collected Works Vol. 6 page 211-212.)
It is clear that the Bolshevik position, justified by Lenin in State and Revolution and implemented in the Soviet Union with the approval of the Bolshevik Central Committee members, was substantially different than that proposed by Marx or the form chosen by the workers and others in the Paris Commune. For Lenin it was to be the case that after the fall of the old society there would remain a political power in charge – the ‘vanguard’ – the Bolsheviks! Yet the Bolsheviks were a group – self-claiming – to be the vanguard of the working class and entitled to exercise a state ‘dictatorship‘ against the workers! For Marx it was the workers commune which would be the institutional and organisational form for continuing the revolution and all which was to follow. For example in debate with the Anarchist Bukharin Marx stated;
“..as soon as the functions have ceased to be political ones, there exists 1) no governmental function, 2) the distribution of the general functions has become a business matter, that gives no one domination, 3) election has nothing of its present political character.” (Marx. Conspectus of Bukharin’s Statism and Anarchy‘.)
So no governmental function, no domination, no politics in elections. Marx further argued that the ‘greatest measure of the commune was its own existence’. He noted that the solution was simple – as all great things. It provided ‘the rational medium’, ‘the political form of social emancipation’, it allowed the return of the powers usurped by the state to the ‘living forces’ of the ‘popular masses’. That was the content of Marx’s term ‘governmental machinery’!
Not actually a machine, of course – that was just a figure of speech – but a non-elitist, low cost living organism capable of collective action, reflection, self-criticism, correction and economic development – a commune! Indeed, continuing the argument with the anarchists and replying to their accusation directed against Marx and others of wishing to implement a form of government over the workers, he replied among other similar points , ‘Non, mon cher‘ ;
“..the whole thing begins with the self-government of the commune….”.(Marx. Conspectus of Bukharin’s Statism and Anarchy‘.)
Permanent Revolution.
So the concept of a post-capitalist ‘state-institution’ doing things for (and against workers) is missing in Marx – who knew very well the problems connected with the separation of such public-power. For Marx the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ was to be exercised by the proletariat organised in its self-governing local communities in which all citizens capable of bearing arms would do so. These local self-governing communities would be federated in the manner they saw fit in order to co-ordinate economic, social and defensive activities. They would only ‘dictate’ to those defeated pro-capitalist forces which wished to become parasitic on the new form or disrupt the peaceful progress (an ongoing revolutionary economic transformation) to an alternative post-capitalist mode of production. Certainly not dictate to and coerce their own class or other oppressed classes.
Also missing in Marx is the concept of a special, self-appointed ‘vanguard’ needed to lead the working and oppressed classes to their emancipation – to free them from above – and also tell them what to think! Their own self-critical experience in a revolutionary transformation of the mode of production was to be a class-wide experience not that of a ‘party vanguard’. A further important content of the term ‘self-activity’ of ‘working people’ used by Marx lies in the following; “..the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution: the revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.” (Marx. German Ideology. Coll. Wks Vol. 5 page 53.)
Lenin and the Bolsheviks differed from Marx on the form and content of the post-capitalist structures created by the working and oppressed classes during uprisings and revolutions. Instead of revolutionary self-activity of the masses, they created a powerful state, with loyal bodies of armed men, which produced top-down plans and coerced workers, soldiers and peasants into fulfilling them. Even internal critics of this ruling party were bullied and coerced well before Stalin, a favoured colleague of Lenin’s for much of Lenin’s life, took it to its logical conclusion and escalated a red terror calling it socialism. In contrast – before finally discarding the by then soiled term ‘socialism’ Marx commented on the purpose and function of a post-capitalist mode of production;
This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionising of all the ideas that result from these social relations. (Marx. Class Struggles in France. Foreign Languages edition. page 198.)
We can see, if we are not blinded by ‘faith‘ or stubbornness, that not only was Lenin’s ‘State and Revolution’ profoundly wrong in theory, its applied conclusions proved tragically destructive in practice. Leninism and Bolshevism has thus become a theoretical and practical model to strenuously avoid in pursuit of a working class post-capitalist mode of production. The Soviet State and its senior architects, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin etc., represent a serious historical and intellectual barrier to the post-capitalist project. It is a barrier which urgently needs to be overcome. One last point from Marx on the nature of the working class revolution as it relates to the idea and practice of any state.
“It was a revolution against the ‘State’ itself, of this supernaturalist abortion of society, a resumption by the people for the people of its own social life.” (Marx. ’The Civil War in France‘. Peking edition. page 172.)
And as Marx also noted, states by direct taxation, become the first and steadily increasing charge on the producers labour. For Marx, a workers and citizens associative self-government, based upon the example of Commune, was the ultimate form of defensive and operational association, and in its continuance, the beginning of the revolutionary post-capitalist transformation. Local and region self-government was to be the foundation of all which was to follow. It was to be the immediate lever of change not a future result – granted to them by a self-selected so-called worker-friendly but coercive government ruled by a party-political elite – after an indeterminate period of time.
The crucial practical contribution by the Communards of Paris and written up by Marx in his various drafts (later interpreted by Engels), was something that Lenin de-constructed and skilfully reconstructed in the ‘State and Revolution’ to suit his own political preferences. This detailed polemic and his forceful character allowed him to influence a political elite (the Bolsheviks) and together they created a power structure (the Soviet State) over the working and oppressed classes. It was a state that stifled and distorted the revolution and strangled the self-activity of the masses – as any ‘state’ must. From the standpoint of workers and the oppressed the choice is clear: during a revolutionary upsurge its either a State or Revolution; one or the other; for the two are incompatible.
[ See also ‘Marxists versus Marx’. and ‘The Party: Help or Hindrance.‘ both athttp://www.critical-mass.net

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER AND ME...AND YOU

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"Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping ... waiting ... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir ... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us ... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love ... the clarity of hatred ... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead." - Buffy Summers 


"You know, I always say that a day without an autopsy is like a day without sunshine." -- Buffy Summers


"I think I speak for everyone here when I say, "huh?"  - Buffy Summers


Today's Scission is NOT what one expects to find here at all.  I know some of you will just take one pass and move along, but what can I say.  The truth is the only reason it is here is that I happen to be the oldest big fan of the too long gone TV series,  Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  That's right I loved Buffy and the gang.  I thought, still do, think it was one of the better series ever to appear on regular old TV.  This wasn't some big HBO drama or anything, just a weekly program that dealt with real issues of real importance in the real lives of all of us, but probably even more so of adolescents.  But again, I was already well into my forties when I began a fan and the program said some things to me, too.  Most teenage TV or movies, I can live without.  I do really like Pump Up the Volume.  I also liked the Breakfast Club.  Still they were movies, not just some crappy little TV series.

Buffy was different.  I am not even sure how to describe why.  I guess that is one reason I am running the post below.  The author of the article which appears on the Toast.

There is more to life then politics, economics, war, social justice, racism, and prison.  There is more to life then THE STRUGGLE.  There is the other struggle which is life, your own personal life.  There is love and fear and joy and despair.  Life is full of ups and downs and often lacks any reason or any answers.  Somehow every one of us has to deal with life in our own ways in our own time.  For some of us life is a hell of a lot harder than it is for others.  They say money isn't everything, but you know it can make life a lot more simple and eliminate a lot of hardships.  The rich may piss and moan, but the rich mostly haven't met the poor.  They don't know and they don't care.

The issues of growing up, of trying to figure out who the hell you are, or why the hell you or where the hell you are going (issues which we face ALL of our lives) may seem trite to those of us who call ourselves serious Marxists, communists, activists, etc. etc. etc.  However, most of us know when you are in the middle of these "trite" little times, they sure as hell seem anything but.

Does any of this matter?  Well, yes it does matter.  However, is it worth a spot here, does it make sense for me to be spending time today and offering this up to you?  I don't know really.  You will have to be the judge of that.

And I won't even get into the slayer known as Faith.....

Anyway, like baseball, Scission plays a long season, so every now and then I am entitled to come up with something like this, don't you think?

Anyway, here we go...

BUT BEFORE WE GO TO FAR, I HAVE TO UPDATE WITH ANOTHER PIECE I JUST FOUND AFTER POSTING THIS.  BUFFY AND CAPITALISM NO LESS...NOW IT WILL BE THE SECOND POST BELOW AND IT IS FROM THE GOTHIC IMAGINATION.







A New Version of You


buffyIn 1998, as Joey and Dawson shared their first kiss and Felicity agonized over Ben and Noel, poor Buffy Summers murdered the love of her life. Watching that episode some 15 years later, as a woman well into my 30s, I cried bitter tears. As Buffy made out with her ex-boyfriend, stabbed him in the stomach, and looked on in horror as he got sucked into Hell, it struck me as the most harrowing and realistic breakup in television history, the whole idea that anyone would ever fall for a big lunk like Angel notwithstanding.

The motivation for their split, of course, was to prevent worldwide human annihilation. Those were the stakes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which rightfully portrayed the process of growing up as a series of encounters with total fucking apocalypse. Because it perfectly captured the histrionic milieu of high school—and because it was on the WB network—people tend to talk about Buffy as a coming-of-age story. But the show’s real artistic achievement was in its flat rejection of the notion we can ever come to know ourselves, much less someone else.

Unlike most teen dramas, Buffy wasn’t a narrative about finding an identity; it was always about having a lot of them. Okay, sure, Season 1, with its mean girls and first dates and cheerleading tryouts, was a straightforward dramatization of the trials of young adulthood. (No social problem was ever so great that it couldn’t be fixed, however improbably, by killing some vampires.) But as the show progressed, and the Scoobies coped variously with sordid pasts, spells gone wrong, and a horrifying spectrum of abusive boyfriends, its moral universe grew more complex. Identities and alliances shifted and relationships grew ever more muddled as evil—no longer relegated to the Big Bad in the basement—was embodied by familiar faces.

On Felicity“a new version of you” meant that you got a haircut or switched majors. On Buffy, it usually meant that you were operating under the influence of a malevolent spirit, spell, curse, or hypnotic trance. Frequently, characters were demonically possessed, supernaturally compelled, or otherwise not themselves. Doubles abounded: Angel and his alter ego Angelus, Buffy and her “dark mirror” Faith, Willow and her murderous “kinda gay” doppelgänger, Buffy and the Buffybot, the two Xanders. Life on the Hellmouth required a certain amount of flexibility. You might, for instance, spend 19 years of your life as an only child, only to one day find you have an annoying little sister that monks made out of mystical energy. At any given moment, you might turn into a rat, a demon, a werewolf, or a lesbian. In Sunnydale, no one was ever what they seemed, and by the time you’d figured someone out, they had already turned into someone else.

The problem of identity came to a head in Season 4, when (not for nothing) the Big Bad was an existential Frankenstein figure named Adam. One by one, the central characters went through their own identity crisis. Having been stripped of his station as a Watcher and a librarian, poor Giles played sad guitar at open mic nights. Buffy, in a bid to redefine herself after killing Angel, slept with a womanizer whose bad behavior she couldn’t redress with a sword to the stomach. Oz boffed some werewolf on accident. (Then, whoops! He killed her.) Willow found herself in a delightful, witchy same-sex relationship, Spike started helping the good guys, Xander switched jobs every week, and Anya tried to adjust to life as a human after hundreds of years as a vengeance demon. While remaining a tight-knit group, the Scoobies continually surprised themselves—and each other—with their capacity for change.

As a culture, we place a lot of emphasis on the coming-of-age story, as though it’s something that happens just once, early in life. The series finales of teen dramas tend to perpetuate that myth by suggesting that we emerge into adulthood somewhat inexperienced, but more or less fully formed. How many series end with the female lead finally (“finally”) locking down her soul mate? In 2002-2003, during Buffy’s seventh and final season, both Dawson’s Creek and Felicity fast-forwarded into the future to assure us that Joey ended up with Pacey and Felicity ended up with Ben. Meanwhile, in her finale, Buffy lost not one but two boyfriends and also saved the world, no big. Like most of the show’s episodes, which eschewed cliffhangers or closure in favor of stopping on a quiet, awkward beat, the series ended on a moment of silence as our heroine was asked to contemplate her future. What would Buffy do next? Even she didn’t know.

Over its long (and admittedly uneven) run, the show itself played with the notion of identity. The magic ofBuffy was not just in combining influences as diverse as John Hughes, classic horror, Broadway, and comic books, but also in its ability to dip into straight genre—as in episodes like “Hush” and “Once More, With Feeling”—and still seem utterly like itself. Joss Whedon is known as (among other things) a champion of nerd culture, but his biggest contribution has been in demonstrating that teen drama (one of the most maligned of all genres) was sophisticated and capacious enough to accommodate rigorous emotional honesty, offbeat humor, and instantaneous shifts in tone.

Coming-of-age stories tend to portray young adulthood as a time when we “find ourselves,” whatever that means. But that model ignores the fact that, for better or worse, the very stuff of our selves—our personalities, our preferences, and even our core values—has a remarkable capacity for change. Our task is to make sure that some semblance of self stays intact as we age. It’s hard because we tend to renounce our Past Selves (those haircuts!), and we have a hard time envisioning our Future Selves at all. In real life, this proliferation of selves can cause continuity problems. (Certainly I don’t recognize the Me who once owned a pink pleather skirt.) On Buffy, despite the limitations of its 45-minute format, the characters juggled multiple versions of themselves all the time, constantly grappling with the contradictions, anxiety, and consequences surrounding who they had been, who they were, and who they would become in a surprisingly cogent way.

After floundering for a time, most of Buffy’s contemporaries (Felicity, Rory from Gilmore Girls) found themselves by the time they graduated college. However much I loved those shows, their journeys did not speak to me. The life of a vampire slayer—gritty and exhausting, with bouts of immaturity, ill-advised romantic entanglements, and the occasional need to kill an evil bug—is the one that I actually recognize, the one that maps onto some semblance of life. It’s a model that makes just as much sense when you’re 15 as when you’re 35, because who ever actually figures it out, really?

The thing is, Buffy was never about a girl coming of age. In her universe, as in ours, no one ever finds herself, at least not for long. With its relentless parade of Big Bads, demonic possessions, and fug leather pants, Buffy shows us how to face life’s central challenge: accepting the monsters we have all had to be, and those we have yet to become.

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Gothic capitalism: Marx, monsters and Buffy

 by Lena Wånggren 



These days, I often feel as if we live in some kind of dystopian fantasy: the divide between poor and rich increases every day because of deliberate government policy, with half a million people in Britain today being forced to use food banks, and racists organising demonstrations in our streets while neoliberal politicians employ the same xenophobic discourse. The economic and social structures in which we live are frightening – indeed gothic. This blog post, the final of my three ones, will explore the economic system in which we live through the metaphor of the monster, examining such economic monsters both in Marx and in a more recent popular text: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003).


'Buffy the Anarcho-Syndicalist: Capitalism Bites'

As Franco Moretti claims, ‘monsters are metaphors’ (105); their bodies standing in for the fears of a certain time and place. Jessie Givner in fact argues that it is the monster’s ability to be seen as a metaphor that makes the creature particularly monstrous (274). Likewise, Judith Halberstam argues that excessive interpretability is the hallmark of monstrosity; monsters are ‘meaning machines’ that can represent gender, race, nationality, class, and sexuality in one body: ‘The monster functions as monster, when it is able to condense as many fear-producing traits as possible into one body’ (21-22). Its ability to be seen as a metaphor can be seen as a part of what makes it monstrous.

Capitalism, with its seemingly magical market movements, lends itself well to metaphorical description. Karl Marx famously describes the gothic character of capitalism, in various of his works, through monstrous metaphors: werewolves and other creatures abound. He specifically and repeatedly uses the metaphor of the vampire to describe the capitalist, and the functions of capitalism. There are also numerous other descriptions in his works with imagery deriving from the vampire metaphor, such as mentions of blood and blood-sucking (Neocleous 669). In the Grundrisse (1857) Marx explains: ‘Capital posits the permanence of value (to a certain degree) by incarnating itself in fleeting commodities and taking on their form, but at the same time changing them just as constantly; alternates between its eternal form in money and its passing form in commodities; … But capital obtains this ability only by constantly sucking in living labour as its soul, vampire-like’ (646). As Halberstam notes, Marx here describes the economic system in which we live, capitalism, as gothic in itself; it is gothic ‘in its ability to transfer matter into commodity, commodity into value and value into capitalism’ (103).

As David McNally notes in Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism (2010), ‘the idea that something monstrous is at work in the operations of global capitalism is never far from the surface today’ (9), in politics, journalism and popular culture. One specific text making full use of the metaphoricity of the monster is the 1997-2003 tv series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. With its abundance of monsters – ranging from vampires, werevolves and various other kinds of demons, to human-made creatures – the series presents many opportunities for analysing the social and political significance of the monster, and for examining what McNally calls the ‘monstrous forms of every-day life in a capitalist world system’ (2).

The series’s creator Joss Whedon is outspoken about his political values – we saw them recently in his satirical zombie-themed anti-Romney (Zomney) video before the last US election. Romney, Whedon tells us, will bring the country quickly towards a zombie apocalypse: ‘Romney is ready to make the deep rollbacks in health care, education, social services, reproductive rights that will guarantee poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, disease, rioting: all crucial elements in creating a nightmare zombie wasteland. But it’s his commitment to ungoverned corporate privilege that will nosedive this economy into true insolvency and chaos, the kind of chaos you can’t buy back. Money is only so much paper to the undead.’ Whedon’s description of capitalism as a kind of zombie economics is not new; it is made explicit in John Quiggin’s recent Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us (2010), in which he examines the persistence of market-based ideas among politicians and economists, despite the failure of market liberalism. Even after the financial crisis, the dead ideas behind market-based ideology still stalk the land, walking among us – and must, Quiggin argues, be killed off once and for all.


Coming back to Whedon, and Buffy, and the gothic capitalism described in the series. We find one of the most explicit thematisations of monstrous capitalism in Buffy in the first episode of the third season, entitled ‘Anne’. Having killed her vampire boyfriend Angel in the previous season, Buffy in this episode is hiding in an unknown city, posing as an anonymous ‘Anne’ and working in a dingy diner.


Already at the beginning of the episode we see the focus on the social faults in the current economic system, when Buffy on the way home from work walks past several destitute and homeless people in the streets, people with no social safety net, several of them begging, many of them telling Buffy: ‘I am noone’. Only one person in this city seems to care about these impoverished people: a director of a local centre, the ‘Family Home’, which welcomes everyone, offering food and support.


However, the director, calling himself Ken, is not the person he claims to be. When Buffy is contacted by an old acquaintance, Lily, whose boyfriend has gone missing, she discovers a whole machinery of exploitation beneath the city. Buffy finds the missing boyfriend among a group of people sleeping rough – but the boyfriend is dead, and seems to have aged about 60-70 years, ‘like something drained the life out of him’. Not drained by a vampire – that could not have accelerated the ageing process – but by something different.

As it turns out, the seemingly altruistic Ken is in fact a demon, not a benefactor. (So much for ‘caring capitalism’!) Buffy rips off his human mask, which reveals underneath it the face of a demon.


The local centre turns out to be an underground workplace, where people are being used as slave labour, forced to work in order to survive. Ken – now in his demon shape – tells Buffy: ‘Welcome to my world’. In this slavery den, the unwanted, the casualised, the precariat, exist. Here time moves more quickly, and everyone ages faster – which explains the death of Lily’s prematurely aged boyfriend.

In a passage from the chapter on the working day, Marx in Capital (vol.1) (1876) explains the vampiric nature of capitalism:

‘Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the worker works is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has bought from him. If the worker consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist.’ (342)

Here, the capitalist demon sucks the life out of the workers, consuming their labour-power so as to make as much profit as possible. But still, this system ‘only slightly quenches the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour’ (Capital 367). While the worker might think that they dispose of themselves freely, Marx writes, once they have sold their labour-power to the capitalist, ‘it was discovered that he was no “free agent”, that the period of time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the period of time for which he is forced to sell it, that in fact the vampire will not let go “while there remains a single muscle, sinew or drop of blood to be exploited”‘ (415-416). As Buffy understands: ‘You just work us ’til we’re too old and then spit us back out?’


The people taken here by the ‘caring capitalist’ demon Ken are chosen precisely because of their precarious situation; they have no one who cares about them in the other world, so will not be missed. In this gothic capitalist world, the workers have no identity – their sole purpose is to work. As one of the guards tells the labourers: ‘You work, and you live – that is all. You do not complain, or laugh, or do anything besides work. Whatever you thought, whatever you were, does not matter. You are no one now.’ The slave-labourers are forced to repeat this, in order to avoid getting beaten. This mantra, ‘I am noone’, is what we earlier heard the impoverished people say to Buffy when above ground – one of them, we find out, having been Lily’s boyfriend. The labourers are worthless commodities in this system.

Buffy of course does not respond well to the guard’s bullying: she strikes the guard, takes her group of fellow prisoners and prepares to flee their enslavement. Having sent off some of the workers to the surface, Buffy kills off guard after guard, while demon capitalist Ken watches his system of exploitation collapse: ‘Humans don’t fight back… Humans don’t fight back! That’s how this works!’ That might be true; as McNally states, perhaps the most monstrous aspect of gothic capitalism is the way in which this exploitative system becomes ‘normalised and naturalised via its colonisation of the essential fabric of every-day life’ (2). There is some beautifully over-the-top imagery here, as Buffy takes the weapons of the guards she defeats: from one of the first guards, she takes a hammer; from another one, she takes a sickle-like knife. With the traditional hammer and sickle – the classic symbols of communism, representing the unity between industrial and agricultural workers – she fights off the last demons of capitalism before bringing the freed workers to the surface of the city.


The anticapitalist imagery from the ‘Anne’ episode in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is taken a step further in the detourned comic Buffy the Anarcho-Syndicalist: Capitalism Bites. Featuring Buffy as anarcho-syndicalist hero, and her Watcher Giles as a hardened revolutionary, together with other comrades from outside of the usual Buffy characters, the story presents the slayer fighting the evil vampire capitalist CEO of Blood Red Enterprises.


Of course, since Buffy is an anticapitalist vampire slayer, she defeats the gothic capitalists in Sunnydale. But there are many more metaphorical and and some very real monsters out there. So join a trade union (Boris Karloff style! [1]), fight some neoliberal vampires, organise against zombie economics.


- See more at: http://www.gothic.stir.ac.uk/uncategorized/gothic-capitalism-marx-monsters-and-buffy/#sthash.LqDAgbEx.dpuf

PORTLAND: THE CITY SAYS "MOVE ON," THE HOMELESS SAY "HOLD ON"

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You hear people complaining about homeless folks clogging up sidewalks, parks, and urinating in public all the time.  Well, my question is if you are homeless what exactly are you supposed to do?  Where is it okay to stand or sit or sleep or piss?  Maybe you are just supposed to stay awake, keep moving and hold "it."  I don't know.  

We live in a country with all kinds of empty housing, abandoned buildings, common space,  and all kinds of folks who want housing and there is no match seen.  We live in a country where people who for whatever reason can't be house or aren't interested in a warehouse shelter are supposed to...just move along, disappear, go elsewhere.

Listen I have worked on the streets and I have been in shelters, and yes, there are some people in the shelter/homeless industry with fine big hearts, but, I'll tell you what, given my druthers, and depending on the weather I would stay out of those shelters most of which are dangerous, most of which have more rules then your high school, most of which send you packing at the crack of dawn, most of which are just no damned "fun."

There are answers, even answers short of the total overthrow of the whole damned system of capitalism which would suffice in the short term.  I used to be involved with some folks from the National Union of the Homeless.  They were homeless people taking care of themselves and of each other.  They weren't a bunch of social workers and government employees who didn't really get it and who really thought of themselves as a different branch of the human species altogether .

I've slept on porches and found myself moving from day to day looking for a place to crash.  I was lucky.  I had friends who would put me up for a short time and my period of this didn't last all that long.  Even with that I in no way claim to really understand what it is to be homeless, not really.

Meanwhile in Portland Oregon, the city of the Roses, their is a battle going on between the homeless and the city.The city keeps driving the homeless "away" and the homeless keep finding another place to be until the city closes in on them again.

Greg Malroy, one of a group of half a dozen homeless found a site tucked under a tinder dry bluff near some homes.  the cops showed up and set up no camping signs.  they told the group they'd be back in the morning.  They told the group to move on.

"They usually give us 72 hours notice, but this time they gave us 24 hours notice," Malroy told Oregon Live. "They told us it was private property and there was a fire hazard here."

Malroy said he, another man and three women moved to the bluff after police rousted them from below the Fremont Bridge at Northwest 19th Avenue about a week ago.


"They just keep moving us," he said. "They've been cleaning up all over town."

Oregon Live reports: 

...the city's estimated 1,700 homeless people are part of a long tug of war between city officials, homeless advocates and police. The issue roared to the forefront when Mayor Charlie Hales announced last month that he'd had enough of the behavior of dozens of people camped outside City Hall.

(Two weeks ago), police arrested five protesters there and police said they would begin to more rigorously enforce the city's camping ban everywhere, not just on city sidewalks.

City law prohibits "camping" on public property, which includes "bedding, sleeping bag, or other sleeping matter." Private landowners also can report campers trespassing on their property.

While Portland police carried out Thursday's camp removal, city park rangers removed 984 homeless camps in 2010, then with increased patrols keeping numbers down, 684 camps in 2011 and 500 in 2012...

 Malroy said the group did its best to keep their camps clean. He said they weren't drug users, didn't drink but were forced onto the streets by medical problems that prevent them from working. Malroy's criminal record is for non-violent crimes, including arrests for drugs and car theft, according to state court records. 


"We're all trying to get disability and get housing, but they won't give you housing unless you have a fixed income," he said. "So we're kind of stuck out here." 

In July Mayor Charlie Hales told homeless camping in front of city hall to move on.


The Willamette Week wrote at the time,


Portland Police officers quietly posted metal signs in front of City Hall Friday evening outlawing obstruction of the sidewalk along Southwest 4th Avenue—in effect serving an eviction notice to the homeless encampment that has swelled to more than 40 people in recent weeks.

This in response to complaints from Portland citizens and a drumbeat of bull from media outlets.

The homeless and supporters weren't impressed and vowed this time to fight.  They set up an occupy like protest.  Eventually though they were forced out and regrouped in a federal plaza.  

Again from the Oregonian: 

 Mayor Charlie Hales boldly declared last week that enforcing sidewalk laws against people experiencing homelessness — and we assume the mentally ill — wasn’t about homelessness at all. “This is about lawlessness,” the mayor proclaimed to the media. 


The mayor doesn't get it.  He wants all these people to move on and on some more.

Street Root News writes:


Not one mention of the public health crisis on our streets or the lack of funding for homeless or mental health services. Nothing was mentioned about how the business community, residents, local government, advocates, social-service providers and law enforcement can work together to tackle these tough problems. Not a peep about an increased investment for rent assistance to target some of the hard-to-reach folks on our streets.

The message sent to the media and Portland was simple: We’re cleaning up lawless behavior that we’ve tolerated for far too long. 

Street Roots and others saw years of hard work about how to frame this issue to get common Portlanders to engage in working together to solve homelessness flash before our eyes.

Then the police went out and swept homeless camps.

Sitting quietly in the background are lobbyists for the business community who are pushing an agenda to government and the media that tourism is hurting and the business climate is threatened because of the visible homeless downtown.



Meanwhile, anyone walking through Portland’s core would see tourism and business booming. 

 What’s the solution?

The solution is to work together to develop strategies to increase our affordable housing stock, to increase rent assistance dollars for people on the streets, and to maintain targeted enforcement on people who are clearly out of line. The solution is not to enforce decades-old perspectives that research and history have shown do absolutely nothing to solve the problem of poverty and homelessness in urban America.

What Portland needs are leaders who listen to experts in the field and in government that have been successfully housing people for years. 

Street Roots is ready to work alongside both traditional and non-traditional partners to get the job done. What we can’t do is sit on the sidelines and watch individuals and families in poverty be demonized in our community.

Housing stability makes economic and social sense. Everyone deserves to have a safe place to call home, regardless of circumstances, and everyone benefits when they do.

The real solution goes beyond this, in my mind, and any solution temporary or otherwise must be one that involves the homeless themselves in the decision making process, not just the "experts" referred to above.  In the meantime, some squatting, some occupations, some takeovers of some abandoned buildings and the like, and yes, the use of public parks and plazas is in order.



Today the police moved the people out of that Federal Plaza, at least, temporarily.





The following is from Right to Dream.



Willow Frost speaks before the City Council


Could you get a good night's sleep in this situation?
  
On July 11th, 2013, Willow spoke brilliantly before the city council - here is what she said:


Hello, my name is Willow Frost, and I'm houseless. I became a member of Right 2 Dream Too in March, and since then, I've learned a lot concerning the homeless population of Portland. The first being this: sleep is a biological need that cannot and will not be denied forever.


According to the Point-in-Time count of homelessness done in Multnomah County, there are 2,869 people who meet the definition of "literally homeless". Literal homelessness is defined by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development as "any person sleeping in an emergency shelter, sleeping in a motel provided by a voucher, or without shelter." Of this number of people, 1,895 are not receiving shelter.


To make this a clearer picture, that is 66% of the homeless population - living, breathing people who have a need for sleep - huddling under whatever shelter they can to stay out of the rain, or trekking to an inconvenient location to keep from getting woken up by police officers. Some of these locations make it difficult to come back into the city to look for work, go to school, or even just to receive services for food and showers.


My last point aside, sleep is obviously a very important thing for the human body. A study performed by the San Diego based University of California showed that sleep deprivation can cause slurring of speech, loss of coordination and manual dexterity, loss of cognitive function, delayed or interrupted perceptive ability, and in cases of prolonged or repeated sleep deprivation, mania and hallucinations.


If this list of symptoms sounds like reasons police confront a person for suspicion of drug use, that’s because it is. In many cases, a police officer will wake up a homeless person, tell them to move on, and that person will begin their day. Many times this means a person is getting less than four or five hours of sleep in a night, and in some cases less than two or three. And then, when those people who were denied rest by the police begin to exhibit these symptoms, they stand less of a chance to get a job, be able to pay attention in school, or even function in the general society. They even stand a chance of going to jail because of mental and physical symptoms caused by lack of sleep.


As I stated before, sleep is a biological imperative. It’s going to happen whether it’s legal or not, and I personally would rather see a person sleep safe and away from traffic, than to see them pass out while crossing a street. I would also prefer to see a person sleeping at Right 2 Dream Too, instead of out on the sidewalks where they stand a chance of being entered into the vicious cycle I previously mentioned.


Right 2 Survive, and by direct action, Right 2 Dream Too, are filling a role that is sorely needed in Downtown Portland. The need for a grassroots organization catering to homeless people, run by the homeless, formerly homeless, and their allies to keep people off the streets, teach them their rights, and extend a warm, welcoming hand that says “Yeah, you might not have a home, you might be in a really bad spot right now, and you may think you have nothing. But guess what? We’re here for you. It’s not gonna be easy, but let us help you help yourself. Come in, sleep for twelve hours, have some food, then go about your day. And at the end of it, come back. We’ll welcome you back with open arms.”


Currently, the City is fining us. I won’t claim to be able to quote the exact amount, but it’s confusing to me that the city would be opposed to an organization that can, in a 24 hour period take up to 90 of those 1,895 non-sheltered people that I mentioned before, and give them a place to sleep without worry. I would appreciate, as I’m sure would the entire homeless community, if the City would re-evaluate its response to, and actions toward Right to Dream Too, and possibly even look into approving more organizations like us."




Photograph is creative commons from the internet. 



THE OLYMPICS: MOVE IT, FIX IT, OR SHUT IT DOWN

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Something more needs to be done in regards to the Olympics and Russia's abject persecution of gays and lesbians...then talking about it. .  Sitting around worrying about the athletes getting to perform is nice, but come on.  Wearing buttons and holding hands around the Olympic site is a nice gesture, too, but come on.  Should we, should everyone boycott the whole shebang, sure why the hell or just move it elsewhere.  Could we boycott all the sponsors, sure why not?  Remember when South African athletes weren't allowed to participate in international sporting events...hey, there's a thought.  While we are talking on the Russians and Putin, there are plenty of other jackass homophobes out there in the Olympic world. Let's go after them, too. vBan them all. 

But back to Russia.  It isn't just Putin, by the way, nor is it just the Russian Orthodox Church, though both are evil.  The Advocate reminds us:


Nearly three out of four Russians think homosexuality should be rejected by society, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.

The study found that 74% of Russians answered “no” to the question: “Should society accept homosexuality?”

Let's join in boycott the big Russian products that are sold in this globalized world we live in.  I am not big on the effectiveness of boycotts, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.  It ain't like I have to drink shots of Stoli.

People are being forced into hiding who they are.  People are being thrown in jail.  People are dying.  The lives of gay people mean more that the Winter Olympics.

..and again, go elsewhere if you want but don't take the Olympics to Russia...and again while we are at let's make the Olympics actually live up to the standards and the ideals their bosses so proudly proclaim, the sports announcers babble about throughout the games, the spirit we all pretend exists, but doesn't

Let's face it the Olympics are big business and global capital has a wonderful home in their villages.  Throw those bastards out.

I admit, I love watching the Olympics, but now is the time for you and I, and people like us to finally say, enough is enough.  The games can't go on as if they exist in some other dimension then the one we inhabit.

I admit, I am starting to just babble or rant, but it pisses me off...It pisses me off that if you google "boycott the olympics" what you mostly find are "reasonable arguments" on why not to do just that.

Move it, fix it, or shut it down.

The first below is from the American Prospect.  After you have read that post, please move on and read a very "interesting" piece on the movement to boycott the 1936 Nazi Olympics from the web site of the United Sates Holocaust Museum.  Then think again about the Putin Olympics.



STICKING IT TO SOCHI: RUSSIAN LGBT ACTIVISTS ON WHAT WORK

by Nancy Goldstein




AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis
There’s no sugarcoating what’s happening in Russia in the days since the Duma and Prime minister Vladimir Putin passed its anti-gay laws earlier this summer. In a jaw-dropping video that Moscow-based journalist and longtime LGBT activist Masha Gessen posted to her Facebook page over the weekend, Dmitry Kiselev, anchorman and deputy director of VGTRK, the Russian state broadcast holding company—in short, a top representative of the Kremlin’s media machine—makes the following statement:

I believe it is not enough to impose fines on gays for engaging in the propaganda of homosexuality among adolescents. We need to ban them from donating blood and sperm, and if they die in car accidents, we need to bury their hearts in the ground or burn them as they are unsuitable for the aiding of anyone's life.

Kiselev’s audience claps and cheers.

So let’s be very clear, very fast about what will and won’t matter to Putin and his cronies when it comes to protesting. There’s no point in pretending that marching around the Olympic Village in Sochi this winter wearing rainbow pins will make a jot of difference, even on the medal-awards platform. “The Kremlin,” Russian LGBT activist Alexei Davydov tells me through an interpreter, “has taken a page from the Middle Ages. Incapable of solving the country's pressing problems, and with Putin's ratings falling, the Kremlin has decided to consolidate society through fear—and to this purpose is engaged in a search for enemies both internal and external. Gays have been chosen as these victims.”

Davydov should know. In this video, he very carefully breaks the new gay “propaganda” law and becomes its first test case by standing on the steps of a library with a sign that reads “Gay is normal.” The police haul him off, along with three other allies. What will happen to him when he’s tried is anyone’s guess. But Gessen—who, along with what one St. Petersburg legislator called her “perverted family” are the primary targets of a proposed law that will remove Russian children from their LGBT parents—urges supporters abroad “to keep reminding the Kremlin that the world is watching. We need media coverage of existing cases.”

That’s our real responsibility in dealing with a country where a solid 74 percent of citizens don’t think homosexuality should be accepted by society—not kidding ourselves that it will make a difference if we bring our loved ones to Sochi, chat with the people next to us at the bobsled track, and hold our children up for the cameras. Russia’s decision-makers couldn’t care less, and its media machine will simply spin those hearts-and-minds gestures into symbols of Western decadence. “Anything addressed to the public,” Gessen says, “risks playing into the hand of the people stirring up the homophobia.”

There’s certainly no point—I’m looking at you, President Obama and British Prime Minister Cameron—in refusing to boycott the games because we don’t want to penalize the athletes who have trained so long and hard. That legitimate concern could be addressed by simply pressing the International Olympic Committee (IOC) tofollow its own charter, which calls for removing the Olympic Games from any nation that does not satisfy its own requirements for equal rights and tolerance. Start working with the one senior IOC member from Norway who already shares this view to help bring others around to it. I’m sure Vancouver’s snowboarding ramps are still in fine repair.

Think long and hard before you evoke the spectacle of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin—thus far the model for the West’s approach to Putin—or argue that winning LGBT athletes will “show 'em” in Sochi. In 1935—as in 2013—the International Olympics Committee was keen to pretend that sporting events could wash a clearly politicized setting of its politics, or wipe a dirty city clean. IOC chair Count Henri Baillet-Latour was content with Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s promise that anti-Semitic placards would be taken down during the Olympic games the next year.

In this Faustian bargain, Hitler hid the most obvious signs of what would later become his Final Solution. Jesse Owens, the allegedly “inferior” Negro, kicked Aryan butt on the track and came home with four gold medals (to a country where FDR refused to host him at the White House for fear of losing the Southern vote in the upcoming election). And then, once the international community had left, Hitler and his willing minions invaded neighboring countries and incinerated every fucking Jew, queer, or dissenter they could get their hands on.

If President Obama has “no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them,” Davydov suggests he demonstrate that by instructing Secretary of State John Kerry to put Elena Mizulina and Vitaly Milonov—the officials most responsible for Russia’s new laws—on the visa ban. The former is the Duma deputy responsible for the federal law banning gay "propaganda" to minors and for the law banning foreign adoptions of Russian orphans by gays and lesbians; the latter is the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly deputy responsible for the law banning gay "propaganda" to minors in St. Petersburg. (Here’s a petition that asks Obama to do precisely that.) 

Essentially, Davydov is proposing to extend the Magnitzky Act to cover homophobes.

Essentially, Davydov is proposing to extend the Magnitzky Act to cover homophobes. This 2012 law punishes 18 Russian officials thought to be complicit in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison after investigating fraud involving Russian officials, by prohibiting their entrance into the United States or use of its banking system. “If you forbade persons who advance fascist discrimination laws, such as deputies Mizulin and Milonova, entry into civilized countries,” says Davydov, “I assure you there would be few who would be ready to advance similar laws.”

There’s plenty that the rest of us could do as well. Russian LGBT activists have been saying for some time now that there’s no point in aiming at so small a target as the Kremlin’s heart, especially when its wallet presents a larger, more tender object. First, RUSA LGBT asked allies to boycott Sochi and all Russian products, and press for withdrawal of corporate sponsorship from the games. Then 34 LGBT Russian activists (including Davydov and Gessen) echoed that call in a letter released by Queer Nation.

So let’s keep dumping Russian vodka into the streets and outside of the Russian consulate in New York City. Let’s keep marching in London. Sign the Change.org petition that calls for Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Samsung, Procter & Gamble, and Visa tocondemn the laws and pull their sponsorship from the Sochi Olympic games (it’s now surpassed 100,00 signatures).

And keep taking actions like the one where activists confronted Russia’s U.N. ambassador with a petition signed by 340,000 supporters urging world leaders to help eliminate anti-gay laws in Russia ahead of the Sochi games. “Every time that Putin, or other government officials, or representatives of Russian big business or cultural institutions step foot into the West,” says Gessen, “s/he should have a hellish experience. They should encounter protests and questions about these laws everywhere they turn.” Let’s take a cue from Amsterdam, where public officials put their money where their mouth was: The rainbow flag flew above the capitol during Putin’s April visit, while yellow tape reading “Homophobia-free zone” cordoned off streets where thousands protested.

We have a chance to do things differently in Sochi than we did in Berlin. Let’s start with skipping the part where we appease a dictator, and instead give a damn about what’s happening beyond the scrubbed streets of the Olympic Village. Let’s lose the naïve notion that the wins of a few remarkable LGBT athletes will make any difference to the mobs of Neo-Nazi vigilantes luring gay teens with online ads, then kidnapping and torturing them—a process they like to videotape and post online for their admirers to enjoy. Let’s focus on forms of protest that will have an impact in locations beyond Sochi—actions that will continue to impede the progress of Putin’s Final Solution even once the crowds and the cameras leave.
---------------------------------------------------


THE MOVEMENT TO BOYCOTT THE BERLIN OLYMPICS OF 1936


A pedestrian pauses to read a notice announcing an upcoming public meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, December 3, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. New York, United States, 1935.
A pedestrian pauses to read a notice announcing an upcoming public meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, December 3, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. New York, United States, 1935.
— National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.
Soon after Hitler took power in 1933, observers in the United States and other western democracies questioned the morality of supporting Olympic Games hosted by the Nazi regime. Responding to reports of the persecution of Jewish athletes in 1933, Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee (AOC), stated: "The very foundation of the modern Olympic revival will be undermined if individual countries are allowed to restrict participation by reason of class, creed, or race." Brundage, like many others in the Olympic movement, initially considered moving the Games from Germany. After a brief and tightly managed inspection of German sports facilities in 1934, Brundage stated publicly that Jewish athletes were being treated fairly and that the Games should go on, as planned.

Debate over participation in the 1936 Olympicswas greatest in the United States, which traditionally sent one of the largest teams to the Games. By the end of 1934, the lines on both sides were clearly drawn. Avery Brundage opposed a boycott, arguing that politics had no place in sport. He fought to send a US team to the 1936 Olympics, claiming: "The Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians." He wrote in the AOC's pamphlet "Fair Play for American Athletes" that American athletes should not become involved in the present "Jew-Nazi altercation." As the Olympics controversy heated up in 1935, Brundage alleged the existence of a "Jewish-Communist conspiracy" to keep the United States out of the Games.

Judge Jeremiah Mahoney, president of the Amateur Athletic Union, led efforts to boycott the 1936 Olympics, pointing out that Germany had broken Olympic rules forbidding discrimination based on race and religion. In his view, participation would indicate an endorsement of Hitler's Reich. Mahoney was one of a number of Catholic leaders supporting a boycott. New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, New York governor Al Smith, and Massachusetts governor James Curley also opposed sending a team to Berlin. The Catholic journal The Commonweal (November 8, 1935) advised boycotting an Olympics that would set the seal of approval on radically anti-Christian Nazi doctrines.

Another important boycott supporter, Ernst Lee Jahncke (a former assistant secretary of the US Navy), was expelled from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in July 1936 after taking a strong public stand against the Berlin Games. The IOC pointedly elected Avery Brundage to fill Jahncke's seat. Jahncke is the only member in the 100-year history of the IOC to be ejected.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not become involved in the boycott issue, despite warnings from high-level American diplomats regarding Nazi exploitation of the Olympics for propaganda purposes. Roosevelt continued a 40-year tradition in which the American Olympic Committee operated independently of outside influence. Both the US ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, and George Messersmith, head of the US Legation in Vienna, deplored the American Olympic Committee's decision to go to Berlin.

Many American newspaper editors and anti-Nazi groups, led by Jeremiah Mahoney, president of the Amateur Athletic Union, were unwilling to accept Nazi Germany's hollow pledges regarding German Jewish athletes. But a determined Avery Brundage maneuvered the Amateur Athletic Union to a close vote in favor of sending an American team to Berlin, and, in the end, Mahoney's boycott effort failed.

Short-lived boycott efforts also surfaced in Great Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands. German Socialists and Communists in exile voiced their opposition to the Games through publications such as Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (The Worker Illustrated Newspaper). Some boycott proponents supported counter-Olympics. One of the largest was the "People's Olympiad" planned for summer 1936 in Barcelona, Spain. It was canceled after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, just as thousands of athletes had begun to arrive.

Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries also chose to boycott the Berlin Olympics. In the United States, some Jewish athletes and Jewish organiztions like the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott of the Berlin Games. Once the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States voted for participation in December 1935, however, the other countries fell in line. Forty-nine teams from around the world competed in the Berlin Games, more than in any previous Olympics.

STRETCH TIME

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TIME FOR THE SEVENTH INNING STRETCH.  BACK IN AROUND TEN DAYS FOR THE BOTTOM HALF OF THE INNING....AND MORE OF THE GAME...

A REMARKABLE LIFE / REST IN PEACE BEAR NUMBER 56

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  Maybe it seems strange for the story of Bear Number 36's passing to suddenly appear here at Scission, but, in my mind not so much.   In the midst of all the chaos, horror, and just crap that fills the world today, this wondrous life should not go unnoticed.  I have a feeling she could have taught us much if we knew how to listen.  In death, perhaps, she taught us something about living.

Rest in Peace Bear Number 36, a remarkable life.

From Indian Country Today.



.

Bear Facts: Oldest Known Black Bear Takes That Final Nap in 

Minnesota

August 30, 2013

She was a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. And when the time came, she curled up in a cozy, shady spot ideal for a midday nap, and went into her final sleep.

That is how researcher Karen Noyce found 39½-year-old “Bear No. 56,” as she was known to wildlife officials from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, according to the MinneapolisStar-Tribune. She had died peacefully of old age, after 32 years of providing information via a radio collar she’d been tagged with at age seven, when just a mother of three.

Noyce found the American black bear’s decomposed remains in Chippewa National Forest, near Marcell, Minnesota, theStar-Tribunereported on August 27. She most likely died in July.

“She had left her home range … looking for food, apparently,” Noyce told the newspaper. “I was surprised in her state that she would do that. She was just lying in a wooded spot, next to a little bit of a low area, a shady area. It was a kind of place a bear would lay down and take a midday nap.”

Bear No. 56 was first collared in 1981, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said in astatementthat paid tribute to her life and acknowledged her service to science.

“During a 32-year study period, she and her many offspring provided an almost uninterrupted record of reproduction, survival, movements and, eventually, senescence (aging), within a single matriarchal lineage,” the department said. “Data from this bear and her offspring have contributed significantly to the scientific literature on black bear biology.”

She also lived 19 years longer than all the other black bears that the department had collared and followed since 1981, marking nearly a decade beyond the black bear’s normal life span of 30 years. Next in line for the longevity record would have been a brown bear that lived to age 34, the department said.

She produced eight litters between 1981 and 1995, though she lost two cubs in 1997 before they were weaned, the department’s statement said. She bore and raised her last cub at age 25. Although last handled by researchers in March 2010, No. 56 was beginning to deteriorate, the department’s statement said. Her teeth were worn and her eyes were clouding.

“From all indications, she died a quiet death, with no sign of struggle at the site and no evidence of broken bones or traumatic injury,” the wildlife department’s statement said.

“We knew she was getting feeble,” Noyce said in the statement. “It would have been sad to find her on the side of the road somewhere, hit by a car. After following her all these years, I’m glad to know she died peacefully. It was a fitting death for a fine old bear.”


"A WORLD WHERE AUTONOMY ISN'T JUST TALKED ABOUT, IT IS LIVED"

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It is theoretical weekends at Scission.  The piece below is not exactly theoretical, but it is not exactly not theoretical either.  It is autonomy.  It is direct democracy.  It is the Zapatistas.  It is worth reading.  So damn it all, read it.

It comes from the Narco News.



At the Escuelita Zapatista, Students Learn Community Organizing and Civil Resistance as a Way of Life



The Class Was Stopped Twice: The First Time to Emphasize the Importance of Discipline in Their Organization



By Alex Mensing
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

August 29, 2013

From August 11-17, the Zapatistas brought more than 1,500 people into their communities to attend the Escuelita Zapatista, the Little Zapatista School. According to a February comunicado by the EZLN, in a class entitled Liberty According to the Zapatistas: Autonomous Government I, “our compas from the Zapatista bases of support are going to share the little we have learned about the struggle for freedom, and the [the students] can see what is useful or not for their own struggles.”


Students line up to register to the first “Escuelita Zapatista” atCIDECI. PHOTO DR 2013 Alex Mensing
The Escuelita was not your typical school, in many ways. The teachers had no degrees, the textbooks did not cite prestigious academic predecessors, and the classrooms had no blackboards. Class was in session 24 hours a day and the question and answer period was open all the time. And, to be sure, the subject matter was out of the ordinary.

Some of the lessons imparted at the Escuelita were delivered in the form of textbook readings and presentations by Zapatista authorities. But many of the most important lessons were learned by sharing lodging, meals, work, life and conversations with the Zapatista families and guardians who hosted students in their small, remote communities for several days during the week-long Escuelita.

According to the Zapatistas, the purpose of the Escuelita was to show people from outside their territory how they had organized their struggle for autonomy, in the hopes that students would share the experience with others and use what they learned to organize their own resistance movements. But the school was not so much a how-to as a show-and-tell. “This is what we do. Questions?” As such, observation was key to learning at this school.

Some basic principles of their organizing process can be culled from the textbooks and the experience, such as discipline and hard work, face-to-face community outreach, long-term planning, reduction of government dependence through collective work projects, avoiding confrontation with the enemy and emphasizing shared experience to convince unsympathetic neighbors. The structure of their autonomous government also reveals certain key aspects of Zapatista resistance and democracy.

Off to School

In the early morning hours of August 11th, dozens of passenger vans began to arrive at the Indigenous Center of Integrated Training (CIDECI, by its Spanish acronym) in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, southern Mexico. The vans had emerged from Zapatista territory, “where the people command and the government obeys.” Each vehicle arrived with one female and one male driver, each one from a different Zapatista community. Some communities are over 10 hours away. They all arrived on time.

Later that morning began a second wave of arrivals—the passengers-to-be of the vans that would return to Zapatista territory later that day. They were the invited students for the Escuelita Zapatista, a week-long immersion course on the Zapatista autonomous government. They were from all corners of the earth, they were of all ages, and they were not all on time.

The Escuelita Zapatista (“Little Zapatista School”) was announced by the EZLN in early 2013, in one of many declarations since their public resurgence last December. Little by little, they released more information about the school. Students would be hosted by a Zapatista family, so they should not bring their own food or lodging. Nor should they come expecting to learn about the EZLN’s military—the school was to be about their self-governance and autonomy, not their armed resistance. The cost of attendance? Apart from getting yourself to San Cristóbal, 100 pesos for the four textbooks and two DVDs they would provide. Less than 8 USD.

In their characteristic political style, the first four announcements about the student body described the people who would NOT be at the school: leaders of social movements who had been disappeared, political prisoners, politicians, and those who came before and taught the Zapatistas how to organize and resist. As for those who WOULD be attending: 1,700 people, from five continents, aged 11 months to 90 years (with a heavy concentration in the 20-30 year range), independent or from collectives, academic institutions, and solidarity groups.

A man walks throguth Rosario Río Blanco in the autonoumous municipality of San Pedro Michoacán. PHOTO DR 2013 Alex Mensing
Students registered at CIDECIand were assigned one of the five Zapatista caracoles, as the autonomous regions are called. Those without invitations were dismissed. As organizers processed a long line of latecomers, live music entertained the crowd and collectives hawked the typical revolutionary goods: t-shirts, posters, notebooks, zines, etc. Meanwhile, the ski-masked Zapatistas waited.

Then came the first lesson in Zapatista organization: quick execution of orders. The departure of the first caravan was announced, destined for La Realidad, the furthest of the caracoles. Ten hours of travel lay ahead, and they wanted to get moving. Within minutes, the students bound for La Realidad were lined up at the entrance, including myself. Minutes later, we and our baggage were aboard… except for those students who had arrived late or were not listening for the announcement. Luckily for them, they were able to catch up quickly.

La Realidad

We were greeted in Caracol I, La Realidad, at 1:00 am by all of the Zapatistas in orderly formation, faces covered by ski masks or red kerchiefs. Tired students trudged through the mud and stood in the drizzling rain as the community sang the Mexican and Zapatista national anthems. Some students stayed out to dance after the greeting, many went to sleep on the concrete floor of the spaces designated for guest lodging.

When class began the next day, the Zapatista presenters announced that “through our voice speaks the voice of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.” All of the teachers, host families and guardians had been declared spokespersons of the EZLN for the duration of the Escuelita, making clear the point that to learn about Zapatista autonomy is to learn from all of Zapatista society.

That horizontality, as was emphasized in the first class, is a fundamental part of their autonomous government. Presenters introduced the structure of their government, with which many people are already familiar. The language of “good government” and “bad government” that Zapatistas use is very telling—their government has a sort of parallel structure to a typical government, but the mechanics and substance are different. Many of the characteristics of their autonomous government were explained by the Zapatistas in relation to the behavior of the Mexican government.

“We don’t use electoral campaigns,” explained a presenter. “We don’t spend tons of money to choose a leader. The representatives aren’t determined before the people vote.” All laws or projects, community representatives and public servants (teachers, health promoters, etc.) at all levels of government (local, municipal and zone), are chosen directly by people, who approve or disapprove proposals by the government.

Public service is performed out of conscience, and not for payment. Anyone can become a “leader.” In a strict sense, there are no leaders, only community members playing different roles. This ensures that the government, the organization, so to speak, cannot go against the will of the people.

During that first class, the importance of history to the Zapatista movement was also made clear. They understand their movement as part of a thread in history of oppression and resistance. One that builds upon itself and does not forget—the whole history is continuously relevant. The important events in their understanding of their history are well known:

-Before the Spaniards arrived, indigenous people had tightly-knit communities and cultural traditions that shaped their relationship to each other and the land they worked.
-The Spanish Conquest destroyed their social fabric and made people work as individuals in an exploitative system.
-In 1810, Miguel Hidalgo led peasants to take independence from the Spanish crown, but Mexico remained in the hands of the rich. They consider this the first important demonstration of nonconformity.
-In 1910, Emiliano Zapata fought in the Revolution for “Land and Liberty,” achieving the ejido system (community-owned farmlands).
-During the 20th century, landowners eat away at the advances gained by the ejido system and, together with the corrupt government, oppress indigenous communities.
-1983, the EZLN is formed and arrives in Chiapas, beginning to train and organize.
-1994, the EZLN’s armed uprising achieves a space for dialogue and autonomy.
-2003, the Councils of Good Government are formed to organize Zapatista autonomy and governance.

When they talk about their autonomy in historical context, they consider what they have achieved in the last 19 years to be much greater than what was achieved in the past 500. This history was very present for the speakers, as well as all of the other Zapatistas I spoke with. In their opinion, it gives strength, meaning and context to their organizing efforts. My host family and guardian later on asked me, nonchalantly, about the history and present of civil resistance movements in my own country.

When a student asked the Zapatista panel if they had any plans to provide higher education, the answer revealed that their movement has certain objectives and their organization has priorities. According to the representative who answered the question, they want their children to learn to read, to write, to do the accounting required in their government and collective enterprises, to understand the true history of their struggle, and to understand the natural world around them and their traditional relationship to it. So no, they don’t plan to make a university, he said, but “that isn’t the problem. The problem is the #*$%ing system.”

Another presentation was dedicated to the importance of their own communication media. They have two community radios in each of the five territories, a presenter explained, which allow them to distribute their “voice, word and work” of everyone equally. When the government tries to trick them or sends paramilitaries, the presenter pointed out, their cameras and radios allow them to record what is going on and announce what is going on. The government has its own media, they explain, so they had to make their own. Later during the school, in fact, my guardian informed me that the Mexican air force had performed low-lying fly-overs of the some communities the previous night. He had found out through the community radio.

Other key lessons emerged in that first class: freedom is not something you ask for, but something you take for your own; their form of self-governance did not come from a book, but from analysis of their own society’s needs and structure; the work of civil resistance requires that people be conscientious and informed of what they are doing.
The class was stopped twice. The first interruption was one of several moments when the Zapatistas emphasized the importance of discipline in their organization, and when the representatives of activist groups around the world were shown to lack this particular skill. A Zapatista authority took the microphone and observed that many students were getting up to walk around, to go to the nearby shop and buy coffee or cookies, or who knows why else. “We don’t want you to be distracted. We remind you that pozol will be served at 1:00. We want you to understand the presentations.” Never completely without humor, the speaker called on Zapatista security to make sure nobody fell asleep. The second and only other interruption was, of course, the pozol, a corn-based drink that provides the mid-day fuel for most campesinos in Chiapas.

A second lesson on Zapatista discipline was given later that afternoon, but as with most of the teachings at the Escuelita, this one was only available through observation. Everyone was instructed to stand in formation while names were announced to join students with their guardians. As the Zapatistas began to announce names, it became clear that many students were not present. Many other students broke formation and began chatting. Every time a Zapatista’s name was announced, they appeared almost immediately. Many of the students’ names went unanswered for several minutes. A glance at the Zapatista guardians, calmly standing in orderly rows, was enough to deduce a tacit lesson. We would move faster and learn more if we practiced discipline. We took so long we had to spend an extra night there before traveling to our communities.

The advantage of staying another night in the caracol headquarters was that, with nothing else to do, we got a taste of Zapatista musical tradition. After all, you can’t keep up a fight for 30 years without a little song and dance. A Zapatista who plays guitar was finally convinced to perform some corridos that told their stories of resistance. Above all, the lyrics revealed in a very poignant way the deepness of the suffering felt by members of the movement. Some bits and pieces:

“He was killed by the damned government,
for nothing more than demanding justice”

“The assassins were soldiers
dressed as campesinos
while he was asleep
they killed his wife and children”

Not all is suffering, though.

“Look here now, the time has come
And you can’t be a spectator
The people’s struggle is without end
Until we see the people triumph.”

The sinuous road makes transportation between Rosario Río Blanco and La Realidad a risky endeavour. PHOTO DR 2013 Alex Mensing
The next day, after three hours in a dump truck and a warm greeting from the Zapatista community of Rosario Río Blanco, the immersion period of the school began. For the next three days, my guardian Jorge, my host “father” Rodolfo and I got up at 4:30 am for breakfast, which Rodolfo’s wife, Rosa, had already made. We went to work in the fields until noon, with a break at nine for pozol, then rested, bathed in the river, and ate lunch. The rest of each day was dedicated to studying: reading the textbooks, talking about their self-governance, or visiting the few “institutional” buildings in the town. That is how the community of Rosario Río Blanco chose to run the Escuelita, though students in other towns had slightly different experiences. Reading, working, eating, and walking around town all yielded different lessons about Zapatista organization.


The Textbooks
The textbooks for the Escuelita Zapatista, according to a February comunicado,

“are a product of meetings that the Zapatista bases of support in all zones have carried out to evaluate their work in the organization.

Compañeras and compañeros from the communities in resistance of the 5 caracoles, tzotziles, choles, tzeltales, tojolabales, mames, zoques y mestizos, gathered to ask and answer questions among themselves, exchange experiences (which are different in each zone), and to criticize, self-criticize, and evaluate what they have done so far and what they still have to do. These meetings were coordinated by our compañero Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, and were recorded, transcribed, and edited for the notebooks.”

One of the lessons that came up repeatedly in the textbooks was the importance of not overworking members of the organization. Since their creation in 2003, nearly all of the Councils of Good Government (the largest level of Zapatista representative bodies) have increased the number of representatives and decreased the amount of time they spend doing the work of governance. As a speaker in the caracol headquarters had mentioned, “we realize that we have families.” Each Zapatista family has to tend their own fields and maintain their own households. It is in addition to that work that representatives perform the task governance.

Textbook contributor Artemio from La Garrucha commented that “before, the work rotations lasted months, two or three months” and the Council representatives had other government positions. “When 24 people were elected just for the Council they organized three rotations of eight compañeros each, and each rotation lasted ten days. That was agreed upon to make the process more continuous, so we wouldn’t forget by the time it was our turn again.” Before that, many representatives failed to complete their work rotations, out of necessities back home.

Even with these changes, some Zapatistas tire of the work. Rosalinda, representative from the caracol Oventik, related in the textbooks that at one point 70 percent of their health and education officials had left their posts, and some had left Zapatismo entirely. Speaking to my guardian and family about this, I learned something interesting about the Zapatistas.

“What do you do to keep people from leaving their posts or the organization?” I asked them. They looked at me, somewhat strangely, and my guardian replied “Nothing. In this struggle, everyone is free. If we were to tell them to stay, they would feel obligated, and then we would be just like the bad government. If someone leaves the organization, it is because they have changed their way of thinking. We continue doing the work, and when they want to be a part of it, they can come back.”

I must admit that this was initially a surprise to me, coming from the USA where there is an overemphasis on growth. The Zapatistas have learned that an organization’s strength does not come simply from its numbers, but also from the quality and dedication of its members. Organizing and resisting are hard work, and there will always be people who do not want to participate, my hosts said. One of the seven principles of Zapatista autonomous government is “convince, don’t conquer.”

That is not to say that they make no effort to convince their neighbors to join the struggle. Besides leading by example, they practice a strategy that has been used to build many successful social movements: emphasize shared experiences. The Zapatistas always talk to unsympathetic community members (in person and through their community radio, which is listend to by many non-Zapatistas) about their shared indigenous identity and historic and continued oppression. They also practice non-confrontation with the people they consider their brothers and sisters, resisting provocation when the government sows intercommunity conflict.

The textbooks also taught the importance of converting external aid into internal independence. In other words, donations by solidarity groups are almost always invested in the establishment of some form of collective work project that will generate its own earnings. Collective work projects are part of the backbone of Zapatista autonomy.

The stage at the “Escuelita Zapatista” in La Realidad has the images of Emiliano Zapata and the differents subcomandantes zapatistas.PHOTO DR 2013 Alex Mensing
One textbook included the testimony of Alex from La Garrucha, who described how his region had invested in the purchase of livestock, which are cared for collectively by members from each community on a rotational basis. “The goal of this work,” said Alex, “is that the donations to the Council are not misspent on any old necessity. That’s why we had the idea to form a regional collective so that one day we would have a way to sustain ourselves, and not have to wait for some NGO to give projects to the Council of Good Government.”

A word about gender equality in the Zapatista organization. One of the four textbooks was dedicated to the participation of women in the autonomous governments. To encourage women to participate, the Zapatistas from each community as well as their government representatives host assemblies to discuss the importance of women’s participation. They also have the long-term strategy of providing equal education, because many adult women never had the chance to go to school and do not know how to read, write, or do the math required to maintain financial accountability.

The challenges to female participation range from Zapatista men who do not allow their wives or daughters to work outside the home, to women who refuse to take government posts, arguing that they are are incapable or illiterate, or out of worry that their family will not be able to cook, wash, or perform other traditional women’s tasks. Some women leave government posts when they marry.

However, given the depth and generational momentum of traditional culture (something which, in many cases, the Zapatistas seek to maintain), the progress that the Zapatistas have made in gender equality over the last thirty years, while incomplete, is impressive. My guardian was an exemplary Zapatista compañero who cooks, cleans, and encourages his wife to participate, learn and travel. (Not that she needs much encouragement. After meeting her, it is easy to see that she would never have married a machista.)

How to Sharpen a Machete

The first morning of work, I learned to sharpen a machete. Unfortunately, since I learned to sharpen the machete before I learned to wield it, I promptly sliced my finger open.. When my guardian returned with a bandage (after picking the leaves off a plant that helps blood clot), we sat and chatted. This was the first moment when Rodolfo and Jorge began to ask me about myself. When I explained that I travel and write about the US influence in Latin America, they began to comment on US-based transnational companies, neoliberalism, and GMO crops.

The Zapatistas see social movements worldwide as relevant to one another, as part of a global capitalist system, and yet they understand each community and each movement as internally independent. When I asked them if they had anything in particular to say to a US citizen, they both said “no.” With prodding, they explained that everyone had to make their own movement. At the same time, they said, the Zapatista struggle is for the whole world. As the Zapatista phrase goes, they fight for “a world of many worlds.”

The next day, when we were taking a break to drink pozol in the corn fields, Rodolfo taught me to say “let’s drink pozol” in his native language, tojolabal. Wah kuti pichi, I repeated. Then he looked at me and asked, “do you know why we drink pozol together?” I could think of many answers to this question, but I had no idea what sort of answer he was anticipating.

“We drink pozol together,” Rodolfo said, “because in the Zapatista struggle, we do everything as a collective. Nobody in the organization gets more or less. To drink pozol by yourself in a group is individualist.” This sudden statement by Rodolfo took my understanding of Zapatista equality to another level. Of course, many people talk about equality and sharing and community cooperation. But what might seem to many to be an unnecessary degree of sharing was natural and matter of fact for Rodolfo and Jorge. When the Zapatistas say they practice a value, they mean it.

Undoubtedly, the most striking lesson to be taken from observing the Zapatistas at work, is that they work hard. They work very very hard. And that is why they have been able to build and maintain their movement, their resistance, and their independence. Men and women start working long before the sun comes up, and when they finish the work required to support their family, they participate in collective work projects to raise money for their community’s medicine or the transportation costs of their government representatives. Or they work the fields or cook the meals for families whose members are spending their time as health promoters, teachers, or Council members.

The Escuelita taught that the members of a civil resistance movement must not only work hard, but they must understand why they work hard. In thee case of the Zapatistas, if they do not support their own medical system, educational system, or justice system, then they will depend on the Mexican government for those services. And for two hundred years, the Mexican government has failed to provide those services or used them to control and manipulate the population. The average Zapatista understands this, talks about it, and works hard because of it.

A Walk around the Block

One afternoon, my guardian and host father took me on a tour of the Zapatista buildings in their town. Rosario Río Blanco has a local store, a regional store, a school and a health clinic. In the health clinic, the health promoter provided an example of the importance of long-term planning, skill-sharing and patience in the Zapatista organization.

A mural of subcomandante Marcos on a wall at La Realidad. PHOTO DR 2013 Alex Mensing
Little by little, the Zapatistas have named community members to be trained as health promoters. Initially, external volunteers with medical experience trained Zapatistas, but as they gain experience, the new health promoters are able to train others, and in this manner they have trained enough people to have general practitioners in each community.

The Zapatista government held an assembly and determined 47 important factors for improving the health of the population, and now that there are enough practitioners, after years of training, they have begun to address those 47 factors in all Zapatista communities at the same time. But rather than trying to work on all factors at once, they chose ten basic factors to address this year, in 2013. The factors include personal hygiene, the use of dining tables and proper storage of firewood and dishes, etc.

By holding local assemblies and by visiting each household to help make sure they are implementing the improvements, the health promoters have already begun to see dramatic reductions in illness. But the organizational development required years of long-term planning and widespread training and skill-sharing.

Another important principle in the development of Zapatista autonomous government, which the health and education promoters embodied, is that you just have to start doing something even when you feel unprepared. In the case nearly all Zapatista government representatives, teachers, and doctors, they began playing their role with little to no experience. But by maintaining a healthy culture of cooperation, reflection, and periodic self-evaluation and critique, groups of individuals have been able to improve their skills in accordance with local circumstances and challenges. Learning from experience, in the end, has helped the Zapatistas to build a system that fits their own needs.


Conclusion

As I said goodbye to my guardian and thanked him, his reaction taught me one last lesson in Zapatista organization. When I acknowledged the difficulty of translating and thanked him for his effort, (he translated between tojolabal and Spanish for me), he replied simply that it was his job, and that everyone in the organization had done their part to make the Escuelita happen. Many students experienced this. The Zapatistas see their movement as a collective effort, and while each individual is responsible for their role, they do not take personal ownership over the successes of the organization. Social movements must share responsibilities and skills in order to achieve their objectives. Accordingly, the Zapatistas shared the credit for their accomplishments.

The audience pays attention during the final presentation announcing the end of the first “Escuelita Zapatista”. PHOTO DR 2013 Alex Mensing
The Zapatistas invited people to come to their escuelita so that they would go back to their own communities, their own worlds, and organize social movements to fight against neoliberalism, against oppression, against the commercialization of people and of the earth. But the escuelita was not structured as a series of workshops, and was not intended to provide a blueprint for revolution. And most of the students I spoke with afterwards didn’t percieve the escuelita that way. In fact, many said that they already knew many of the things that were explicitly taught at the Escuelita.

What the escuelita Zapatista provided its students, above all, was immersion in a world where autonomy isn’t just talked about, it is lived. They saw in action the principles they had read about online and in pamphlets. They tasted the hard work and discipline required to build effective resistance to a powerful system. They spoke face to face with people who had suffered and persevered, looking them in the eye as they told stories of repression that few had ever come anywhere close to experiencing.

The real training, the real workshops, the real blueprints, must be built outside Zapatista territory. The students must become the teachers. They must design their own strategies for approaching autonomy, liberty, and justice; strategies that maneuver around the obstacles of their own worlds, which are inevitably quite different from the highlands of Chiapas, but which arrive at the same fundamental values. It remains to be seen, then, what role the Escuelita Zapatista will play as its first class of students make their way back to their places of oppression… err, origin.

DON'T GET "LEFT BEHIND?" WELL, BILL DOES...

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My old friend Bill Berkowitz suggested I start a Scission Culture Mondays section.  I think I will give it a shot and in his honor start with a "sort of" cultural commentary which he wrote.  You will want to read it or you may get left behind.

As if once wasn't enough...

It comes from BuzzFlash.


Rebooting the Rapture: Will Nick Cage Resurrect the "Left Behind" Series?


BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

jesusteachWithout warning, millions of people around the globe simply vanish. All that remains are their clothes and belongings ... and an overwhelming sense of terror. The vanishings cause unmanned vehicles to crash and burn. Emergency forces everywhere are devastated. Gridlock, riots and looting overrun the cities. And there is no one to help or provide answers. In an instant, the earth has been plunged into darkness...This is the story of the Rapture, the story of those LEFT BEHIND.

– Synopsis, "Left Behind"

Feeling that moviegoers didn't get their full bang for their buck the first time around, Cloud Ten Pictures is rebooting "Left Behind." According to leftbehindmovie.com, the "Left Behind" reboot, "will focus on the hours immediately following the rapture," but it won't "cover everything that the first book includes." if an amped-up "Left Behind" is successful at the box office, will more servings of the bestselling "Left Behind" series of End Times novels be green-lighted?

Since the public can't seem to get enough of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic movies, it will be interesting to see how it responds to a souped up remake – bigger budget, celebrity actors, and a theatrical release -- of "Left Behind," a film based on Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' series of 16 wildly popular and mega-bestselling End Times/Rapture-ready novels. Total sales for the series surpassed 65 million, and in 1998, four "Left Behind" books occupied the top four places on The New York Times bestseller list.

The Christian Post reported that Paul Lalonde, the founder and CEO of Cloud Ten Pictures, which released the first film adaption of "Left Behind," is the producer and writer of the reboot (along with John Patus). According to the Christian Post, they said they were remaking the film in order "to give it the blockbuster treatment many fans had felt the original version deserved."

"... I've spent 24 years producing Christian-themed TV, films and documentaries that were made specifically for a Christian audience. Preaching to the choir so to speak," Lalonde told The Christian Post via email. "It has always been my goal to produce a big-budget version of 'Left Behind' that would appeal to a wider audience. The resources to do this exist now where they didn't back in 2000."

Academy Award-winning actor Nicholas Cage is heading up the cast for the remake, which is currently being shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Track star and U.S. bobsledder Lolo Jones, popular recording artist and 2007 winner of American Idol, Jordin Sparks, and actors Chad Michael Murray and Nicky Whelan are also listed as cast members.

According to nola.com, Cage will play repentant Ray Steele, "the series' born-again protagonist.""Left Behind," which is being produced by Stoney Lake Entertainment and will be distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films, is being directed by Vic Armstrong, "the legendary stunt coordinator and second-unit director who boasts screen credits dating to the 1960s and including work on everything from 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' and the James Bond film 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' to 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,''Superman' and 'The Amazing Spider-Man.'"

Between 1995 and 2007, LaHaye and Jenkins, produced 16 books in their "Left Behind" series, published by Tyndale House; three movies -- "Left Behind: The Movie" and "Left Behind: Tribulation Force," and "Left Behind: World at War"; and, the video game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" and its three sequels, "Left Behind: Tribulation Forces,""Left Behind 3: Rise of the Antichrist," and "Left Behind 4: World at War."

Writing for Salon in 2002, Michelle Goldberg, the author of "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism," pointed out that "The Left Behind series provides a narrative and a theological rationale for a whole host of perplexing conservative policies, from the White House's craven decision to cut off aid to the United Nations Family Planning Fund to America's surreally casual mobilization for an invasion of Baghdad — a city that is, in the Left Behind books, Satan's headquarters."

"On one level," Goldberg wrote, "the attraction of the Left Behind books isn't that much different from that of, say, Tom Clancy or Stephen King. The plotting is brisk and the characterizations Manichean. People disappear and things blow up. Revelation is, after all, supremely creepy, which is why it gets so much play in horror flicks from 'Rosemary's Baby' to 'End of Days.'"

The election of Barack Obama in 2008, allowed "Left Behind" devotees to reinforce their beliefs, as many conservative Christians saw Obama as the Antichrist.

The "Left Behind" books became a cultural phenomena, and in 2004, Newsweek ran a cover story featuring LaHaye and Jenkins. The story, which described the "Left Behind" co-authors as "an odd couple," pointed out that they were "arguably, the most successful literary partnership of all time. And if you define success in worldly terms, you can drop the 'arguably.'"

According to Newsweek, "Their Biblical techno-thrillers about the end of the world are currently outselling Stephen King, John Grisham and every other pop novelist in America. It's old-time religion with a sci-fi sensibility: the Tribulation timetable comes from LaHaye; the cell phones, Land Rovers--and characters struggling with belief and unbelief--come from Jenkins. And their contrasting sensibilities suggest the complexities of the entire evangelical movement, often seen as monolithic."

"Tim LaHaye isn't merely a fringe figure like Hal Lindsey, the former king of the genre, whose 1970 Christian end-times book 'The Late Great Planet Earth' was the bestseller of that decade," Michelle Goldberg wrote. Not only was he "[t]he former co-chairman of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign, [he] was a member of the original board of directors of the Moral Majority and an organizer of the Council for National Policy, which ABCNews.com has called 'the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of.'"

In 2011, Dustin Rowles of Pajiba.com compiled a list of "The 20 Most Successful Christian-Themed Films of All Time." At the top of the list was Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ," followed by three movies based on C.S. Lewis books, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,""The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," and "The Nativity Story" rounded out the top five. Holding down the 18th spot was "Left Behind," which brought in a little over $4 million at the box office.

In the FAQ section at leftbehindmovie.com, one question is: "How closely will the new 'Left Behind' movie follow the books?" The answer: "The 'Left Behind' reboot will focus on the hours immediately following the rapture. It will not cover everything that the first book includes, but will be more specifically concentrated on those first few hours and the chaos of the world in the wake of millions of people vanishing with no explanation."

If movie goers respond to what Cloud Ten Pictures promises to be a more visually thrilling and electrifying reboot, might Left Behind 2, 3, 4, etc. be green lighted?

As Michelle Goldberg noted, you can "ignore 'Left Behind,' or chuckle at its over-the-top Christian kitsch," but "keep in mind, though, that for some of the most powerful people in the world, this stuff isn't melodrama. It's prophecy."

(Photo: Harry Kossuth)

COLOMBIA RISING

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Well, it is certainly going on in Colombia where the multitudes have had enough nonsense for a lifetime.  Everyone from farmers to teachers to healthcare workers to miners to truckers have been on strike and protesting for a while now.  Hundreds of thousands are out protesting the government for its trade and agricultural polices, for the price of gas and fertilizer, for crop subsidies...and more.  


Colombia Reports tells us who is striking and why:




Health workers



Health workers are striking against recent health sector reforms passed by Congress.


“We have exhausted the tracks of dialogue and therefore define the realization of a strike from August 19 to press the government to try and hear both our demands and aspirations,” Hector Gaviria Alviz, President of the national trade union of workers and public health (ANTHOC) told Colombia Reports.


MORE: Colombia’s health workers join farmers, miners and coffee growers in strikeAccording to the unionist, the health workers “wish to remove the economic concept of health and ensure that the service be provided directly by public hospitals and municipal authorities” instead of corruption-ridden health care providers that fail to pay hospitals on time.

Alviz additionally claimed that current health workers at present have no economic stability “as they are hired to work for two, three or maybe four months only.”

According to the unionist, recent legislation passed by congress only “increases instability among health workers,” added Alviz.

Coffee Farmers

Coffee farmers are striking because the sector claim that subsidies promised by the government to compensate for falling international coffee prices has never reached farmers.

In march the government agreed to pay coffee farmers a subsidy known as the Grower Ingress Protection, which guarantees that they will not lose money with the fluctuation in grain prices.

The production costs of coffee are between $335 and $365, while its market price is approximately $245. The subsidy of $85 promised by the government barely compensates for the loss.

Vicor Correa, one of the coffee strikes organizers, told Colombia Reports however that such subsidies have “not made it to the farmers yet.”

Truckers

Truckers are striking against high gasoline prices.
In February the government raised the price of fuel by 6%, resulting in a strike by the truckers. After no reduction in fuel costs, the truckers have decided to continue demonstrations.

MORE: Colombia truckers go on strike

The president of Colfecar (Colombia’s road freighters union) Jaime Sorzano said that constant increases in fuel prices have “become intolerable and unsustainable.”
The price per gallon of gasoline is now $4.82 in Bogota. The share of an average wage to the price of gas puts Colombia in the top 10 of Bloomberg’s “pain at the pump” rankings.

“This hike has no purpose and is not in [step] with the quality of infrastructure…[the] quality of roads, the expensive tolls and the price of diesel and biodiesel,” said Sorzano.

The union leader said that approximately 34 percent of truckers’ costs is fuel, so with each increase the business becomes less profitable.
University teachers

University teachers are striking over the government’s alleged failure to honor agreements made after earlier strikes this year.

In an interview with Colombia Reports, FECODE Secretary General Rafael Cuello Ramirez detailed the issues at stake.

“Last May 21, we signed an act of agreement with the Education Ministry; those terms, however, have been delayed by the national government, specifically the Minister of Education. We agreed on a text, and it was written, but the spirit of what was agreed to hasn’t come to fruition,” said Ramirez.

The most blaring inconsistency has to do with the state’s allegedly continued delinquency on the sizable debts it owes its education employees.

“Today, the [Education] Ministry’s debt to retired pension and benefits funds exceeds $49 million…we’re asking the government to open up just $1.7 million in the budget it is supposed to pass October 31 to go toward the amortization of its debt,” added Ramirez.

One of the more pressing concerns for FECODE regarding the government’s faulty debt payments is the financial welfare of education employees whose contracts have been terminated, in many cases because of cost-cutting measures.

“Right now we have been notified of 15,000 severances but do not have the money to pay any of the teachers [their severance packages].”

Miners

Miners have been striking since July 17 demanding the repeal of a decree that orders for the destruction of machinery used in the informal, and according to the law illegal mining industry.

Stella Luz Ramirez, executive director of the Confederation of Colombian miners justified the strike, stating “the national government has failed us twice. On July 25 last year we agreed not to strike because the government pledged to improve conditions in the sector, but they once again broke their word. This time, we will not yield.”

Miners are seeking the repeal of decree 2235 of 2012, which authorizes the destruction of machinery used in exploration of minerals without legal authorization.
Ramirez argues however, that the decree “violates due process and the right to self defense” as it has led to the destruction of materials used in the informal mining industry.

Miners have called for the government to create a law, clearly differentiating between informal, and illegal mining.

Rice growers

Rice growers are striking as the government has failed to respond to their letters, in which they have put forward a four point plan that they feel could bring the sector out of its current state of crisis.

The rice farmers’ four main propositions are as follows:

  • Prices: The first point that the farmers are claiming is related to establishing new base prices per field, per year, which, according to producers, would allow them to judge how much each harvest would make and how much to sow.
  • Control of imports: Another demand is that the government shut off the importation of rice from the United States and Andean Community Nations (CAN) such as Peru and Ecuador due to the increase that they say internal demand has on prices.
  • Contraband: In addition to these imports, rice farmers point to contraband as a factor in the sector’s troubles. More stringent border control from the government is called for to stem the entry of contraband rice into Colombia.
  • Modernization: Finally the farmers are asking for resources in order to modernize, in particular, machinery for the post-harvesting process.

Sugar cane cutters

Sugar cane cutters want to be directly hired for the companies that they work for.

Prior to the reform of Colombian labor law in 1990, this was the case. The legislation however, allowed for the sub-contracting of work through labor intermediaries which severed the relationship between employee and employer.

Jhonsson Torres, Vice President of Sinalcorteros (sugar cane union) explained the impact of the legislation.

“The law ended labor stability for workers. This was when the plantations took advantage and removed the cane cutters from collective bargaining agreements. We became contractors,” said Torres. “My father made good money. We lost all that.”

Putumayo peasants

Putumayo peasants are striking because they disapprove of the governments manual eradication of coca in the region.

Many of Putumayo’s peasants grow coca as they say it is they're only means of economic income.

Without adequate alternative development plans in place, the destruction of coca crops in the region leaves the peasants with no viable source of income, they say.

Whoa, that is a bag full of unhappy folks who ain't wanting to take it no more.


Colombia’s national miners union (CONALMINERCOL) announced Tuesday it will be lifting its national work stoppage after nearly two months of nationwide strikes.  According to Colombia Reports:



The exact details of the deal are set to be released by CONALMINERCOL leaders Tuesday afternoon, but Ramirez said it will only prove effective in dealing with the ongoing struggles of Colombia’s independent mining sector if the government follows through on its promises.


“We are here in part because the government refused to honor its word,” said Ramirez. “If you study each of the protest movements, that is the common theme. Everyone had deals with the government, and the government refused to fulfill its promises. We have provided oversight measures to ensure the government’s compliance with our [most recent] deal, but we have no way of knowing if they will work or not.”



With the formal resignation of the 16 presidential cabinet ministers, senior advisers and secretaries on Monday, the government is trying to send a message to the public that it is dealing with the severe crisis that erupted in recent weeks, according to El Tiempo newspaper.

Earlier today it was announced that four Colombian soliders who had been taken captive while trying to infiltrate the protests have been released.  NTN24 writes:


According to farmers protesting in the area, the alleged infiltration of the protest movement by the Colombia Army soldiers was aimed at creating instability and violence.



The troops' release comes after three local officials were detained by protesters in Antioquia and then later released the same day over the weekend.

A group of Canadian organizations, NGOs and unions released a statement yesterday in support of the strikers and condeming the repression activists have met from security forces.

We the undersigned organizations stand in solidarity with Colombian rural peasant farmers who along with other members of civil society, including miners, teachers, medical professionals, transport workers, and students have undertaken nationwide strikes. This past weekend an estimated 200,000 people blocked roads and marched peacefully across Colombia to protest the negative impacts on their communities of the U.S.-Colombia and Europe- Colombia Free Trade Agreements.

There is a growing discontent with Free Trade Agreements that benefit only large multinational corporations and impose privatization, deregulation and anti-union policies. President Juan Manuel Santos government’s economic policy known as “locomotora minero-energetica” is promoting the development of large scale mining and resource extraction in the hands of multinational corporations many of which will benefit Canadian companies like Pacific Rubiales Energy and Gran Colombia Gold at the expense of small scale local miners and workers.


We condemn the heavy handed tactics of the riot police who have used violence in the form of beatings, arrests and tear gas on peaceful protests in an effort to crackdown on civil society. Civil society is also condemning the targeted arrests and detention of peasant and labor leaders like Mr. Ballesteros, the Vice President of the Agricultural workers union, FENSUAGRO who was recently elected to the Executive Board of the trade union central CUT. Mr. Ballesteros is an organizer and spokesperson in the labour movement and has played a significant role in the current strikes.


We are also alarmed by the irresponsible comments of Colombia’s Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon who claimed that the striking workers are being controlled by "terrorist” groups.


We support civil society calls for President Juan Manuel Santos to guarantee the democratic right for peaceful protests and to establish a meaningful dialogue with striking sectors that will allow their demands to be met.
Bolivarian Circle Louis Riel
British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF)
Christian Peacemaker Teams Colombia
Common Frontiers
Comité pour les droits humains en Amérique latine
Council of Canadians
Idle No More
The Colombia Action Solidarity Alliance (CASA)
The Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Network (LACSN)
United Steelworkers (USW)

The following report is from the Alliance for Global Justice is a few days old but informative.







Brutal Repression of National Strike in Colombia-Santos Declares Militarization of Bogotá

by James Jordan



Colombian Armed Forces have brutally attacked members of the “Paro Agrario” National Farmers and Popular Strike, with at least four to five persons dead and reports of hundreds wounded. Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos, dismissing strikers as vandals, has ordered the militarization of the capital city of Bogotá and places throughout the country, vowing to deploy 50,000 soldiers. Santos accused the popular peace movement, the Marcha Patriótica (Patriotic March) of fomenting the violence, saying, “We know the Marcha Patriótica seeks nothing but a situation without exit to impose its own agenda. The interests of the peasants don’t mean anything to them, nor do regional accords: the only thing that matters is their political agenda.” What Santos does not seem to understand is that the Marcha Patriótica is largely made up of peasant groups, including Colombia’s largest agricultural union, FENSUAGRO. The fact that Marcha Patriótica leaders have been chosen to represent strikers, and the widespread participation in the strike itself, both expose the lie of Santos’ declaration.


The national strike was called following attacks against peaceful protesters in the Catatumbo region, which set off a national movement. Demands include popular participation in the peace process, an end to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that threaten the livelihoods of family farmers and workers, and government fulfillment of unkept promises for infrastructure development and Peasant Reserve Zones in rural areas.


Starting around mid-afternoon on Thursday, August 29, 2013, violent crack downs on protesters were carried out by ESMAD, the Colombian riot police, in Bogotá. Eyewitnesses told us ESMAD attacked demonstrators with bricks and tear gas. Telesur reports 89 wounded in the city and in a more recent report by Ecuador’s El Comercio, the number was raised to 200. Similar events were unfolding in cities and departments throughout Colombia, including Tolima, Meta, Guaviare, Antioquia and elsewhere. Radio Caracol lists five persons killed, including two in Bogotá, one in Soacha (a Bogotá suburb), one in Coyaima, Tolima, and one in Rionegro, Antioquia. FENSUAGRO reports two farmers killed and four wounded in Tolima. El Espectador also published photos documenting police attacks against journalists covering the strike in Medellin, and FENSUAGRO has informed us of attacks in Bogotá against reporters for Contagio radio.


The Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) is especially distressed to hear about the arrests in Tolima of Jailer Gonzalezand Maribel Oviedo, with whom we visited in both our last delegations to Colombia. Jailer is the President of ASTRACATOL, the Tolima affiliate of FENSUAGRO, and Maribel is the Educational Secretary. In 2011 the Colombian Armed Forces illegally apprehended Jailer. He was released only after a campaign of national and international pressure. In March of this year, Maribel was threatened with execution by members of the Colombian military who held her hostage in a farm house for two days. Before her cell phone was confiscated, she was able to alert community members about her situation. When we visited Maribel in April, she also credited national and international intervention for her safe release. Jailer and Maribel are husband and wife, with two daughters, one an infant. We are very concerned for the entire family during this difficult time.


I spoke to July Henriquez, a lawyer for the Lazos de Dignidad (Links of Dignity) organization who provide support for Colombian political prisoners, and for ASTRACATOL. I wanted to ask for more information about Jailer and Maribel. However, at the moment I contacted her, she was in the streets of Bogotá and told me that national strike supporters were under attack. She reported that, “At this moment we are in a critical situation in Bogotá. Since 2pm, the police have been committing abuses against the protesters from the National Farmers Strike and damaging the property of downtown residents.”


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An international labor activist living in the area, who asked to remain anonymous, described “…a scene of utter chaos. I was observing in the march all day. ESMAD was extremely aggressive. A lot of people were arrested. This is particularly worrying because most of the human rights organizations and lawyers are in the field in verification missions and so on….I witnessed ESMAD throwing bricks into a crowd of mostly nonviolent protestors, with representatives of the mayor’s administration and the ombudsman’s office dodging them. I also saw quite a few crowds of totally peaceful protestors getting gassed by mobile police units on motorcycles.”


These attacks are the latest in a series of harsh actions taken by the state against growing protests 0010091470around the nation. Peasant farmers are demanding the government honor agreements to protect their farms by establishing Peasant Reserve Zones and building basic infrastructure for rural areas, such as good schools, roads to get crops to market, support for crop substitution to replace coca cultivation, and basic health facilities.


We at AfGJ are especially concerned because of the targeting of FENSUAGRO, the Marcha Patriotica, and the strikers’ chosen representatives in negotiations with the government. The arrest of Hubert Ballesteros was a major blow to the entire process for peace.[Click here to send an email demanding his release.] He is Vice President of FENSUAGRO and a member of the Executive Committee of the United Workers Center (CUT), Colombia’s largest labor federation (which includes FENSUAGRO). Hubert is one of ten primary negotiators for the national strike. More than that, he is an adamant supporter of just peace through negotiations. I first met Hubert in 2009 when he helped organized one of AfGJ’s delegations. In several discussions Hubert repeatedly told us two things that Colombians were asking of us in the United States: to end support for war and repression in Colombia; and to advocate for a peace process based on dialogue including not only the armed actors, but all the people. Hubert was arrested on August 26th and charged with “Aggravated Rebellion”.


The crackdown has been difficult for the embattled ASTRACATOL union in Tolima. In May, Guillermo Cano was arrested and charged with “Rebellion”. He is the Human Rights Coordinator for ASTRACATOL, and a member of the FENSUAGRO Executive Committee. He was arrested, along with eight other activists from ASTRACATOL and the Tolima Marcha Patriótica, just days after attending a United Nations forum on popular participation in the peace process. By removing ASTRACATOL’s President, Human Rights Coordinator and Educational Secretary, the representation of Tolima’s peasant farmers and agricultural workers is seriously compromised.


For Fensuagro nationally, it is the same situation. Since the 2011 installation of the Marcha Patriótica, there has been a spike in arrests and assaults of Fensuagro and other Marcha leaders. Aggressions against rural human rights defenders are at a ten year high, and forced displacement has risen by 83%. It is clear that the Santos Administration is trying to break Fensuagro, the Marcha Patriotica, the national strike and the entire agrarian movement.


The United States is continuing policies that encourage state violence and violations of basic human, labor and civil rights, having spent more than $8 billion on Plan Colombia, the US sponsored war plan. The US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and active support for Colombia’s integration into NATO show that the White House is less interested in peace than in rewarding displacement and brutality when it advances corporate interests. By jailing farmers, workers and peace and justice activists, the Colombian government is systematically removing those who stand in the way of further acquisitions of resources and profits for big landowners and transnational corporations.


This coming Wednesday, September 4th, 2013, is the first anniversary of the Colombian government accord with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) that began the current peace process. It is interesting that at the same time that Santos was ordering attacks on protests around the country, that the FARC released a statement calling for a bilateral cease fire for the upcoming 2014 elections.

What you can do:

  • September 4th is SOLIDARITY WITH COLOMBIAN FARMER/LABOR DAY! It is also the first anniversary of the beginning of the peace process between the Colombian government and guerrillas. We are asking people to jam the Colombian Embassy and Consulates with calls demanding an end to repression of the national strike and for the immediate liberty of the unionists and peasant leaders Hubert Ballesteros, Jailer Gonzales and Maribel Oviedo. We are further urging people to contact their Representatives and ask them to act to suspend the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and to end all aid to Colombia until these three are freed and the repression has ended.

CALL THE COLOMBIAN EMBASSY:  202-387-8338 Fax: 202-232 8643

SYRIA: SAYING "NO US INTERVENTION" IS NOT SAYING ENOUGH

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While working out today, I was watching the Congressional  Committee hearings on a possible US military response to chemical weapons use in Syria.  Interesting, but nothing more.  

Like apparently most people I am horrified by the use of gas, but less then thrilled with a unilateral bombing attack by the United States.  That said.  I believe there are other options, or perhaps it would be better to say, there should be better options.  I also believe that those of us on the left, those of us who call ourselves progressives, Marxists, anarchists, anti-war activists, etc. could and should say more than just that we are opposed to a unilateral US military strike. It is important to say that, but it isn't enough.  It is important for people like me to also state up front that we support the multitude of working people in Syria, as everywhere, in their struggle against Empire, the local State and government, and all the rest of the players within global capital.  We support revolution and the creation of a new world entirely at all times and everywhere.  However, that, too, is not always enough and certainly not immediate enough.

So what other options are there?

The other day I got to thinking about this and tried to come up with some other option in situations like this.  Before I lay it out here, I will state up front, there is a lot that would be easily criticized with my suggestion.  In fact, my suggestion probably makes more sense as a goal for the future, if it makes sense at all.  However, one of the reasons for this is merely to get us, you and I,  to think about these things in more than just a knee jerk way.  I am going to go out on a limb here and actually make a concrete suggestion, a dangerous thing to do sometimes on the left.  However, I have my reasons and I invite comments and criticisms.  I invite your concrete ideas though, not just empty rhetoric and critiques.  Here is what I wrote on my facebook page:

Thinking aloud here about Syria and similar situations.


There should exist some way for the WORLD to respond to this sort of shit. I, however, don't kmow what that is. Perhaps, the International Court of Criminal Justice should have a military arm. If anyone does anything, perhaps, the first step beyond simple, and often useless diplomacy, could be declaring certain areas within Syria, probably near a border, should be declared a safe haven for refugees and defended by air power (which stated right up front will be used in the event of any intrusions), and if possible some group of peacekeepers from Norway or China or Spain or Senegal, or Vietnam, or S. Africa, or somewhere...rather then just a senseless bombing run. Meanwhile, rather then just presenting the evidence to the UN, it should be presented to like the Arab League, ASEAN, the OAU. Like many, I am weary of the world just turning away while atrocities of all kinds are committed. I also understand the horror of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, but for the dead, I am not sure they care all that much if it is a chemical weapon, a bomb, an artillery strike, or a bullet. In Syria alone, how many hundreds of thousands of non combatant dead without Chemical weapons is too much.


Notice also that my proposal does not even rely on proving who used the chemical weapons, merely that they were used. The warning about messing with the safe havens would also apply to everyone. It also makes irrelevant USA (or anyone else's) past actions. The only thing that matters is here and now...

Perhaps, in a more ideal world, the safe havens themselves could become autonomous zones, similar to what the Zapatistas have created, where people could learn and create a whole new way of living together, governing themselves, and creating a new world (see for example, http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-world-where-autonomy-isnt-just-talked.html).


Okay, that said, I would love to hear other ideas and, again, I realize there are a number of problems with the above scenario.

The post below is a statement of a number of groups scattered around the middle east and north Africa about the overall situation in Syria and which makes a clear statement that all of the discussions, well most of them, going on today miss the point entirely.  I post it to remind US that there are "good guys" out there.  I post this to remind US that we can remain true to our principles in these situations and we don't have to choose between two sets of bad actors.  We don't have to choose between the Empire, fundamentalist religious reactionaries, tin horn dictators, the USA, this State or that State.  The following is from Europe solidaire sans frontieres.




STATEMENT ON SYRIA
We Stand Behind the Syrian People’s Revolution - No to Foreign Intervention Sunday 1 September 2013


Over 150 thousand were killed, hundreds of thousands injured and disabled, millions of people displaced inside and outside Syria. Cities, villages, and neighborhoods were destroyed fully or partially, using all sorts of weapons, including warplanes, scud missiles, bombs, and tanks, all paid for by the sweat and blood of the Syrian people. This was under the pretext of defending the homeland and achieving military balance with Israel (whose occupation of Syrian land is, in fact, being protected by the Syrian regime, which failed to reply to any of its continuing aggressions).

Yet, despite the enormous losses mentioned above, befalling all Syrians, and the calamity inflicted on them, no international organization or major country – or a lesser one – felt the need to provide practical solidarity or support the Syrians in their struggle for their most basic rights, human dignity, and social justice.

The only exception was some Gulf countries, more specifically Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, their aim was to control the nature of the conflict and steer it in a sectarian direction, distorting the Syrian revolution and aiming to abort it, as a reflection of their deepest fear that the revolutionary flame will reach their shores. So they backed obscurantist takfiri groups, coming, for the most part, from the four corners of the world, to impose a grotesque vision for rule based on Islamic sharia. These groups were engaged, time and time again, in terrifying massacres against Syrian citizens who opposed their repressive measures and aggressions inside areas under their control or under attack, such as the recent example of villages in the Latakia countryside.

A large block of hostile forces, from around the world, is conspiring against the Syrian people’s revolution, which erupted in tandem with the uprisings spreading through a large section of the Arab region and the Maghreb for the past three years. The people’s uprisings aimed to put an end to a history of brutality, injustice, and exploitation and attain the rights to freedom, dignity, and social justice.

However, this did not only provoke local brutal dictatorships, but also most of the imperialist forces seeking to perpetuate the theft of the wealth of our people, in addition to the various reactionary classes and forces throughout those areas and in surrounding countries.

As for Syria, the alliance fighting against the people’s revolution comprises a host of reactionary sectarian forces, spearheaded by Iran and confessional militias in Iraq, and, to much regret, Hezbollah’s strike force, which is drowning in the quagmire of defending a profoundly corrupt and criminal dictatorial regime.

This unfortunate situation has also struck a major section of the traditional Arab left with Stalinist roots, whether in Syria itself or in Lebanon, Egypt, and the rest of the Arab region – and worldwide – which is clearly biased towards the wretched alliance surrounding the Assad regime. The justification is that some see it as a “resilient” or even a “resistance” regime, despite its long history – throughout its existence in power – of protecting the Zionist occupation of the Golan Heights, its constant bloody repression of various groups resisting Israel, be it Palestinian or Lebanese (or Syrian), and remaining idle and subservient, since the October 1973 war, concerning Israel’s aggressions on Syrian territories. This bias will have serious ramifications on ordinary Syrians’ position regarding the left in general.

The United Nations and the Security Council, in particular, was unable to condemn the crimes of a regime, which the Syrian people rejected continuously and peacefully for more than seven months, while the bullets of the snipers and shabbiha took demonstrators one by one and day after day and while the most influential activists were being detained and subjected to the worst kinds of torture and elimination in the prisons and detention centers. All the while, the world remained completely silent and in a state of total negativity.

The situation persisted with small difference after the people in revolution decided to take up arms and the emergence of what became known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) – whose command and soldiers came, to a large extent, from the regular army. This led to the horrific escalation of crimes by the regime.

Russian imperialism, the most important ally of the Baathist regime in Damascus, which provides it with all sorts of support, remains on the lookout to block any attempt to condemn those crimes in the Security Council. The United States, on the other hand, does not find a real problem in the continuation of the status quo, with all the apparent repercussions and destruction of the country. This is despite the threats and intimidation utilized by the US president, every time someone in the opposition raises the question of the use of chemical weapons by the regime, up until the latest escalation, when it was considered crossing a “red line.”

It is clear that Obama, who gives the impression that he will go ahead with his threats, would have felt great embarrassment if he did not do so, since it will not only impact negatively on the president, but also on the image of the mighty and arrogant state that he leads in the eyes of subservient Arab countries and the entire world.

The imminent strike against the Syrian armed forces is led by the US in essence. However, it occurs with the understanding and cooperation of allied imperialist countries, even without rationalizing it through the usual farce, known as international legitimacy (namely the decisions of the UN, which was and remains representative of the interests of major powers, whether in conflict or in alliance, depending on the circumstances, differences, and balances among them). In other words, the strike will not wait for the Security Council due to the anticipated Russian-Chinese veto.

Unfortunately, many in the Syrian opposition are gambling on this strike and the US position in general. They believe this would create an opportunity for them to seize power, skipping over the movement and of the masses and their independent decision. It should not be a surprise, then, that the representatives of this opposition and the FSA had no reservations on providing information to the US about proposed targets for the strike.

In all cases, we agree on the following: The western imperialist alliance will strike several positions and vital parts of the military and civilian infrastructure in Syria (with several casualties, as usual). However, as it was keen to announce, the strikes will not be meant to topple the regime. They are merely intended to punish, in Obama’s words, the current Syrian leadership and save face for the US administration, after all the threats concerning the use of chemical weapons. The US president’s intentions to punish the Syrian leadership does not stem, in any way or form, from Washington’s solidarity with the suffering of children who fell in the Ghouta massacres, but from its commitment to what Obama calls the vital interests of the US and its homeland security, in addition to Israel’s interests and security. The Syrian army and its regional allies, led by the Iranian regime, will not have enough courage, most probably, to fulfil what seemed to be threats by their senior officials that any western attack on Syria will ignite the entire region. But this option remains on the table, as a final option with catastrophic results. The imminent western imperialist assault does not intend to support the Syrian revolution in any way. It will aim to push Damascus into the bargaining table and allow Bashar al-Assad to retreat from the foreground, but keeping the regime in place, while greatly improving conditions to strengthen the position of US imperialism in the future Syria against Russian imperialism. The more those participating in the continuing popular mobilization – who are more aware, principled, and dedicated to the future of Syria and its people – realize these facts, their consequences, results, and act accordingly, the more this will contribute to aiding the Syrian people to successfully pick a true revolutionary leadership. In the process of a committed struggle based on the current and future interests of their people, this would produce a radical program consistent with those interests, which could be promoted and put into practice on the road to victory.

No to all forms of imperialist intervention, whether by the US or Russia.

No to all forms of reactionary sectarian interventions, whether by Iran or the Gulf countries.

No to the intervention of Hezbollah, which warrants the maximum of condemnation.

Down with all illusions about the imminent US military strike.

Break open the arms depots for the Syrian people to struggle for freedom, dignity, and social justice.

Victory to a free democratic Syria and down with the Assad dictatorship and all dictatorships forever.

Long live the Syrian people’s revolution.

Revolutionary Socialists (Egypt) - Revolutionary Left Current (Syria) - Union of Communists (Iraq) - Al-Mounadil-a (Morocco) - Socialist Forum (Lebanon)


ABORTION RIGHTS AND THE MUSLIM WORLD

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I sort of figured I could answer the question of how the issue of abortion plays out in Muslim countries.  You likely feel the same way.  Well, it turns out it is more complex than I thought.  In fact, there is a remarkable variability on the issue in Muslim majority countries.  The variability is largely dependent on the point of gestational development and the grounds for abortion.    Further, unlike, for example, the Catholic Church, Islam does not have a hierarchy of organised clergy, or a central authority which instructs Muslims in one single interpretation of the faith. On the contrary, different Muslim communities exist within the religion, including Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, which in turn are differentiated by the different schools of Islamic law to which they adhere. Therefore, no generalised account of the religion should be attempted.

Research cited at the web site of London School of Economics and Political Science points out:


On the one end of the spectrumabortion laws in Muslim-majority countries exemplified a generally conservative approach where 18 of 47 countries only legally permit abortions in cases where the life of the pregnant women is threatened (i.e. not in cases to preserve a woman’s physical or mental health, rape, foetal impairment, or for social or economic reasons). On the other end of the spectrum, 10 Muslim-majority countries allow abortion ‘on request’.

The diversity found in Muslim-majority countries is likely in part due to the variability of the Islamic position as well as many other factors including whether the legal system is based on Sharia law exclusively (e.g. Iran), a combination of Sharia law alongside civil or common law (e.g. Saudi Arabia), or whether the legal system is not formally based upon Sharia law at all (e.g. Turkey). 


And then there is Iran.  Beth Speake of the Center for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, University of Leeds,, and currently the Administrator at Sheffield Rape and Sexual Abuse Counselling Service Volunteer Social Policy Coordinator at Sheaf Citizens Advice Bureau writes at e-International Relations, 



The example of Iran is particularly interesting. Iranis a theocratic country, where the Shiite rule of the jurist was established in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the Muslim clergy or Ulama are involved in policy making and legislation (Mehryar, Ahmad-Nia and Kazemipour, 2007, p.353). In 1977, before the Revolution, abortion was made available on request provided it was prescribed by a qualified doctor, and the government was involved in an active family planning programme which had been established since 1967. This law was annulled by the new state immediately after the Revolution (Mehryar, Ahmad-Nia and Kazemipour, 2007, p.357), abortion was outlawed except to save the woman’s life, and sterilisation was banned. The official national family planning programme was abandoned, and the regime under the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini became overtly pronatalist, with procreation (within marriage) and fertility being extolled as key Islamic values (Boonstra, 2001, p.5). Over the next few years, the fertility rate in Iran increased dramatically (Obermeyer, 1994, p.46). However, attributing this change in policy purely to the triumph of Islamic values is misleading. In fact, in early 1980, when the revolution had ended, the Ministry of Health obtainedfatāwa from the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini and other respected ayatollahs stating that Iranian couples’ use of modern contraceptives was not contrary to Islamic principles (Mehryar, Ahmad-Nia and Kazemipour, 2007, p.354). Furthermore, though high fertility rates had been encouraged in response to heavy casualties during the war with Iraq between 1980 – 1988, by the late 1980’s, the negative effects of the war became apparent and worsening economic conditions, combined with a rapidly increasing population, obliged the leaders of the Islamic Republic to ‘re-evaluate its ideological stance with respect to population issues’ (Obermeyer, 1994, pp.46-47). Thus, a reproductive health and family planning programme was re-introduced in 1988 and now provides a wide range of contraception. Moreover, in April 2005 the Iranian parliament, despite opposition from the Islamic Guardian Council, approved a law which permits abortion in the first four months of gestation if the foetus is ‘physically or mentally handicapped’ (Hessini, 2007, p.80). Additionally, the law in Iran (along with only Tunisia and Turkey) allows for vasectomy procedures and tubal ligation[3] (Boonstra, 2001, p.5).

Thus, a country ruled by some of the most conservative Muslim clerics has, in relation to other countries of the MENA region, a fairly permissive approach to abortion and family planning (Hessini, 2008, p.82). DeJong, Jawad, Mortagy and Shepard (2005), therefore argue that: ‘Iran’s efforts to address reproductive health issues in consonance with religious values in an important model for other Muslim countries’ (DeJong et al., 2005, p.50). From a more cynical perspective, it can be argued that the leaders inIran, as well as being religious clerics, are also a ‘pragmatic political elite’ who to some extent recognise the importance of co-opting women’s support to ensure the survival of the government regime (Marcotte, 2003, p.162). Crucially, it must be recognised that the economic and political considerations of the different governments have motivated them to respond in different ways to issues of reproductive rights. Thus, while the present government inIranrefers to the Islamic religious tradition to justify its more permissive policies in relation to abortion and reproductive rights, previously, more restrictive policies had also been legitimated with reference to Islamic principles (Obermeyer, 1994, p.47). 


Ibrahim Syed, President of the Islamic Research Foundation, International writes,


In principle, the Qur'an condemns the killing of humans (except in the case of defense or as capital punishment), but it does not explicitly mention abortion. This leads Islamic theologians to take up different viewpoints: while the majority of early Islamic theologians permitted abortion up to day 40 of pregnancy or even up to day 120, many countries today interpret these precepts protecting unborn children more conservatively. Although there is no actual approval of abortion in the world of Islam, there is no strict, unanimous ban on it, either. Islam has not given any precise directions with regard to the issue of abortion. Hence it is not a matter, which has been clearly stated in the Shari'ah (Islamic Law) but rather an issue pertaining to the application of our knowledge of the Shari'ah.  Such application may vary in conclusion with a difference in the basic premises of one's arguments.


He adds,

The scholars all agree that abortion is forbidden after the first four months of pregnancy, since by that time the soul has entered the embryo but it would allow the use of RU486 (the "morning-after pill"), as long as it could be reasonably assumed that the fertilized egg has not become implanted on the wall of the uterus. Most scholars say that abortion is legal under Islamic Shari'ah (law), when done for valid reasons and when completed before the soul enters the embryo. To abort a baby for such vain reasons as wanting to keep a woman’s youthful figure, are not valid.


Muslims who argue that abortion is permissible up to four months, he writes:

...quote a statement from the Prophet (s) that refers to a human being starting as a fertilized ovum in the uterus of the mother for forty days, then it grows into a clot for the same period, then into a morsel of flesh for the same period, then an angel is sent to that fetus to blow the Ruh into it and to write down its age, deeds, sustenance, and whether it is destined to be happy or sad.

Dr. Gamal Serour, Director of the International Islamic Center for Population Studies and Research at Al-Azhar University states, 


 Yet women in many Muslim communities face barriers to contraceptive access and family planning services due to religious and cultural misconceptions. The reality is that Islam is – and always has been – supportive of women’s reproductive rights. The family is the basic unit of a Muslim society, and the mother is the keystone of this unit. Islam is a progressive religion that encourages its followers to uphold principles and practices that ensure maternal and reproductive health, and family planning is a central component of such practices.

Islam does not forbid a woman from controlling the spacing and number of her pregnancies. A thorough review of the Holy Quran reveals no text (nuss) prohibiting the prevention or planning of pregnancy, and there are several traditions of the Prophet (PBUH) that indicate such practices are permissible. Many modern contraceptives and family planning methods, by analogy (kias), are similar to coitus interruptions (al-azl), which has been practiced since the time of the Prophet (PBUH). Modern contraceptive pills, injectables, implants, and other reversible methods were not known at the time of the Prophet (PBUH), but serve the same purpose as coitus interruptions as they temporarily prevent pregnancy. Hence they can – and should – be used today.

Of course, the real issue isn't what religious laws says, is not what religious scholars think, is not what any religious belief dictates, the real issue is the fact that a woman must be able to control her reproductive capacities, her body and not be dependent on any patriarchal notions of what to do with it.  Patriarchy has a hard time existing the moment women take back themselves, seize the power over their lives, turn their backs on the priests, reverends, rabbis and mullas. 

PS: I don't know about you, but I can help but notice that as soon as I got into quoting religious scholars, I found myself quoting MEN.  Hmmm...

Anyway, I just found the piece below from Open Democracy interesting and informative.  The author Naureen Sameem  is a member of the international solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws ( WLUML) and was the Harvard Public Service Fellow at WLUML and Stop Stoning Women campaign coordinator. A human rights lawyer and gender justice activist, she is a Women and Justice Fellow at Cornell Law School.



The future of abortion rights in Islam



There is no explicit reference to abortion in the Qur'an, and classical jurisprudence and modern-day religious scholarship highlight the diversity of Islamic thought on this subject. Naureen Shameen asks what the new antipathy to family planning by some of the Muslim majority countries means for the future of abortion rights.

In March this year the Muslim Brotherhood publicly denounced the UN Commission on the Status of Women’s Agreed Conclusions on violence against women, which call for sexual and reproductive health services - including safe abortion - for survivors of sexual violence. A statement by the Muslim Brotherhood described these as ‘the final step in the intellectual and cultural invasion of Muslim countries’ and as undermining ‘Islamic ethics and destroy[ing] the family.’

The statement is indicative of a newly vociferous antipathy to family planning from some Muslim majority countries such as Egypt and Libya, and stands in sharp contrast to the ways in which Muslim communities have historically addressed the issue, both in jurisprudence and social practice.

The legal and social framework regarding abortion of many modern Muslim-majority countries runs counter not only to classical jurisprudence of centuries before, but to the practices of many Muslim-majority societies historically. Research suggests that abortion was socially acceptable and broadly available within the Ottoman Empire and in Egypt up until the 19th century, for example.

Islam does not have a central authoritative structure of religious interpretation, and no single school or theology characterizes ‘Islamic thought’. There exists no explicit reference to abortion in the Qur’an. A number of passages refer to the multiple stages of development of the human embryo (23:12-14), and to the timing and process of ensoulment (23:14). At the end of the third phase of embryonic development, the soul enters the body. This is most frequently read as 120 days following conception.

The Sunnah - practices and rulings of the Prophet Muhammad, as described in orally transmitted traditions, or Hadith - also do not directly cite or prohibit abortion, and further elaborate on the Qur’an’s embryonic stages of development and ensoulment. They also point to the fetus as having some legal protections but fewer than that of a ‘full-fledged human being.’
Classical Muslim scholars such as Abu Hanifa and Ahmad ibn Hanbalattempted to translate the traditional Islamic textual sources - the Qur’an and Sunnah – into legal rulings, and Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) emerged from the multiple interpretations of scholars of several legal schools named after their founding jurists. Under classical Islamic jurisprudence, there exist roughly four different positions on abortion, prior to the point of ensoulment:

1.  Unconditional permission to terminate a pregnancy without a justification or fetal defect: Zaydi school (Shiite, associated with Zayd ibn Ali), some Hanafi (Sunni, founded by Abu Hanifa, most influential in South and Central Asia and Turkey) and Shafi’i (Sunni, following Al Shafi’i, most common in such countries as Malaysia and Indonesia) scholars. The Hanbali (Sunni, deriving from Ahmad ibn Hanbal, dominant in Saudi Arabia and Qatar) school allows for abortion through the use of oral abortifacients within 40 days of conception.

2.  Conditional permission to abort because of an acceptable justification. Should there be an abortion without a ‘valid reason’ it is considered disapproved/makruh, but not forbidden/haram: majority of Hanafi and Shafi’i scholars.

3.  Abortion is generally disapproved, but not forbidden: some Maliki (Sunni, founded by Malik bin Inas, particularly influential in Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE) jurists.

4. Abortion is unconditionally prohibited: alternative Maliki view, in addition to the Zahiri (Sunni, minor, founded by Dawud al-Zahiri) , Ibadiyya (influential in Oman and Zanzibar) and Imamiyya (Shiite) legal schools.

Exceptions after ensoulment also exist under classical jurisprudence – in keeping with the fiqh principle to choose the lesser of two evils, most schools support abortion where the mother’s life is at risk. This is echoed by contemporary rulings, such as that of the late Grand Ayatollah Hassan Fadhlallah of Lebanon, who stated that abortions are permitted for a woman if continuing the pregnancy puts her life in danger, or if it will cause her serious difficulty.

More recently, exceptions in cases of rape have been supported by several modern-era fatwas in such countries as Egypt and Algeria. In 1998, the Egyptian Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhammed Sayed Tantawi, issued a fatwa that unmarried women who had been raped should have access to abortion, and the same year in Algeria the Islamic Supreme Council issued a fatwa stating that abortions were allowed in cases of rape, as rape was being used by extremists as a weapon of war. These opinions, however, have not been codified in law.

Abortion in the case of fetal impairment is also supported by several Iranian and Egyptian fatwas. The Grand Mufti Ayatollah Yusuf Saanei allows for abortion in the first trimester in cases of fetal genetic disorder, as does Sheikh Nasri Farid Wasil. Although more rare, some modern fatwas supporting socio-economic justifications for abortion also exist, such as that of Sheikh Ahmed Harayd, who supports abortion in circumstances where the family would be incapable of hiring a wet-nurse to feed the child.

Of course, modern fatwas on abortion do not necessarily have women’s liberty as their aim. They may instead uphold regressive patriarchal structures, as for instance when the Grand Mufti Sheikh Nasr Farid Wasel of Egypt arguesthat rape survivors should have access to abortions along with reconstructive hymen surgery in order to preserve female virginity and marriageability.

Some modern Islamic scholars have supported abortion for social and medical reasons in the context of rapidly expanding populations in Muslim-majority countries, constrained health budgets, and maternal health, arguing from principles such as public interest (istislah), equity or just solutions (istihsan), protection against distress and constriction, necessity to avert probable harm and necessity. Notably, Ayatollah Yusuf Saanei of Iran stated his opinion in 2000 that abortion is allowed under conditions such as parents’ poverty or overpopulation.

In spite of the work of the modern Islamic scholars above, the laws and policies of many current Muslim-majority nations are today, surprisingly, more restrictive than the rulings of medieval Islamic jurists. The picture, however, is diverse.

Laws in present-day Muslim-majority states emerge from plural legal traditions, a variable and hybrid mixture of colonial-era, civil and common law and differentially-interpreted religious texts, the latter frequently confined to matters concerning family law.

Abortion is illegal in Senegal outside of exceptions for the mother’s life, for instance, based on the 1810 French penal code. French colonial law also influenced prohibitive abortion provisions in Algeria, Iran, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco and Syria. Libya’s restrictive legislation is based on Italian law and British colonial codes proscribing abortion are still alive in Qatar and other Gulf states.

Several countries permit abortion without restriction: Albania, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey (where the right isthreatened by the ruling AKP government) and Uzbekistan. Tunisia liberalized its law in 1973 before France, Germany and the USA.  Yet eighteen Muslim majority countries, including Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, Mali, Yemen, and Iraq, have amongst the most restrictive abortion laws worldwide, allowing abortion solely to save the mother’s life or prohibiting it altogether.

Today the actual practice of abortion in Muslim contexts, although seldom spoken of, is significant and often dangerous. Between 1995 and 2000, more than 50 percent of all unintended pregnancies in the Arab World region ended in abortion. It is estimated that 80,000 illegal abortions are performed in Iran per year, and nearly one million yearly in Pakistan. Nearly 5 percent of all maternal deaths in the MENA region were due to abortion related complications, with the number rising to over half of all maternal deaths in some Muslim-majority countries.

Women in these regions benefit neither from religiously-argued permissiveness of abortion or international human rights standards, the subject of significant expansion in the past two decades. Women’s rights to comprehensive reproductive health services, including abortion, are rooted in international and regional standards that guarantee the right to life, health, liberty, privacy, bodily integrity and non-discrimination. The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, notably, is a legally binding human rights instrument that explicitly addresses abortion as a human right

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action called upon governments to consider the consequences of unsafe abortion on women’s health, urged governments to directly address unsafe abortion as a major public health concern and confirmed that where abortion is legal, the procedure should be accessible and safe. And the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women’s Committee has called upon States parties to ensure that women are not forced to seek unsafe medical procedures such as illegal abortion because of lack of appropriate services.

The expansion of sexual and reproductive rights language in international and regional frameworks, signed and ratified by most Muslim-majority countries, has momentum. However the CSW this year was a flashpoint for a more powerful and troubling counter-narrative on the international level from 'conservative forces' such as the Vatican, Russia, Libya, Egypt and others with increased political clout.

On the national level, several powerful conservative governments in such countries as Turkey and Egypt have made moves to curtail women’s rights and further police women’s sexuality. These moves involve attempts to reverse existing policies or legislation or targeting of individual activists or groups where possible. Prime Minister Tayyip of Turkey – a country with a long history of women’s right to abortion - has frequently expressed his distaste for abortion rights and promoted his pro-natalist policies. In May 2012, he compared abortion to air strikes on civilians and equated it with murder.

And back on the world stage, the ongoing efforts of a group of conservative states, Egypt prominent amongst them, to weaken human rights language on women’s rights and undermine women’s right to abortion is becoming increasingly visible and effective.

This June, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on violence against women which cites the need to provide reproductive health services to survivors, but unlike the 57th CSW Agreed Conclusions in March 2013, the new resolution does not list these services, including safe abortion. Is this the future for abortion rights in Muslim contexts?




STOP THE STRIP SEARCH OF WOMEN IN NORTHERN IRELAND PRISON

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It is prison friday at Scission and, of course, the big news is that the hunger strike by California prisoners is over for now.  You can read much about this at the San Francisco Bay View which has covered the on going struggle better than anyone else.

I, today, will travel across the Atlantic to Ireland, the occupied part that is, where Irish Prisoner Welfare Association Reported a few weeks ago:




On Wednesday, 14th Aug, Sharon Rafferty, Sean Kelly, Aidan Coney and Gavin Coney were taken out to Omagh Court for their P.I.(preliminary investigation) The 3 men in which is unfortunately now normal practice for Republican prisoners in Maghaberry were forcibly strip-searched before leaving the gaol but in a sinister development it has transpired that female Republican prisoner Sharon Rafferty was also forcibly strip-searched by staff in Hydebank gaol. Sharon was physically restrained by staff and her clothing was forcibly removed. Sharon has been left with physical injuries and no doubt emotionally scarred by this brutal sexual assault. IRPWA demand an end to all strip-searches and strongly condemn this new development whereby female Republican prisoners are forcibly strip searched in Hydebank.

Sharon was forced to remove her clothes before and after making a court appearance in Omagh.  After refusing to voluntarily strip, female prison officers forced the action. 

It has since been reported that a second woman, Christine Connor, 27, missed a medical appointment last month after refusing to be strip searched.  Christine has kidney problems and she does need to make those appointments. 


Christine was due to be taken out to Belfast City Hospital when she was confronted by several Prison staff members of various rank including governor.


She was informed by these people that a Strip search was to be conducted upon her person. When Christine refused on a point of principle she was informed that she would not then be able to leave the prison. 


She is in essence being denied her right to medical attention.  



Seachranaidhe1 reports as well:



Mandy Duffy from the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association (IRPWA) sais Ms Rafferty felt like she had been “sexually assaulted” after the search. “She feels very strongly she should not have to remove her clothing,” she aid. The prisoner campagner says Ms Connor will also continue to resist strip searches. “Christine feels she is being denied the right to medicial treatment which is a basic human right,” she said. “She is on medication and needs to see a specialist.” The last high-profile female republican prisoner to be subjected to strip searches is believed to be Roisin McAliskey – daughter of former Mid Ulster MP Bernadette McAliskey – who was searched more than 70 times while pregnant in custody awaiting extradition to Germany in connection with an IRA mortar attàck in 1996. She was released wîthout charge in 1998.


 In more recent times the practice came under the spotlight in 2005, when the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) helped non-republican prisoner Karen Carson bring a judicial review before the High Court in Belfast, claiming frequent strip searching in Hydebank was in violation of articles three and eight of the European Convention on Human Rights, which relate to torture and privacy.

 Speaking to the Tyrone Herald, a spokesperson for the NIHRC said it supports the Prison Review Team’s 2011 recommendation to find an effective and less intrusive alternative to strip searching.


“The Commission’s 2005 research revealed the traumatic impact of strip searching on women and recommended that its use should be exceptional and restricted.”


It said while it had not received any complaints about the use of strip searching on women prisoners in recent times, the body intends to raise the issue of Sharon Rafferty’s forced search on August 14 during a visit with the Prison Service later this month.


Mandy Duffy said both male and female republican prisoners refuse to submit to strip searching, claiming that scanners exist that deem the practice unnecessary. On August 14, she said Rafferty’s three co-accused were also similarly strip searched by force at Maghaberry Prison after refusing to comply with requests to remove clothing.


“There is technology in place that removes the need for any prisoner to remove they're clothing,” said the IRPWA spokesperson, “Sharon said she did not want to humiliate herself.”



The Northern Ireland Prison Service declined to comment.

In the British occupied northern counties of Ireland, this sort of thing actually can't come as a shock.  The centuries long occupation has never been anything but brutal and degrading, and it has been met with a never ending resistance.


The following is from Republican Unity.


Christine Connor refuses strip search, screws deny her medical treatment

Christine was due to be taken out to Belfast City Hospital when she was confronted by several Prison staff members of various rank including governor.

She was informed by these people that a Strip search was to be conducted upon her person. When Christine refused on a point of principle she was informed that she would not then be able to leave the prison. Nevertheless Christine refused and as such is now being denied medical attention she so urgently requires.

The insistence of Hybank on introducing strip searching to female prisoners on Republican charges, suggests that the ‘pound of flesh’ approach (as practiced in Maghaberry) has not been enough to wet the appetite of the inherently sectarian POA who are the driving force behind the overt security atmosphere in both Maghaberry and Hydebank Wood.

Today’s events also call into question the good faith of the prison service and David Ford, already in short supply after their refusal to implement the August agreement.
Christine Connor is tonight at risk of falling very ill due to Hydebanks insistence on practicing an outdated procedure which by its nature is anti-woman, anti-republican and inhumane, let there be no doubt that there is an appetite on the streets to resist such systematic abuse of female prisoners.

We would call particularly on those concerned with women’s rights to explore, expose and protest this dark return to the ways of the past. We also again call on the ‘Socialist’ party to break links with the POA, who throughout the most recent episodes of human rights abuses, have been to the forefront every time.


THE FOSSIL FUELS WAR BY JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER

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I had a great autonomous Marxist theoretical piece all lined up for Theoretical Weekends and then decided I would have time for that in the future.  Right now, the world is running out of time, and I haven't posted here lately something dealing with the environmental catastrophe surrounding us all, and I had just read this article in Monthly Review, so why not post it today.  It isn't the greatest thing ever written but it is all I have for today.  

SAVE THE EARTH PEOPLE, SAVE THE DAMN EARTH



The Fossil Fuels War 
John Bellamy Foster more on Environment/Science


This is a revised and updated version of an afterword written in May 2013 for the German translation of The Ecological Revolution (Hamburg: Laika Verla, 2013). The original English edition of the book was published by Monthly Review Press in 2009.
The Rise of the Unconventionals
Only a few years ago governments, corporations, and energy analysts were fixated on the problem of “the end of cheap oil” or “peak oil,” pointing to growing shortages of conventional crude oil due to the depletion of known reserves. The International Energy Agency’s 2010 report devoted a whole section to peak oil.1 Some climate scientists saw the peaking of conventional crude oil as a silver-lining opportunity to stabilize the climate—provided that countries did not turn to dirtier forms of energy such as coal and “unconventional fossil fuels.”2
Today all of this has changed radically with the advent of what some are calling a new energy revolution based on the production of unconventional fossil fuels.3 The emergence in North America—but increasingly elsewhere as well—of what is now termed the “Unconventionals Era” has meant that suddenly the world is awash in new and prospective fossil-fuel supplies.4 As journalist and climate activist Bill McKibben warns,
Right now the fossil-fuel industry is mostly winning. In the past few years, they’ve proved “peak-oil” theorists wrong—as the price rose for hydrocarbons, companies found a lot of new sources, though mostly by scraping the bottom of the barrel, spending even more money to get even-cruddier energy. They’ve learned to frack (in essence, explode a pipe bomb a few thousand feet beneath the surface, fracturing the surrounding rock). They’ve figured out how to take the sludgy tar sands and heat them with natural gas till the oil flows. They’ve managed to drill miles beneath the ocean’s surface.5
The new phase of environmental struggle that the Unconventionals Era has engendered is symbolized above all today by the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, extending from the Alberta tar sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, designed to deliver up to 830,000 barrels of tar-sands oil (diluted bitumen or dilbit) a day. The proposed pipeline has two legs. The northern leg, which has not yet been approved in Washington, is to be 1,179 miles long and will cross the border from Canada to the United States. The southern leg runs 484 miles from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast, and is already largely completed.6 Tar-sands-oil production and processing generates roughly 14 percent more emissions than the average oil consumed in the United States, and leaves large pools of polluted water.7 Failure to halt the burning of tar-sands oil would mean “game over” with respect to climate change, in the words of James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the most renowned U.S. climatologist.8
The Alberta tar sands, which underlie an area roughly the size of Florida, are already generating 1.8 million barrels of oil a day and the current push is to expand this further. The Achilles heel of tar-sands production, however, is transportation. At present there is a “bitumen bubble” as tar-sands oil is more readily produced than transported. The inability to get the tar-sands oil to ports means that it remains dependent on the U.S. market and is unable to command world prices. Tar-sands oil (known on the oil markets as Western Canadian Select) traded at times in 2012 at $35 a barrel less than the price it would have received had transcontinental oil transport been readily available. This represented a loss of about a third of its value when compared to West Texas Intermediate.9 Hence, the tar-sands industry is desperate to secure adequate transcontinental transport to support its current as well as expanded oil production. The big push is for pipelines. Yet, there are serious environmental concerns that diluted bitumen may be more dangerous to transport in pipelines than conventional crude oil, because of increased likelihood of pipeline corrosion, and the resulting leakages. The Keystone XL Pipeline would go right over the Ogallala aquifer, the largest drinking-water aquifer in the United States, which supplies eight states.10
The United States witnessed its biggest climate demonstrations yet in February 2013, with upward of 40,000 people protesting in front of the White House and more than a thousand arrested in opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline.11 In Canada, meanwhile, the indigenous-led Idle No More has utilized a variety of strategies and tactics in fighting tar-sands production, such as: a hunger strike by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence; rail blockades; flashmobs in malls; a giant circle dance in a large intersection in Winnipeg; and the legal defense of First Nations sovereignty rights with respect to land, water, and resources. Idle No More protests have targeted oil transport by both rail and pipeline, with the latter including opposition to Keystone XL and to the planned Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines Project—designed to extend around 730 miles from the Alberta tar sands to a marine terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia.12
Other unconventionals are also altering the terrain of the struggle. The last few years have witnessed dramatic, new technological developments with respect to hydraulic fracturing coupled with horizontal drilling or “fracking.” Sand, water, and chemicals are injected at high pressures in order to blast open shale rock, releasing the trapped gas inside. After the well has reached a certain depth the drilling occurs horizontally.13 Fracking has led to the rapid exploitation of vast, hitherto inaccessible, reserves of shale gas and tight oil in states across the country from Pennsylvania and Ohio to North Dakota and California, unexpectedly catapulting the United States once again into the position of a major fossil-fuel power. It has already led to substantial increases in natural-gas production, replacing dirtier and more carbon-emitting coal in generating electricity. Together the economic slowdown and the shift from coal to natural gas due to fracking have resulted in a 12 percent drop in U.S. (direct) carbon dioxide emissions between 2005 and 2012, reaching their lowest level since 1994.14
Nevertheless, the negative environmental and health effects of fracking falling on communities throughout the United States are enormous, if still not fully assessed. Toxic pollution from fracking is contaminating water supplies and affecting wastewater treatment not designed to cope with such hazards. Methane leakages from fracking, in the case of shale gas, are threatening to accelerate climate change. If such leakages cannot be contained, fracked natural-gas production could prove more dangerous to the climate than coal.15 Fracking has also engendered earthquakes in the extractive areas.16 In response to such developments, a whole new environmental resistance to fracking has arisen in communities throughout North America, Australia, and elsewhere.
A train pulling seventy-two tank cars laden with oil from fracking in North Dakota derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec on July 6, 2013, killing fifty people. Such accidents are themselves a product of the boom in unconventionals, coupled with “pipeline on rails” methods of shipping the oil (as well as the decrease of labor used in rail transport). In 2009, corporations shipped a mere 500 tank cars of oil by rail in Canada; in 2013 this is projected to be as much as 140,000 tank cars.17 North Dakota tight oil is also shipped by rail to Albany, New York, where it is loaded onto barges for shipment to East Coast refineries.
Only three years ago, on April 20, 2010, an explosion in BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform killed eleven workers and generated a huge underwater oil gusher, which dumped a total of 170 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.18 The Deepwater Horizon disaster has come to stand for the new, environmentally perilous era of ultra-deepwater oil wells—offshore oil drilled at depths of more than a mile as a result of the development of more sophisticated technologies. (Deepwater oil drilling more generally involves drilling at depths of more than a thousand feet.)
Deepwater oil drilling is most advanced in the Gulf of Mexico, but is spreading in other places, such as Canada’s Atlantic Coast, Brazil’s offshore zone, the Gulf of Guinea, and the South China Sea. Still more ominous from an environmental standpoint is the drive by oil companies and the five Arctic powers (the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, and Denmark) to drill deepwater wells in the Arctic—made increasingly accessible due to global warming. Meanwhile, pressure is mounting to open up the outer continental shelf off the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts to offshore oil drilling.19
In the face of the rush by capital to extract unconventional fossil fuels in ever-greater amounts, climate activists are seeking new means of resistance. The “Do the Math” strategy of 350.org is focused on the necessary divestment in fossil fuels, to be replaced by clean energy sources. Some financial analysts have been sounding the alarm with respect to the carbon budget imposed by the red line of a 2°C increase in global average temperature—referred to as a planetary tipping point or “point of no return” with respect to climate change. Climate scientists fear that once this point is reached processes will be set in motion that will make climate change irreversible and out of human control.20 It will no longer be possible to stop the progression to an ice-free world. Staying within the global carbon budget means that further carbon emissions are limited to considerably less than 500 billion metric tons (of actual carbon), according to Oxford climatologist Myles Allen and scientists associated with trillionthtonne.org. This means that most of the world’s current proven fossil-fuel reserves cannot be exploited without initiating extremely dangerous—even irreversible—levels of climate change. And this limitation in turn threatens trillions of dollars of potential financial losses in what are now accounted as fossil-fuel assets—a phenomenon known as the “carbon bubble.”21
While capital in the last few years has been triumphantly celebrating its increased ability to tap fossil fuels for decades to come, climate change has continued to accelerate—symbolized by the melting of Arctic sea ice to its lowest level ever recorded in summer 2012, with the total ice area receding to less than half the average level of the 1970s. The vanishing Arctic ice, which is melting far faster than scientists had predicted, suggests that the sensitivity of the earth system to small increases in global average temperatures is greater than was previously thought. The ice loss is of particular concern since it represents a positive feedback loop to climate change, accelerating the rate of global warming as the reflectivity of the earth declines—due to the replacement of white ice with dark seawater. The melting of Arctic sea ice, and the resulting “arctic amplification” (temperature increases in the Arctic exceeding that of the earth as a whole) is generating extreme weather events in the Northern hemisphere and worldwide through the “jamming” and redirection of the jet stream. As Walt Meier, a research scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center put it, “the Arctic is the earth’s air conditioner. We’re losing that.”22
The growing incidence of extreme weather events—a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “global weirding”—is symbolized by Superstorm Sandy, which in October 2012 wreaked havoc from the Caribbean to New York and New Jersey. Australia’s “angry summer” of 2012–2013 saw 123 separate extreme weather records broken in a mere ninety days.23 Meanwhile a scientific report in November 2012 revealed that Greenland and west Antarctica had lost more than 4 trillion metric tons of ice over the last two decades, contributing to sea level rise.24
Under these circumstances the increased exploitation of unconventional fossil fuels, made possible by higher oil prices and technological developments, has catastrophic implications for the climate. No less remarkable technological developments, however, have arisen at the same time in relation to renewable energies, such as wind and solar, opening up the possibility of a more ecological path of development. Since 2009 solar (photovoltaic) module “prices have fallen off a cliff.”25 Although still accounting for a tiny percentage of electric-generating capacity in the United States, wind and solar have grown to about 13 percent of total German electricity production in 2012, with total renewables (including hydroelectric and biomass) accounting for about 20 percent.26 As the energy return on energy investment (EROEI) of fossil fuels has declined due to the depletion of cheap crude-oil supplies, wind and solar have become more competitive—with EROEIs above that of tar-sands oil, and in the case of wind even above conventional oil. Wind and solar, however, represent intermittent, location-specific sources of power that cannot easily cover baseload-power needs.27 Worse still, a massive conversion of the world’s energy infrastructure to renewables would take decades to accomplish when time is short.
The Carbon War
The result of all these historically converging forces, dangers, and opportunities is an emerging fossil-fuels war: between those who want to burn more fossil fuels and those who want to burn less. Jeremy Leggett, a leader in the carbon-divestment movement, concluded his 2001 book, The Carbon War, with the observation that the giant fossil-fuel corporations “may well enjoy minor victories along the way. But they have already lost the pivotal battle in the carbon war. The solar revolution is coming. It is now inevitable. The only question left unanswered is, will it come in time?”28
The main battle lines of the carbon war are clear. On the one side, there are the dominant capitalist interests that have sought to address the decline of conventional crude-oil reserves through the incessant expansion of fossil-fuel resources. This has led to actual wars in the oil-rich Middle East and surrounding regions in an effort to gain control over the world’s chief remaining “cheap oil” supplies. A decade ago, in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, leading to what can only be called a continuous military intervention in the oil-rich regions of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa by the United States and “global NATO.”29 These military incursions have been primarily related to the geopolitics of oil, and only secondarily to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and so-called “humanitarian intervention”—the main rationales provided.
Nevertheless, the main response of the capitalist system to the peaking of conventional crude oil has not been geopolitical expansion but rather development of the unconventionals. Not stopping with deepwater drilling, fracking, and the exploitation of tar-sands oil, the fossil-fuel industry, backed by the state, is now looking toward development of oil shale and methane hydrates—offering, if these can be brought online, what seems to be truly unlimited supplies of carbon, coupled with the prospect of unthinkable, catastrophic disruptions to the earth system.30
Today’s business-as-usual interests refuse to accept any limits to continued expansion of fossil-fuel production. Establishment energy policymakers—as witnessed by the Obama administration and Council on Foreign Relations’ senior energy analyst Michael Levi—see shale gas from fracking as a “bridge fuel” that will allow a reduction in carbon emissions until carbon capture and sequestration technologies can be developed sufficiently to be feasible, opening the way to supposedly unlimited exploitation of coal and other fossil fuels with zero carbon emissions. The fact that “clean coal” is a fairy tale never seems to enter the analysis.31 Most establishment energy proponents also favor biofuels as an added option, and support large hydroelectric facilities and nuclear energy, discounting the enormous ecological problems represented by all three—particularly nuclear power. Wind, solar, and biomass, in contrast, are viewed by industry as minor supplements to fossil fuels. Empirical research by environmental sociologist Richard York, published in Nature Climate Change in 2012, has verified that the introduction of low-carbon energy has been used mainly to supplement rather than actually displace fossil fuels within the global economy.32
ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson aptly summed up the overall outlook of today’s fossil-fuel industry when he declared on March 7, 2013, that renewables such as “wind, solar, biofuels” would be supplying only 1 percent of total energy in 2040. He described the struggle against the Keystone XL Pipeline by “environmental groups…concerned about the burning of fossil fuels” as simply “obtuse,” since they “misjudged Canada’s resolve” (and no doubt that of the U.S. government) to exploit the tar sands—whatever the social and environmental cost. “My philosophy,” Tillerson said, “is to make money.”33
In the United States this addiction to fossil fuels is built into the Obama administration’s “all of the above” energy strategy. The current Democratic administration is not only promoting the maximum extraction/production of unconventional fossil fuels in the United States and Canada, it is also actively encouraging other countries, such as China, Poland, the Ukraine, Jordan, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico to develop unconventionals as rapidly as possible. Meanwhile, Washington has used its influence in Iraq to get it to boost its crude oil production.34
The Obama administration has strongly underscored its support for coal, and has given a boost to nuclear power. It is also promoting the production of fracked natural gas globally as a “transition fuel.” In the face of all of this, the administration’s very limited support for the development of renewable energies—mainly via the Defense Department and federal-land-use policies—constitutes little more than governmental greenwashing, hardly discernible from the approach of the leading multinational oil companies themselves.35
To be sure, Obama has declared climate change a serious concern, and has supported modest, phased-in new fuel-economy standards for automobiles to come into effect by 2025. Recently, he has extended such fuel-economy standards to heavy-duty trucks, buses, and vans. He has also directed the Environmental Protection Agency to consider carbon-pollution limits for power plants.36
Such positions, however, have not prevented his administration from attempting to accelerate the production of the dirtiest fossil fuels. The administration’s meager proposal to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by a mere 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 strongly belies any claims that it has to addressing the climate problem on the scale required. Congress’s record in this area is even worse. Washington thus remains little more than a water carrier for the oil corporations and capital in general where climate policy is concerned, reflecting what Curtis White has called capitalism’s “barbaric heart.”37
On the other side is the burgeoning climate movement, propelled into massive direct action by the new threats from the unconventionals. Hansen’s dire warning that it is “game over” if the Alberta tar-sands oil is exploited fully—with the tar sands themselves generating potentially enough carbon dioxide emissions to break the world’s carbon budget, while also symbolizing the pressing need to draw a line in the sand in relation to unconventional fossil fuels—has had an electrifying effect on the movement on the ground. Over 50,000 people have pledged to put their bodies on the line to block Keystone XL Pipeline construction, thereby facing arrest if the Obama administration gives the northern leg of the pipeline a green light.38 Idle No More is fighting oil pipelines in Canada extending south, west, and east. This on-the-ground mobilization is combined with the growing fossil-fuels-divestment movement. Organized resistance to fracking meanwhile has been mounting as well. The main thrust of the climate movement has therefore shifted from demand-side initiatives aimed at reducing consumer-market demand for carbon fuels to supply-side strategies aimed at corporations and designed to keep the fossil fuels in the ground.
The shift to a supply-side struggle targeting corporations represents a maturing of the movement and a growing radicalization. Still, the more elite-technocratic and pro-capitalist elements, which appear to be in the driver’s seat within the climate movement in the United States, remain wedded to the continuation of today’s capitalist commodity society. The prevailing strategic outlook of the U.S. climate movement is largely predicated on the technologically optimistic assumption that there are currently available concrete alternatives to fossil fuels, particularly wind and solar, which, when combined with other renewable sources such as biomass, biofuels, and limited-scale hydroelectric power, will allow society to substitute renewable energies for fossil fuels in the near term without altering society’s social relations. The solar revolution, it is often declared, is here.39
This outlook has allowed the movement to narrow its opposition to the fossil-fuel industry alone, confining its demands to keeping fossil fuels in the ground, blocking the transport of fossil fuels, and divesting in fossil-fuels corporations. As McKibben has stated, “movements need enemies” and the strategy has been to focus not on capitalism but on the fossil-fuel industry as a “rogue industry…. Public Enemy Number One.”40 This has been highly successful in sparking the growth of the movement. Yet, there are serious questions with regard to where all of this is headed. Will the current struggle metamorphose into the necessary full-scale revolt against capitalist environmental destruction? Or will it be confined to very limited, short-term gains of the kind compatible with the system? Will the movement radicalize, leading to the full mobilization of its popular base? Or will the more elite-technocratic and pro-capitalist elements within the movement leadership in the United States ultimately determine its direction, betraying the grassroots resistance?
These are questions for which there are no answers at present. In the current historical moment the struggle against the fossil-fuel industry is paramount—the basis of today’s ecological popular front. Yet, a realistic outlook indicates that nothing short of a full-scale ecological and social revolution will suffice to create a sustainable society out of the planetary rift generated by the present-day capitalist order. The break with the relentless logic of the system cannot be long delayed.
The Revolution Against the System
A realistic historical assessment tells us that there is no purely technological path to a sustainable society. Although a rapid shift to renewables is a crucial component of any conceivable path to a carbon-free, ecological world, the technical obstacles to such a transition are much greater than is usually assumed. The biggest barrier is the up-front cost of building an entirely new energy infrastructure geared to renewables rather than relying on the existing fossil-fuel infrastructure. Construction of a new energy infrastructure requires vast amounts of energy consumption, and would lead—if current consumption and economic growth were not to be reduced—to further demands on existing fossil-fuel resources. This would mean, as ecological economist Eric Zencey has explained, “an aggressive expansion of the economy’s footprint in paradoxical service to the goal of achieving sustainability.” Assuming the average EROEI of fossil fuels keeps falling, the difficulty only becomes worse. Ecological economists and peak-oil theorists have dubbed this the “energy trap.” In Zencey’s words, “The problem is rooted in the sunken energy costs of the petroleum infrastructure (which makes the continued use of petroleum energetically cheap)” even when the EROEI of such fossil fuels in the case of unconventionals is lower than wind and solar.41 It follows that building an alternative energy infrastructure—without breaking the carbon budget—would require a tectonic shift in the direction of energy conservation and energy efficiency.
Kevin Anderson, a leading British climate scientist and the deputy director of the Tyndall Institute for Climate Research, explained in a 2012 interview with Transition Culture that while it is imperative that we drastically cut fossil fuel use,
we cannot deliver [this] reduction by switching to a low carbon energy supply, we simply cannot get the supply in place quickly enough. Therefore, in the short to medium term the only major change that we can make is by consuming less. Now, that would be fine, we could become more efficient in what we consume by probably [a] 2–3% per annum reduction. But bear in mind, if our economy was growing at 2% per annum, and we were trying to get a 3% per annum reduction in our emissions, that’s a 5% improvement in the efficiency of what we’re doing each year, year on year.
Our analysis [at the Tyndall Institute] for 2°C suggests we need a 10% absolute reduction per annum [in carbon dioxide emissions in the rich countries], and there is no analysis out there that suggests that this is in any way compatible with economic growth. If you consider the Stern Report [on Climate Change], Stern was quite clear that there was no evidence that any more than a 1% per annum reduction in emissions had ever been associated with anything other than “economic recession or upheaval,” I think was the exact quote.42
In Anderson’s view, the only hope is to shift rapidly from a capitalist-growth economy to a steady-state economy—or, at the very least, to place a moratorium on economic growth for several decades while society’s surplus resources are devoted to the transformation of the energy infrastructure. This would require, he says, “the community approach, the bottom-up approach,” with the population mobilizing on its own behalf and that of future generations to create a new “emergent” reality. Such a social and ecological transformation would necessitate a move towards social conservation, even short-term rationing. Ecological planning of production and consumption, and energy use, would be essential.43 In the words of the Royal Society of London, one of the world’s oldest scientific bodies, it is now necessary to “develop socio-economic systems and institutions that are not dependent on continued material consumption growth.”44
If we go beyond the climate change issue and examine the entire global ecological crisis the logic behind such reasoning is inescapable. In 2009 leading earth-system scientists led by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Center introduced what is known as the “planetary boundaries” approach to determining the “safe operating space” for human beings on the planet, using as their baseline the biophysical conditions associated with the Holocene geological epoch in earth history—the last 10,000–12,000 years which nurtured the rise of civilization. The global ecological crisis can thus be defined as a sharp and potentially irreversible departure from Holocene conditions.45
This analysis of a “safe operating space” for humanity established a system of natural metrics in the form of nine planetary boundaries. In the case of three of these—climate change, biodiversity loss, and the nitrogen cycle (part of a boundary together with the phosphorus cycle)—the planetary boundaries have already been crossed. While in the case of a number of other planetary boundaries—the phosphorus cycle, ocean acidification, global freshwater use, and change in land use—alarming trends suggest that these boundaries will soon be crossed as well. Climate change is therefore only one part of a much larger ecological crisis facing humanity, traceable to the exponential growth of an increasingly destructive economic order within a finite planetary system.
These considerations all point to the limitations of what appears to be the governing outlook of the climate movement, promoted by its elite-technocratic elements. The current ecological popular front has its basis in its singular opposition to fossil fuels and the fossil-fuel industry, and is largely premised on the notion the solar revolution will provide the solution to the climate problem, allowing for the continuation of the current socioeconomic order with relatively few adjustments. However, stopping climate change and the destruction of the environment in general requires not just a new, more sustainable technology, greater efficiency, and the opening of channels for green investment and green jobs; it requires an ecological revolution that will alter our entire system of production and consumption, and create new systems geared to substantive equality, and ecological sustainability—a “revolutionary reconstitution of society at large.”46 It means comprehending, as Marx presciently did in the nineteenth century, the metabolic relation between society and nature based in production itself—and the dangers associated with capitalism’s growing metabolic rift. For Marx, the very destruction of “that metabolism” in the human relation to nature “compels its systematic restoration as a regulative law of social production, in a form adequate to the full development of the human race.”47
The materialist conception of history has often been interpreted in ways—contrary to Marx—that systematically excluded ecological conditions from the analysis. Yet an argument can be made that the working class during its most class-conscious and revolutionary periods has been just as concerned with overall living conditions—including urban and rural community and the interaction with the natural environment—as with working conditions (in the narrow sense). A clear indication of this, reflecting the times in which it was written, is provided by Engels’s 1844 Condition of the Working Class in England, where environmental conditions were presented as of even greater importance to the overall material conditions of the working class than factory conditions—although the root cause resided in the class basis of production.48 In today’s world, the undermining of the lifeworld of the great majority of the population is occurring in relation to both economy and environment. We can therefore expect the most radical movements to emerge precisely where economic and ecological crises converge on the lives of the underlying population. Given the nature of capitalism and imperialism and the exigencies of the global environmental crisis, a new, revolutionary environmental proletariat is likely to arise most powerfully and most decisively in the global South. Yet, such developments, it is now clear, will not be confined to any one part of the planet.49
The “bottom line” in an accounting ledger is one of capitalism’s most enduring metaphors. We are now facing an ecological bottom line—a planetary carbon budget together with planetary boundaries in general—that represents a more fundamental accounting. Without a thoroughgoing transformation of production and consumption, and also social consciousness and cultural forms, the world economy will continue to emit carbon dioxide on a business-as-usual basis, pushing us all the way to the redline of 2°C and beyond—to a world in which climate change is increasingly beyond our control. In Hansen’s words: “It is not an exaggeration to suggest, based on [the] best available scientific evidence, that burning all fossil fuels could result in the planet being not only ice-free but human-free.”50
Under these conditions what is needed is a decades-long ecological revolution, in which an emergent humanity will once again, as it has innumerable times before, reinvent itself, transforming its existing relations of production and the entire realm of social existence, in order to generate a restored metabolism with nature and a whole new world of substantive equality as the key to sustainable human development. This is the peculiar “challenge and burden of our historical time.”51
Notes
  1. See John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), 85–105; International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2010 (OECD/IEA, 2010), 125–26; Ramez Naam, The Infinite Resource (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2013), 47.
  2. Pushker A. Kharecha and James E. Hansen, “Implications of ‘Peak Oil’ for Atmosphere CO2 and Climate,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 22 (2008): 1–10. The term “unconventional fossil fuels” is commonly used to refer to: fossil-fuel feedstocks that have not been intensively exploited up to the present, usually because they are of inferior grade and/or require additional technology and added costs for extraction and processing, such as heavy oils, oil sands, shale gas, tight oil, tight gas, oil shale, methane hydrates, and oil from deepwater drilling. “Unconventional Fossil Fuels,” Juice: Alternative Fuels World, http://alternatefuelsworld.com, accessed July 15, 2013; International Energy Agency, “Glossary of Terms” (“Unconventional Gas” and “Unconventional Oil”), http://iea.org, accessed July 15, 2013.
  3. Charles C. Mann, “What If We Never Run Out of Oil,” Atlantic 311, no. 4, May 2013, 54, 63.
  4. Michael T. Klare, The Race for What’s Left (New York: Henry Holt, 2012), 106.
  5. Bill McKibben, “The Fossil Fuel Resistance,” Rolling Stone, April 25, 2013, 42.
  6. The Keystone XL Pipeline is actually part of the larger Keystone pipeline system. The first two phases of this are already completed and the third phase, the southern leg, will soon be finished. When this is done Alberta tar-sand oil will begin to flow to the Gulf. But the completion of the critical northern line (phase 4) will provide a more direct route and will carry about twice the oil. As Candice Bernd has written: “James Hansen called the [Keystone XL] project ‘the fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet.’ … The northern, cross-border expansion of the project would make that fuse burn faster, doubling the Keystone pipeline system’s carrying capacity to more than 800,000 barrels a day.” Candice Bernd, “Tar Sands Will Be Piped to the Gulf Coast, With or Without the Northern Segment of Keystone XL,” Truthout, April 29, 2013, http://truth-out.org.
  7. David Biello, “How Much Will Tar Sands Oil Add to Global Warming?,” Scientific American, January 23, 2013, http://scientificamerican.com.
  8. James Hansen, “Game Over for the Climate,” New York Times, May 9, 2012, http://nytimes.com, and “Keystone XL: The Pipeline to Disaster,” Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2013, http://articles.latimes.com.
  9. Glenn Gilchrist, “Transportation—Alberta Achilles Heel,” April 5, 2013, http://world.350.org; Reid McKay, “Canada Losing Massive Wealth on Oil Price Differential,” CEO.CA, February 13, 2013, http://ceo.ca; David Biello, “Greenhouse Goo,” Scientific American 309, no. 1 (July 2013): 61.
  10. David Sassoon, “Crude, Dirty and Dangerous,” New York Times, August 20, 2012, http://nytimes.com; David Biello, “Does Tar Sand Oil Increase the Risk of Pipeline Spills?,” Scientific American, April 4, 2013, http://scientificamerican.com.
  11. McKibben, “The Fossil Fuel Resistance,” 40; Michael Levi, The Power Surge (New York: Oxford, 2013), 81; “What’s Next in the Ongoing Keystone XL Saga,” U.S. News & World Report, April 5, 2013, http://usnews.com.
  12. See Jacob Devaney, “Idle No More: Hints of a Global Super-Movement,” Common Dreams, January 3, 2013, http://commondreams.org; “First Nations Group Calls for B.C. to Reject Northern Gateway Pipeline Work Permits,” Vancouver Sun, June 27, 2013, http://vancouversun.com; Brooke Jarvis, “Idle No More: Native-Led Protest Movement Takes on Canadian Government,” Rolling Stone, February 4, 2013, http://rollingstone.com.
  13. Ohio Environmental Council, “What is Fracking?,” http://theoec.org, accessed July 29, 2013; “Baffled About Fracking? You’re Not Alone,” New York Times, May 13, 2011, http://nytimes.com; Levi, The Power Surge, 41–49.
  14. Rise in U.S. Gas Production Fuels an Unexpected Plunge in Emissions,” Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2013, http://online.wsj.com. Such figures are of course misleading in terms of the overall climate problem, since the coal industry has responded to the increased competition of natural gas by increasing coal exports to China and elsewhere. Indeed, a study by John Broderick and Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Climate Change Research Institute has indicated that “more than half of the emissions avoided in the U.S. power sector [in 2008–2011] may have been exported as coal.” Thus they conclude that “without a meaningful cap on global carbon emissions, the exploitation of sale gas reserves is likely to increase total [global] emissions.” John Broderick and Kevin Anderson, Has US Shale Gas Reduced CO2 Emissions?, Tyndall Manchester Climate Change Research, October 2012, http://tyndall.ac.uk, 2. U.S. coal exports help fuel Chinese industry, which then sells a larger part of their output back to the United States. It has been estimated that the United States imported 400 million tons of embedded carbon in Chinese goods in 2008 alone. Bill Chameides, “On U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Cognitive Dissonance,” The Green Grok, November 14, 2012, http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu.
  15. Jeff Tollefson, “Methane Leaks Erode Green Credentials of Natural Gas,” Nature, January 2, 2013, http://nature.com.
  16. Matthew Phillips, “More Evidence Shows Drilling Causes Earthquakes,” Bloomberg Businessweek, April 1, 2013, http://businessweek.com.
  17. Quebec’s Lac Mégantic Oil Train Disaster Not Just Tragedy, But Corporate Crime,” Guardian, July 11, 2013, http://guardian.co.uk; Jonathan Flanders, “‘Pipeline on Rails’ Plans for the Railroads Explode in Quebec,” CounterPunch, July 11, 2013, http://counterpunch.org; “Quebec Train Death Toll at 50,” New York Post, July 11, 2013, http://nypost.com; “Canadian Tanker Train Crash Raises Fresh Questions on Oil Transportation,” Guardian, July 16, 2013, http://guardian.co.uk.
  18. Frances Beinecke, “3 Years Later: Act on the Lessons of BP Gulf Oil Spill,” The Energy Collective, April 18, 2013, http://theenergycollective.com; Klare, The Race for What’s Left, 42–49.
  19. Klare, The Race for What’s Left.
  20. Susan Solomon, et. al., “Irreversible Climate Change Due to Carbon Dioxide Emissions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 6 (February 10, 2009): 1704–9; Heidi Cullen, The Weather of the Future (New York: Harper, 2010), 261–71; James Hansen, “Tipping Point,” in Eva Fearn and Kent H. Redford, eds., State of the Wild 2008 (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008), 7–8; Biello, “Greenhouse Goo,” 58–59.
  21. Trillionthtonne.org; Carbon Tracker and the Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics, Unburnable Carbon 2012: Wasted Capital and Stranded Assets (2013), http://carbontracker.org; Myles Allen, et. al., “The Exit Strategy,” Nature Reports, April 30, 2009; http://nature.com; and “Warming Caused by Cumulative Carbon Emissions Towards the Trillionth Tonne,” Nature 458 (April 30, 2009): 1163–66;Malte Meinshausen, et. al., “Greenhouse Gas Emission Targets for Limiting Global Warming to 2°C,” Nature 458 (April 20, 2009): 1158–62.
  22. Ending Its Summer Melt, Arctic Sea Ice Sets a New Low that Leads to Warnings,” New York Times, September 19, 2012, http://nytimes.com; Andrew Freedman, “A Closer Look at Arctic Sea Ice Melt and Extreme Weather,” Climate Central, September 19, 2012, http://climatecentral.org; John Vidal and Adam Vaughan, “Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks to Smallest Extent Ever Recorded,” Guardian, September 14, 2012, http://guardian.co.uk.
  23. Australian Climate Commission, The Angry Summer (2013), http://climatecommission.gov.au; Climate Central, Global Weirding (New York: Pantheon Press, 2012).
  24. Greenland and Antarctica ‘Have Lost Four Trillion Tonnes of Ice’ in 20 Years,” Guardian, November 29, 2012, http://guardian.co.uk.
  25. Levi, The Power Surge, 148–49; Naam, The Infinite Resource, 161–62.
  26. Bruno Burger, “Electricity Production from Solar and Wind in Germany in 2012,” Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, February 8, 2013, http://ise.fraunhofer.de; “Crossing the 20 Percent Mark: Green Energy Use Jumps in Germany,” Spiegel Online International, August 30, 2011, http://spiegel.de; Levi, The Power Surge, 144–45; Naam, The Infinite Resource, 163.
  27. Mason Inman, “The True Cost of Fossil Fuels,” Scientific American (April 2013): 58–61; Charles A.S. Hall and Kent A. Klitgaard, Energy and the Wealth of Nations (New York: Springer, 2012); Steve Hallett, The Efficiency Trap (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2013), 77; Eric Zencey, “Energy as a Master Resource,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013 (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2013), 79; Levi, The Power Surge, 151–52.
  28. Jeremy Leggett, The Carbon War (New York: Routledge, 2001), 332.
  29. See Horace Campbell, Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013); John Bellamy Foster, Naked Imperialism(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006).
  30. See Matt McDermott, “Why Japan’s Methane Hydrate Exploitation Would Be Game Over for the Planet,” Motherboard, March 2013, http://motherboard.vice.com; Mann, “We Will Never Run Out of Oil.”
  31. Executive Office of the President, The President’s Climate Action Plan (June 2013), http://whitehouse.gov, 19; Levi, The Power Surge, 99–101, 171–72.
  32. Richard York, “Do Alternative Energy Sources Displace Fossil Fuels?,” Nature Climate Change 2 (2012): 441–43.
  33. Charlie Rose Talks to ExxonMobil’s Rex Tillerson,” Bloomberg Businessweek, March 7, 2013, http://businessweek.com.
  34. Juliet Eilperin, “The White House’s ‘All of the Above’ Energy Strategy Goes Global,” Washington Post, April 24, 2013, http://washingtonpost.com; David Biello, “All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy Trumps Climate Action,” Scientific American, November 16, 2012, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com.
  35. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on Climate Change,” WhiteHouse.gov, June 25, 2013, http://whitehouse.gov; Executive Office of the President, The President’s Climate Action Plan, 7, 19.
  36. Executive Office of the President, The President’s Climate Action Plan, 8.
  37. Curtis White, The Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature (Sausalito, CA: PolipointPress, 2009).
  38. George Lakey, “I Pledge Allegiance, To Resist the Pipeline,” Waging Nonviolence, March 12, 2013, http://wagingnonviolence.org. In his June 2013 remarks introducing his “climate action plan” Obama ambiguously stated that the Keystone XL Pipeline project would be disapproved if it was shown to “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” The inclusion of the word “significantly” naturally allows the administration the maximum latitude to come down on the side of the fossil fuels industry if it so chooses.
  39. See, for example, Jeremy Leggett, The Solar Century (London: GreenProfile, 2009). This technocratic approach is a product of Leggett’s whole history, first as a geologist consulting for the oil industry, then as a Greenpeace leader, then as CEO for Britain’s first solar power corporation, and finally as the founder of Carbon Tracker.
  40. Bill McKibben, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012, http://rollingstone.com.
  41. Zencey, “Energy as a Master Resource,” 80–82.
  42. An Interview with Kevin Anderson,” Transition Culture, November 2, 2012, http://transitionculture.org; Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 232. A similar criticism (to that of Anderson) of the Stern Review’s contention that carbon emission reductions of more than 1 percent per annum were detrimental to the capitalist economy and thus had to be off limits was made in John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, The Ecological Rift (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 154–56.
  43. Kevin Anderson interview; Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, “Beyond ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Emission Scenarios for a New World,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 369 (2011): 40–41. We might add that what would make a vast reduction in consumption possible while at the same time improving the conditions of most of the population is the massive amount of waste built into monopoly capitalist society, associated with the prodigious expansion of superfluous goods, and vast marketing expenses. Such socially unnecessary expenditures, as Thorstein Veblen explained at the outset of the twentieth century, are built into the production of commodities themselves. See John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, “The Planetary Emergency,” Monthly Review 64, no. 7 (December 2012): 7–16; Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1964), 284–325.
  44. The Royal Society, People and the Planet (London: Royal Society, April 2012), 9.
  45. Johan Rockström, et. al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Nature 461 (2009): 472–75, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov; Carl Folke, “Respecting Planetary Boundaries and Reconnecting to the Biosphere,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013, 19–27.
  46. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964), 2. See István Mészáros, “Substantive Equality: The Absolute Condition of Sustainability,” in Mészáros, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008), 258–64.
  47. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976): 637–38.
  48. Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1984).
  49. The notion of an environmental proletariat is advanced in Foster, Clark, and York, The Ecological Rift, 440. See also Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), 143–44. An example of the growth of a broad alliance of working people is the Idle No More movement in Canada, in which popular environmental groups, the National Farmers Union, and, increasingly, unionists are allying themselves with a movement led by First Nations, and organized around their treaty rights—in opposition the Canadian government’s rapacious extractivist policies. Much of the struggle has centered on resistance to tar-sands oil extraction/production, focusing on native land and water rights. See Gene McGuckin, “Why Unionists Must Build the Climate Change Fight,” Climate & Capitalism, May 2, 2013, http://climateandcapitalism.com; “Farmers Union: Why We Support Idle No More,” Climate & Capitalism, April 3, 2013, http://climateandcapitalism.com.
  50. James Hansen, “Making Things Clearer: Exaggeration, Jumping the Gun, and the Venus Syndrome,” April 15, 2013, http://columbia.edu; Obama, “Remarks by the President on Climate Change.”
  51. Mészáros, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time.

CHALKY WHITE: "...AIN'T FIXING TO BUILD NO BOOKCASE"

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REMEMBER THE ROBERT WILLIAMS BOOK "NEGROES WITH GUN?"
WELL, HERE SITS CHALKY WHITE AND SOME NEGROES WITH GUNS
A FEW DECADES EARLIER


I will continue down the path which Bill Berkowitz has put me on with another version of Scission's new Cultural Monday.  I am the worst person in the world to deal with culture.  Even though I read about everything I can lay my hands on and always have, I have never been able to write even a decent book report, let alone review literature of any kind.  I almost never see the symbolism.  In fact, I don't believe, that most of the time, the authors ever see the symbolism.  I think most of the time  literary critics, university professors, high school english teachers and an assortment of snobs are the one's who actually create the symbolism.  How come you never read a book where the author at the end relays to you all the deep meanings of what he or she has written...maybe because there really  isn't any.  Don't you just hate me.

Further, if it were up to me and I was running a bankrupt city the first thing I would do to raise some cash is sell the closest city owned Art Museum.  Really?  Can someone explain to me who decides what is art and who decides what it is worth and why?  I am all for your local artists making a little cash for their work, but their work is really no more significant, less so usually, then the worker at the local plant who puts the brake linings in your new car.  I don't claim to never view a painting or a photograph or a sculpture that I really like and admire, but that seems pretty much a matter of individual feeling to me.  I wouldn't give you thousands of dollars for any of it.  Millions for a Mona Lisa, I don't think so.  I am just a yokel, I suppose.

Art films, never much liked them.  Classical music, hey give me some rock and roll.  Dare I even mention folk music.  I always wondered just who the "folk" in folk music were/are.  Who are these people who wear nothing but flannel shirts and work boots and who all sing the same song with different words while hopping the next freight train passing through town.  Maybe they existed once, decades and decades and decades ago, who knows, but I don't believe all the old Okies heading west were that guy, nor do I believe they were that woman in the long dress, with the stringy hair, and the sad eyes, standing gallantly by her man.  And then there is the problem that apparently almost none of these poor folks, hard working folks, were anything but white.  What's up with that?  Really, there are folk songs I like, but mostly I find the stuff slow and dull and pretty much all the same.  Yeah, yeah, we all love the oh so political lyrics, but hey, go write a poem.

Speaking of poems.  Now I do like a lot of poetry.  Couldn't tell you why.  Couldn't interpret much of any of it, but as the Supreme's said of porn, well sort of, I know the stuff I like when I see it.

I like baseball and consider it an art, not always, but sometimes.  As I said before I like good rock, good metal, good goth...and I even enjoy a television shows like Justified, Nashville (I know), China Beach, Sons of Anarchy, and, of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  

So, the likes of me, doing something called Cultural Anything is an abomination, but oh well.

That brings us finally to today's post.  I have recently been watching the DVD set of the series Boardwalk Empire. I do get a little tired of seeing people getting their heads blown off and all that, but I have been particularly intrigued by the character known as Chalky White.  Chalky is Atlantic City's premier black bootlegger and all around urban gangster sort (we're talking prohibition times here).  The Grio says of Chalky,


 ...he’s a gangster involved illegal trade, but he also serves as a defender of his community against often violent white racism and a provider for the needs of black people whether they participate in the underground economy or not. More than just a procurer of outlawed whiskey, White is the political leader and moneyed savior of Atlantic City’s poor black population. 

Actually, I think that is a little over the top...the "savior" part. 

Grio goes on,


 Chalky is a devoted family, he spends his time outside of the home running his business and making sure the black population gets their proper cut of the burgeoning illegal liquor economy. It’s not that we’ve never seen a black man as husband and father, but to share in the same body two ideas that seem at odds with one another (criminal mastermind and loving husband/father) challenges us to think of black men beyond the binary of good versus bad, that one could be both wedded to the streets and his take care of his responsibilities his family left at home....

Loop 21 adds, 


... what makes him most compelling is not simply that he is complex – a man who ruthlessly runs an illegal liquor enterprise and dotes on his Morehouse College-bound son – but that his complexity represents a real, if forgotten set of black men who lived during that era.


One of the most powerful scenes I have recently seen on television is the one in Boardwalk Empire where, as Loop 21 describes:


 ...we witness an exchange between a prohibition-era black political boss and the Klansman he believes lynched one of his employees. Chalky White, played brilliantly by Michael K. Williams (who previously played the homoerotic killer Omar on “The Wire” ) tells the bound white man a story about his father, the most talented carpenter in Elkin, Texas. After building a majestic set of bookshelves for a white employer, Chalky’s father is lured out of town and lynched – likely to avoid paying him for his work and for the sin of being an artistically gifted Negro. At the conclusion of the tale we see Chalky White unfolding a set of carpenter’s tools, at which point the captive Klansman gulps and asks what he plans to do with them. The reply, uttered with sneering contempt encapsulates every reason why “Boardwalk Empire” has quickly become one of the best-written shows on television. “Well,” the Chalky says ominously, “I ain’t fixing to build no shelves.”

Chalky ain't playing the victim.  No sireee... I think he actually said, by the way, that he wasn't fixing to build "no bookcase."

Loop 21 again, 


Where the bootlegging at the heart of “Boardwalk” was largely run by whites, the numbers racket was, at least early in its history, a black and Latino enterprise. And Casper Holstein, who was the most powerful of these bosses, would be worthy of his own HBO series. At his height in the mid 1920s, Holstein controlled a large swath of the Harlem numbers racket, pulling in $10,000 daily. His wealth made him a major force in politics both in Harlem and his native Virgin Islands.


What made him stand out, though, was the significant role he played in helping fund the Harlem Renaissance. Holstein donated money to black colleges, dropped large financial contributions on Marcus Garvey’s movement and set up a fund for aspiring black writers, several of whom later became recognized figures in the Harlem Renaissance.


Chalky White is a fictional character but this is literally a case of art imitating life. Given the nature of the world he inhabits and the demands of the storyline, a character like him probably isn’t long for this world. But there’s something to be said for the fact that there are plenty more where he came from.

I have to admit I feel a little out of my league getting into all this, not the least of reasons being, quite simply that I am white, so what do I really know.  I wasn't even sure if I should write this stuff.  Surely there is someone out there who will view this from an angle that might cast the whole thing as racist.  I thought long and hard about that, but figured to do ahead with my thoughts anyway.  I was helped in this decision by the piece I am posting below from the blog site We Are Respectable Negroes and the writing of  Chauncey Devega.  His piece is three years old, but I am just getting around to watching the show, so, well, you know...

Chauncey DeVega is editor and founder of the blog We Are Respectable Negroes, whose work has been featured by the NY Times, Alternet, the New York Daily News, the Utne Reader, the Week, and The Atlantic Monthly. Writing under a pen name, Chauncey DeVega's essays on race, popular culture, and politics have appeared in various books, as well as on such sites as the Washington Post's The Root and PopMatters.


Black Revenge Fantasies, White Manhood, and Historical Memory: Boardwalk Empire's Episode, "Anastasia" Reviewed



HBO's Boardwalk Empire is a lush television series. Do not be mistaken: Lushness does not necessarily mean a completeness of superficial physical beauty or the trap of ephemeral and pretty things. Lushness can also be depth. It can be intelligence. Lushness can be breadth and reward. As noted philosopher Slavoy Zizek said of the seminal dystopian film Children of Men, some artifacts of popular culture reward "deep viewing." For those who study film, popular culture, or the semiotics of mass culture, this means viewing a film with obligatory seriousness, intensity, and broadness of field.


For scholars of film, this understanding is a wink to the concept understood as "Mis En Scene." Translated: Boardwalk Empireframes a shot in such a way as to encourage a careful attention to clothing, the positioning of the characters relative to one another, and of the scene at large. The most damning observation that one can make of a television series such as Boardwalk Empire, a period piece set in the 1920's, is that it is a wax museum come to life. On its worst of days, and in the hands of a lesser steward, Boardwalk Empire could be the pitiable performance of a once great Motown band singing at a county fair when all the magic is gone, and the agents involved are in full denial about how far low they have fallen. Boardwalk Empire is none of these things--it is a window into the past, carefully constructed, and indelibly committed to the best that dramatic television can offer.



Boardwalk Empire is set is the great age of Prohibition-era America, when flappers danced upon the stage, temperance societies of now empowered (white) women reigned for a moment as they spread the wings of their now found political agency, and gangsters (with their liquor) were king. This is also the moment when white ethnics--those Italians, Irish, Greeks, and others--fought to burn away their ethnicity in the crucible of a soon to be found full whiteness in the post-World War One moment, as they become erstwhile Horatio Algers, when like James Cagney, they came to understand that "the world is mine."


The setting that is the literal boardwalk in Boardwalk Empire is also a complement to how race was made in early 20th century America. The sites, sounds, and spectacle of this space, the World's Fairs and mass culture were locations for race makingthrough popular culture. Moreover, the iron cage of white manhood, its imagined fraternal order, and the creation of "normal" bodies were all made real through the accessible spectacles featured on the boardwalk of places like Atlantic City, P.T. Barnum's enterprises, the "freak show," Ripley's stages, andthe great midways of cities such as Chicago.



Boardwalk Empire contains all of these elements. It has acknowledged the racist spectacle of The Hottentot Venus. The marquis of the theaters featured in Boardwalk Empire's deep scenes all signal to this history. Cigarette store Indians are omnipresent. Black popular culture is the ether of The Roaring Twenties, all the while black folks are dismissed as schwartzes who don't polish the crystal ware correctly. As whiteness exists only in juxtaposition to blackness and the Other, black folk are peripheral to Boardwalk Empire while being central to the American mythos. This is especially clear in Sunday's episode, "Anastasia." Because popular culture, especially television shows such as Mad Men andBoardwalk Empire, traffic in the malleability of historical memory, the white gaze doesn't see "us," but "we" are forever there.


The greatest moment of Boardwalk Empire's "Anastasia" episode signals to the power of blackness in American memory, and of this country's popular culture at large. To this point, Nucky, Steve Bushemi's (main) character, the top dog of Atlantic City, is playing chess not checkers. If politics is "what have you done for me lately?" and "who get's what, when, and why?" Nucky must reach out to Chalky, Omar of The Wire fame and the boss of the African American political machine in Atlantic City. Ultimately in"Anastasia," realpolitik trumps white supremacy and provincial notions of the supremacy of white bodies over those black and brown.



There is also a fantasy element to collective memory whichBoardwalk Empire is so keenly aware. Some viewers may indulge dreams of flappers, finely tailored suits, and bootleg liquor. For those with a blue's sensibility, our freedom dreams may be a bit different: How many of "us" have ever gotten to sit across from their sworn foes? To make them render onto Caesar? To act out justice upon their bodies?



In "Anastasia," Chalky indulges this dark dream--an Inglorious Bastards moment--of providential justice. He sits across from the Grand Cyclops of the KKK in Atlantic City. Chalky, in the longest monologue on the show to date relays a tale of class, race, and "uppity" negroes who dared to step out of line. For this, Chalky's father swung like strange fruit. And as Chalky opens up the leather clutch that contains his father's tools to torture the Grand Cyclops, we understand that pain will be a form of cathartic vengeance.



Here, suffering rendered onto the enemies of black folk, the Knight Riders, Klansmen, Klanswomen, and others is also a fantasy of sorts. How many black Americans can really recount a family story--one that is "true"--of relatives hung on the lynching tree, of uppity negro Catcher Freeman runaways, and where we, all of us, had grandmas who had Colt revolvers hiding under the hemline of their dresses ready for any white man (or anyone for that matter) who crossed them?



And we certainly cannot forget the stories about former chattel who ran away and came back as Union soldiers--much to the chagrin of their former masters; of slaves who posted bounties for their "owners" during Reconstruction; slaves that evicted masters on the plantation as they built a nation under their feet, or of the ultimate "go to hell letter" written by Jourdan Anderson to his white "employer." These are collective memories that may or not be literally true. Nevertheless, this does not take away the power of these communal truths because collective memory is none diminished by appeals to empirical truth.



In relief, Boardwalk Empire is a story of class, aspiration, and the Horatio Alger myth. Boardwalk Empire is also a tale of revenge and fantasy on the part of "us" against "them." Per our tradition, some questions about the Easter Eggs and Mis En Scenes of Boardwalk Empire:



1. What have you noticed in the background? What is your favorite shot of the series so far?



2. Of fashion choices and body sculpting. Am I the only person who has noticed something amiss with Lucy's beautiful breasts, or the choice of "female grooming" to this point so far?



3. Harlem. I need to see Harlem in its heyday. As an Easter egg,Boardwalk Empire could feature some former Harlem Hellfightersas badmen and now gangsters. Alternatively, some former white officers in those famed units would make for suitably complicated characters that are nonetheless racist, but somehow "progressive" for their contemporary moment in Jim Crow America.



4. On that note, Steve Bushemi's character dismisses the obviously "racist" cop during their meeting. Am I being cynical, or does the white racial frame always find a way to protect itself through a narrative where white racism is an outlier and most white folk are always good people--despite the politics of the epoch?



5. The Romanovs. What a great meta-narrative for this episode asBoardwalk Empire is a show centered on the pretenses of class mobility, uplift, social betters, and striving towards the good life.



6. As we saw with the slashing of Jimmy's prostitute lover, do the little folks always have to suffer for their associations with the marginally more powerful?



7. Why the emphasis on premature babies? Is this some signal to technology, progress, and America? Or is it a wink to a fascination with abnormal bodies during the early part of the 20th century?



8. We have Chalky as the bad black man and one of the machine bosses of Atlantic City. Are we going to see The Queen, the real queen, who was marginalized by the Hollywood myth-making machine in Lawrence Fishburne's movie Hoodlum?





THE WEST VIRGINIA ECONOMY SHOULD NOT BE BUILT ON CRUELTY TO DOGS

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My greyhound bud Hawk has asked me to return to Scissions series on  the world of greyhound racing and help do what I can to explain why it needs to stop.  So I turn to West Virginia where all is not well, not well at all.

The greyhound industry is just one small component of Capital.  No big deal in the whole global capital scheme of things.  What is interesting is that in West Virginia, as local papers there have pointed out, when coal companies, steel mills, grocery stores, auto shops, and the like fall on hard times, they can't just ask the state of West Virginia for subsidies (well, I'm not so sure about coal companies, but let's pretend on that one).  Businesses in the capitalist world, after all, are supposed to make it without help from the State.  Well, in West Virginia, believe it or not, the Greyhound racing industry, and the horse racing industry for that matter, seem to be exempt from that basic law of Capital.  Those two get huge state subsidies.

The Charleston Daily Mail reports:


Since 2008, the state has provided more than $41 million to West Virginia greyhound breeders through the Greyhound Breeding Development Fund, according to a report released today by Massachusetts-based nonprofit Grey2K USA.

"The state is investing in an industry that has passed," said Christine Dorchak, Grey2K president. "And we want to point out that this is not only a misuse of taxpayer money, it's also causing great harm to greyhounds."

Without that money the race track/casino owners claim they would have to close and many would lose their jobs.

Again from the Daily Mail, 


Other states that have ended greyhound racing have also allocated money to people in the racing industry to help them transition to other jobs, Thiel said.

"But to us, our economy shouldn't be built on cruelty to dogs,"Thiel said. "We don't understand the argument that you should continue doing something that causes hundreds of dogs to die and thousands of dogs to endure lives of confinement."

A recent study (see link below)  found that  almost 4,800 injuries were reported in West Virginia from the beginning of 2008 to June of this year, the report states. More than 1,400 greyhounds suffered "career ending" injuries during that period. There is overlap in the data: a dog could suffer multiple injuries at one time or throughout the year.

Oh yeah, during that same time span 289 greyhounds died or were euthanized at West Virginia's two dog tracks.


"We believe this is cruel and inhumane, but the industry certainly doesn't," said Carey Theil, executive director of Grey2k USA, a nonprofit dedicated to ending dog racing. "This is not because they're cruel people, it's just what has always been done in the industry."

There is more.

In West Virginia regulations require that the crates that greyhounds spend twenty-two hours each and every day be a minimum of 44 by 32 by 34 inches in size.  In those cages many greyhounds cannot even stand up.

Last week a report released by GREY2K USA exposed the horrible situation within the greyhound racing industry in West Virginia.  I would ask you to view the entire report which can be found at   http://grey2kusa.org/pdf/WV2013_web.pdf

The post below is from ThinkProgress.



How Organizers Are Bringing About the Death of 

Greyhound Racing

BY ADAM HUGHES, 

Credit: Action Shots Online
Credit: Action Shots Online
The sights of the greyhound track can be horrifying: cages too tight for dogs to stand, abuse at the hands of trainers, gruesome injury and prompt euthanasia. A new report [PDF], released on September 4th by GREY2K USA and the ASPCA, looks at greyhound racing in West Virginia and finds a dying industry that’s propping itself up by cutting corners on animal care. Across the country, it seems like public opinion has turned against greyhound racing–the number of tracks in the United States has fallen by half over the past ten years.

The emotional case to ban greyhound racing is easy to make. People love dogs, and racing dogs face short and painful lives so casinos can maximize their profit. West Virginia has only two active tracks, but from 2008 to the present, 4,796 greyhound injuries were reported, resulting in 289 deaths. If the numbers don’t make the case, then the stories do. One dog spent over two months in the kennel with a broken leg without receiving veterinary treatment. Another was grabbed by the neck and thrown screaming into a truck by a trainer with a record of mistreatment. A director at the Wheeling Island Racetrack described one kennel: “I began choking so badly that even my eyes were watering… a strong odor of urine affected me.”

Emotions alone don’t change public policy, however, especially not when significant sums of money are involved. Without much fanfare, the legislative shift against greyhound racing has become one of the most decisive progressive victories of our time. In the past twenty years, eleven states have passed laws prohibiting dog racing.

How did the anti-racing movement become so successful so quickly? Like any successful campaign, they had a strong but nimble leadership who understood how to activate passive supporters and create strategic alliances.

The 2008 campaign to ban greyhound racing in Massachusetts operated in the shadow of a failed referendum eight years earlier. The 2000 campaign lacked the infrastructure to compete on a statewide level; the measure only appeared on the ballot because unconnected volunteers across the state collected signatures. By the next campaign, activists had enlisted almost one hundred local coordinators and won the endorsement of many more community leaders. The movement gained a voice, and a thorough research effort provided a meaningful, compelling message. Massachusetts voters responded by giving the greyhounds a victory by almost 12%.

Advocates of greyhound racing use mostly economic arguments, threatening job losses if the industry is forced to close. Rhode Island kept dog racing in 2009 because of the need to maintain tax revenue, and advertisements from Massachusetts tracks told the stories of their workers. To combat this, anti-racing activists have focused on the subsidies that state governments spend on greyhounds. They’ve formed alliances with casino owners forced to keep failing tracks open. When I spoke to Ann Church, the ASPCA’s vice president for state affairs, she was just as prepared to make the economic case as the animals rights case for ending the sport. These arguments resonate across the political spectrum, and Republicans have led the fight to ban racing in Arizona andWest Virginia.

Through all this, greyhound advocacy has been on the fringes of the progressive movement. I doubt that many progressives actively support greyhound racing, but the campaigners’ success rarely gets the attention it deserves. Church admits that they face entrenched opposition in West Virginia, admitting to me that “once the stream of money starts flowing, it’s very hard to turn off.” The dogs have canny organizers and battle-tested strategies on their side, however, and I doubt it will be long before we finally see an end to America’s cruelest sport.






YOU DON'T NEED A REVOLUTION TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS

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It is one of those days when I am already just about out of time and I am just getting here.  So, what to do.

Well, a moment ago I discovered that while I wasn't looking, something was happening in Romania, of all places.  I shouldn't say "of all places" as today everywhere is "of all places."  Things happen seemingly out of the blue, when if we stopped and looked and listened for a minute we would realize they weren't out of the blue at all.  What confuses many  is that most on the left think uprisings and rebellions, mass protests, and revolutions have to be the work of some vanguard grouping which will let us all know when it is time to hit the streets.  Instead, what the world's multitudes keep demonstrating over and over these days is that they don't want or need no vanguard to explain things to them and tell them what to do.  The multitude just keeps doing...and Capital keeps quaking (and quacking, too).

None of this means there is a revolution today in Romania or Egypt or Syria or anywhere else.  Revolutions are more than uprisings or riots or even rebellions.  However, to paraphrase an old group some of you may remember fondly, some may remember with disgust, and some may not remember at all, "You don't need a Revolution to know which way the wind blows."

I present you Romania.

The following is from ROAR.



One week of protests: what’s going on in Romania?

By Grecu Cristian-Dan
Post image for One week of protests: what’s going on in Romania?

For over a week now, the people of Romania have been out in the streets to protest against the construction of an open-pit gold mine and gas fracking.

Via our comrades at the Centrul de Cultură Anarhistă.

Sunday, September 1 marked the beginning of a new age in the social struggles unfolding in Romania. Protests occurred in more than 25 cities across the country — against gold mining and shale gas fracking. The same thing happened in more than 20 cities across Europe and even in North America.

For more than 15 years, there has been a struggle against a Canadian gold mining corporation that wants to exploit gold and silver from the Apuseni Mountains, in the Western part of the country, which would represent the biggest open-pit mining project in Europe. The corporation wishes to erase the village of Roşia Montană and four mountain tops, only to be replaced by a lake full of cyanide. The estimations are that about 200.000 tons of cyanide will be used, only to process 200 tons of gold and a couple hundred tons of silver! What will be next is a regional environmental catastrophe, with extremely high chances of toxic contamination across Romania, Hungary, the Danube River and even the Black Sea.

People are pressured to leave their homes, and those who remain and resist are going to be expropriated by the paramilitary private police of the company, of course in the name of the state and its so called “national interest”. The mass media have been bought, the same happened to the government. On the 27th of August, the government passed a law that will permit this exploitation to take place. What remains between a wish and reality is the decision of parliament. And this thing happened even if, for 14 years, the government admitted that there the Canadian mining corporation has engaged in numerous illegal activities.

At the same time, Chevron is almost on the brink of fracking the earth beneath our feet. A number of illegal probes have already been made, and in some parts of the country the villagers are boycotting the corporation by stealing the wires used for detonations that have been laid out illegally on their property. Some villagers also got physically abused by the private henchmen of the corporations involved in the exploratory work (one of them owned by none other than Franck Timiş, who is one of the people behind the Roşia Montană project as well).

If they would start fracking, a very large portion of the country would be destroyed, and the environment heavily polluted. They tell us that we need shale gas to quit the dreaded dependency on Russian gas, but they say nothing about the fact that Romania is one of the three European states that produces more gas than it uses. The problem is that we have privatized natural gas and what is produced here is sold at cheap prices for the benefit of the powerful states of the European Union while we keep importing gas for consumption at very high prices.

People in the villages are informed and organized by activists, the majority of them shouting that if Chevron starts drilling, they will stop being peaceful, and take out their pitchforks and resist! Slogans like “defend our land!”, “industrial sabotage!” and the like can be heard more and more often. In some villages, the people have threatened the officials, and in others, like the city of Bârlad, which is at the center of the resistance against fracking, people have taken to the streets protesting in the thousands.

In the last couple of years, people from Romania forgot that they had a voice, that they had power, that they could change something. Many accepted the current situation of poverty and corruption, and forgot that they could unite and fight together. But Chevron and RMGC (the Roşia Montană Gold Corporation, which is the Romanian arm of the Canadian mining corporation) with the complicity of the state obliged us to wake up!

People are very angry: they are fed up with what has been happening for the last 24 years, ever since the so-called Revolution of ’89. They have had enough of the corrupt and dysfunctional political system and of the exploitative economic regime. Every hope of this situation being just a phase of a wild capitalism (a kind of regional, Balkanic, corrupt capitalism) that migrates towards a civilized, lawful kind of capitalism has vanished. Since the state regulates theft and destruction by law, what is the meaning of law? Who benefits from the law and who are its victims? It’s time for action!

And so, on September 1, tens of thousands of people marched all over Romania. The teachings from Gezi Park in Istanbul arrived here, too. In Bucharest, working and discussion groups were held in the streets during the protests. Every day, people arrive with a couple of tents, which are more of a symbolic statement: “we are not leaving the streets!” In Cluj, we had public meetings to discuss how to organize for the next days. During this time, other cities were protesting. More and more independent journalists started to write on what is happening. People regained their power of setting the narrative, so they began writing their opinions, posting photos, videos, proposals on their Facebook accounts. There is a big craving for real information, for genuine and true information. We won’t give up. We will not surrender.

More precisely, now is when the struggle really begins. The mainstream media is writing everywhere that the Roşia Montană problem has been resolved. Clever move, but not for us. The corporation and the state try to destroy the movement through misinformation and lies. This is what RMGC wants: they want to make us appear like crétins, and the truth to be buried under 6 feet of mud and cyanide. They try to pitch our friends and colleagues against us. The corporations’ “miners” even said that they will block the entrance into Roşia Montană — of course, they were ordered to say this. A couple of hours ago, we got some reports that stated that architects and volunteers that work on preserving the old houses in the village, were spat on, cursed at, and threatened. They are afraid, as they don’t know what will happen next.

We don’t know what tomorrow holds for us. Nor what the future will look like. But we will continue to protest, to struggle, to organize better and better, until victory will be ours, as the truth already is!
This is a message for international solidarity. If we all are united against our common enemies, the State and Capital, one day we could bring a better world in the place of the current one. Our commons are under attack: education, land, nature, water, health care, just to name a few. Faced with this new wave of primitive accumulation we must resist united and strong!

And so the motto of the resistance is: “The Revolution begins at Roşia Montană!”

CHILE: "...THE REVIVAL OF THEIR DREAM, OUR DREAMS IN FACT"

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9/11/13 marked the 40th anniversary of the notorious coup which overthrew the elected government of socialist Salvador Allende in Chile leaving Allende himself dead.  Many more deaths, disappearances, and imprisonments, as well as horrendous incidents to numerous to count of torture were to follow as the Generals with the full support of that bastion of liberal democracy known as the USA did much more than merely look on with a hideous smile.

The US backed dictator who took over, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, thus began a seventeen year reign of terror during which more than 3000 Chileans were killed.  He didn't stop with Chile.  As Nation of Change reminds us:


The Pinochet regime was violent, repressive and a close ally of the United States. Pinochet formed alliances with other military regimes in South America, and they created “Operation Condor,” a campaign of coordinated terror and assassinations throughout Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Brazil. Operation Condor even reached onto the streets of Washington, DC, when, on Sep. 21, 1976, a former Chilean ambassador to the US during the Allende government, Orlando Letelier, along with his assistant, a US citizen named Ronni Moffitt, were killed by a car bomb planted by Pinochet’s secret police on Embassy Row, just blocks from the White House.


That anniversary was remembered the past few days in Chile not with flag waving but with protest and repression.

Police hauled out the water canons and the gas as they carried out their battles with protesters.  The protesters fought back injuring at least 42 cops while hundreds of their comrades were arrested marked a second consecutive night of fighting in the suburbs of Santiago.  Protesters erected barricades and cut power.  Also, student activists took over nine schools as part of a call by the Middle School Students Coordinating Assembly (ACES), which believed that Chile’s public education system began its decline during the military takeover.

Protests these days in Chile are not merely about the past.  Young people born since the return to "democracy" in 1990 have been in the streets demanding education reform, healthcare and jobs.  Carolos Torres says in the Bullet:


In Chile neoliberal politics were imposed under a military-business dictatorship and until very recently the climate did not appear favorable for challenging the current right-wing government led by Pinochet's cherubs who represent the legacy of the dictatorship, even after more than twenty years of transition to democracy. This is a fearful democracy that had changed the administration of power and made signals toward the protection of human rights, while it continued to repress and criminalize social movements and indigenous communities. It also promotes the criminalization of dissidence by creating new laws to take it to court.
 
...We are talking about a state conceived of and designed to meet the needs of neoliberalism. The cost, however, is paid by the environment, common goods and working men and women: the fallacy of the successful businessmen is based on the dynamic of double exploitation of the environment and labour.

...We are talking about a state conceived of and designed to meet the needs of neoliberalism. The cost, however, is paid by the environment, common goods and working men and women: the fallacy of the successful businessmen is based on the dynamic of double exploitation of the environment and labour.

The powerful students’ struggle of the past three years is questioning the roots of neoliberalism in the educational system as exemplified in 2011, when students began demanding free education and an end to the debt they were forced to assume in order to study. They also confronted the state and the government concerning profits in educational establishments because in neoliberal Chile businesses that provide services, especially in the areas of finance and retail, are characterized as “industry,” and education is no exception. It has become like any factory, mining, chemical, wood or industrial complex. In other words, education is another sector of economic activity developed to expand the frontiers and strengthen the expansion of capital through onerous fees and high interest rates on educational loans, transforming it into a type of double surplus value extraction.


The student movement has persuaded diverse sectors of society to join the students in their demands; they made it clear that they were the children of workers and therefore part of the social fabric of the nation. As such, their problems extended to all parts of society as they did not consider themselves a sector encapsulated by its own imperatives. Nonetheless, the students emphasized their autonomy from political parties, government coalitions and business interests. Moreover, the majority of student federations called for a transformation of society, including the political constitution that impedes the democratic process in matters that directly affect people's lives.


At present, more than ever, social movements across Chile – from workers of all sectors to students and peasants – are requesting the end of the market in the strategic sector of the economy and the removal of the neoliberal approach in the implementation of social programs: no more market in health, education, housing, and pension plans; no more profits on the state funding of social services.

Nowadays we want it all back and more. The debate about a new constitution and the enactment of a constituent assembly is back on the agenda, as is reorganizing the economy and a progressive new tax system. Communities in northern and southern Chile want their regions to have more rights through a decentralized government. The Mapuche-indigenous nation want their land back and reparation for historic losses.


In these days, hundreds of events commemorate the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government and his death as well as the collapse of a democratic system. Human rights organizations and social movements want all perpetrators of abuses, as well as the collaborators of the dictatorial regime, to pay with jail or social scorn for their crimes. Moreover, many right wing politicians, including the current president, are acknowledging their indifference toward human rights abuses. The Supreme Court has stated the same. Most likely, all of these will in some way influence the presidential and parliamentary elections of November 17 in which the right wing candidates will score major losses.


Today, forty years later, it seems that in the context of the commemorations, the mourning and grieving for the fallen is coupled with the revival of their dreams, our dreams in fact. •



Juan Garces, a citizen of Spain who was President Allende's closest advisor and who barely escaped the Presidential Palace just before it was bombed by the air force was tasked by President with telling the world what had happened that day.  Garces, As Nation of Change writes:


Today,...sees alarming similarities between the repression in Chile and US policies today: “You have extraordinary renditions. You have extrajudicial killings. You have secret centers of detentions. I am very concerned that those methods ... were applied in Chile with the knowledge and the backing of the Nixon-Kissinger administration in this period. The same methods are being applied now in many countries with the backing of the United States. That is very dangerous for everyone.”

It is a bit of remarkable irony or not that Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting, yesterday, on Sept. 11, with one of his predecessors, Henry Kissinger, reportedly to discuss strategy on forthcoming negotiations on Syria with Russian officials. 

Rabble puts it well,


Rather than meeting with Kissinger for advice, John Kerry would better serve the cause of peace by consulting with those like Garces who have spent their lives pursuing peace. The only reason Henry Kissinger should be pursued is to be held accountable, like Pinochet, in a court of law.

I will leave you with the last words Salvador Allende addressed to the people of Chile on September 11, 1973, during the coup and while barricaded inside La Moneda, the Presidential Palace.


My friends,


Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the towers of Radio Portales and Radio Corporación.


My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [national police].


Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign!
Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seed which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.


They have strength and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.


Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector which will today be in their homes hoping, with foreign assistance, to retake power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.


I address, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina who believed in us, the worker who labored more, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals, those who days ago continued working against the sedition sponsored by professional associations, class-based associations that also defended the advantages which a capitalist society grants to a few.

I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours — in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to protect them. They were committed. History will judge them.


Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to [inaudible] the workers.

The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.


Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again where free men will walk to build a better society.


Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!


These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.

I will post below two items of import.  The first is an account of the coup days with analysis.  It is from    Red Pepper. The second has to do with the role of Kissinger and the USA and presents some more then telling documentation.  It is from Popular Resistance.




Chile: The first dictatorship of 

globalisation


When General Pinochet overthrew Salvador Allende’s left-wing government in Chile, Mike Gatehouse was among the thousands of activists arrested. On the 40th anniversary of the coup he describes the hope and then the horror of the time.




I arrived in Chile at almost exactly the half-way point of the Popular Unity government. Salvador Allende had been elected President on 4 September 1970, at his fourth attempt at the presidency, heading a coalition of his own Socialist Party, the Radical Party (like Britain’s Labour Party, an affiliate of the Socialist International), the Communist Party and several smaller parties, one of them a splinter from the Christian Democrats.

The mood in the country in March 1972 was still quite euphoric, following substantial and hugely popular achievements such as the nationalisation of Chile’s copper mines and the pursuit of a more radical land reform. People still felt that now, at last, they had a government which belonged to them and would bring real and irreversible improvements for the poor and the dispossessed. In the words of the Inti-Illimani song: ‘Porque esta vez no se trata de cambiar un presidente, será el pueblo quien construya un Chile bien diferente’ —This time it’s not just a change of President. This time it will be the people who will build a really different Chile.

Radicalised culture

Chile was an intensely exciting place to be. Everyone was ‘comprometido’ —committed, involved. There was no room for being in the words of the Victor Jara song, ‘ni chicha, ni limonada’ —a fence-sitter, neither beer nor lemonade. Political debate was constant and ubiquitous among all ages and classes of people of the left, centre and right. Newspapers (most of the principal ones still controlled by the right), magazines, radio and TV discussed every action of the government, every promise made by Allende and his ministers and every move of the opposition with a depth, sophistication and venom almost unimaginable in Britain today.

The changes were not only political, they were profound changes in the national culture. Most of the popular singers, many actors, artists, poets and authors identified closely with Popular Unity and considered themselves engaged in a battle against the imported, implanted values of Hollywood, Disney, Braniff Airlines, the ‘cold-blooded dealers in dreams, magazine magnates grown fat at the expense of youth’ in the excoriating words of Victor Jara’s song ¿Quien mató a Carmencita? There was a vogue for playing chess and in cafés and squares you would see people earnestly bent over chess-boards while conducting vehement political debates.

The national publisher Quimantu (the old ZigZag company, bought by the government in 1971) was printing a vast range of books, produced and sold at low prices, to enable all but the poorest to own books, enjoy reading and have access to literature. In the two years of its existence it produced almost 12 million books, distributing them not only in bookshops, but street news-kiosks, buses, through the trade unions and in some factories.

Dark clouds

But dark clouds were beginning to gather. The CIA had already attempted a coup in 1970, with a botched kidnap attempt ending in the murder of General Schneider, commander-in-chief of the Chilean army. ITT and other US corporations were busily urging more decisive intervention on the State Department. There was a vast increase in funding to opposition groups in Chile and the price of copper, Chile’s crucial export, was being manipulated on the world market. The economy was beginning to falter, and inflation to climb.

In October 1972 the owners of road transport staged a massive lockout (still, mistakenly, called ‘the lorry-drivers strike’), paralysing road transport, attacking or sabotaging the vehicles of any who continued to work and paying a daily wage well in excess of normal earnings to owner-drivers who brought their lorries to the road-side encampments of the strike. The atmosphere of these was similar to those of the refinery blockades in Britain in 2000, but far more serious and violent. Food, oil, petrol and other necessities ran short.

I spent some of my free hours unloading trains in Santiago’s Estación Yungay, alongside teams of volunteers organised by the Chilean Young Communists and other groups.

The lockout subsided, and all attention was turned for the next few months on the mid-term congressional elections due in March 1973. Despite a concerted opposition media campaign to denounce growing food shortages and economic difficulties which were affecting the living standards of many workers, Popular Unity increased its share of the vote to 43.2 per cent.

By now, however, the Christian Democrat party had turned decisively to the right and began to identify more and more closely with the parties of the traditional right. Virulently anti-communist and sometimes anti-semitic messages became more frequent in their newspaper, La Prensa. Together, this right-dominated block held the majority in both Senate and Chamber of Deputies and could block any legislation. Their messages were that Popular Unity meant ‘the way to communism via your stomach’, in other words by hunger; and that socialism meant promoting envy and hatred (of the rich).

Violence of the wealthy

The now united opposition decided that if democratic votes would not provide the results it required, it would resort to violence and call on the military to intervene. Government buildings and institutions were targeted by arsonists, and sabotage of the electricity network brought frequent black-outs. I watched gangs of young middle-class men in Providencia, one of the wealthier avenues of Santiago, halting trolley-buses and setting fire to them.

On June 29 the No.2 Tank Regiment headed by Colonel Souper and backed by the leadership of the fascist group Patria y Libertad, staged an attempted coup. Tanks surrounded La Moneda, the presidential palace in the centre of Santiago. But the rest of the armed forces failed to move in support and the coup failed. I spent that day with my friend Wolfgang, a film-maker at the State Technical University, peering round street corners and trying to film the action as it developed.

We could not tell at the time if this was a dress rehearsal or a false start by a group of hot-heads. Our relief at its failure was short-lived: it was immediately clear that worse lay ahead. At my work-place, the Forestry Institute, we began to take turns to mount guard at night to protect the buildings against sabotage. The institute’s distinctive Aro jeeps had been ambushed on roads in the conservative south of Chile and the drivers beaten up.

In the poor neighbourhood where I lived, close to the centre of Santiago, we had set up a JAP, a food supply committee, which aimed to suppress the black market, discourage hoarding and ensure that basic necessities such as rice, sugar, cooking oil and some meat, were distributed to local residents at official prices. We had enrolled 1,200 families in an 8-block area, and the weekly general meetings were attended by 400 or more. We worked with the owners of the small corner grocery stores common in that area. But they had no love for us.

Military rebellion

The country was slipping into a de facto state of civil war. Allende attempted to stabilise the situation by including military officers in his cabinet, but his loyal army chief, General Prats, was forced to resign when a group of wives of other senior generals staged a demonstration outside his house, accusing him of cowardice. His replacement was General Augusto Pinochet, at that time still believed to be loyal to the constitution.

By early September 1973, we fully expected a crescendo of right-wing violence, a military rebellion, further coup attempts. Popular Unity supporters marched in a vast demonstration on 4 September, taking hours to pass in front of the Moneda Palace, where a desperately tired and grim-faced Allende stood to salute his supporters.

But nothing had prepared us for the swiftness, the precision and the totality of the coup that began in Valparaiso on the night of 10 September and had gained complete control of the government, all major cities, airports, radio stations, phones, transmitters and communications by 3pm on the 11 September.

In the Instituto Forestal, we met in the canteen. Most people left to go home, collect children from school, ensure the safety of their families. Some perhaps had orders from their parties to go to particular points of the city, to defend, to await orders, possibly to take up arms. A group of us stayed on to guard the buildings until the military curfew made it impossible for us to leave. The radio broadcast only military music and bandos, military communiqués, read in a clipped, cruel, mechanical voice, declaring an indefinite 24-hour curfew, reading a list of names of those who must hand themselves in immediately to the Ministry of Defence, and justifying the ‘military pronouncement’.

Torture and killings

At first we believed that there would be resistance, that the armed forces would divide, even that General Prats was marching from the south at the head of regiments loyal to the constitution. But none of this occurred. Pockets of resistance in industrial areas of the cities were swiftly and brutally eliminated. Some military officers were arrested, others fled the country, but there was no significant rebellion. The parties of Popular Unity and the MIR hunkered down for underground resistance but, having worked publicly and openly for so long, most of their existing leaders were instantly identifiable and were soon arrested or killed.

Together with other non-Chileans, I hid that night in the outhouse of a colleague who lived near the Instituto. Returning next morning we found the institute empty, with signs of doors having been forced and some bullet marks. A military patrol had come during the night and arrested the director and those who had remained on guard. We went through the buildings, office by office, removing all lists of names, trade union membership, party posters and badges, everything that we supposed might incriminate our colleagues. It was hard: everything that had been normal, routine, legal, was now illegal, dangerous, potentially lethal.

Later, some of the cleaners arrived and warned us to leave immediately: it was likely that the military would return and arrest us. They took us across the fields to the shanty-town where they lived and, at considerable risk to themselves and their families, hid and fed us in their houses until the curfew ended.

The next days were spent living in limbo, moving from one friend’s house to another. Of my two Chilean flatmates, one had been arrested on the 12 September in the State Technical University, along with hundreds of students and academics and taken to the Chile Stadium, where Victor Jara was tortured and shot. Wolfgang managed to escape and later would come as a refugee to Britain. The other, Juan, had sought asylum in the Swedish Embassy.

Complete purge

The scale and totality of the coup is hard to grasp. From the first, the military sought to replace every single public official from ministers, through provincial governors, university rectors, right down to small town mayors and secondary school heads. The new appointees were mostly serving or retired military officers or those in their direct confidence.

University departments (especially sociology, politics, journalism) were purged or closed and whole degree courses abolished. Libraries and bookshops were ransacked and books burned. Blocks of flats in central Santiago were searched and all suspect books (including mine) thrown by soldiers from the windows and burned in the street below. All political parties were declared ‘in recess’ and all those of Popular Unity and the left were banned, with their offices and property seized. The entire national electoral register was destroyed.

Our flat had already been raided twice by police, after right-wing neighbours claimed we had an arsenal of weapons stored there. Unwisely I returned, ten days after the coup, to collect clothes and was just leaving when the police blocked off the street and an armed patrol arrested me.

At the comisaría, the local police station, there was an atmosphere of hysteria. The carabineros there had divided and fought a battle on the day of the coup, between those loyal to the constitution and supporters of the coup. The survivors had been on duty almost continuously and been fed with rumours that ‘foreigners had come to Chile to murder their families’. Improbably, they accused me, despite my fair hair and blue eyes, of being a Cuban extremist. A pile of books, perhaps including mine, was burning in the courtyard and the smoke blew in through the bars of the cell where I was held.

In the National Stadium

Later that day they took me to the National Stadium, the vast national football and sports arena. The entrance was thronged with groups of prisoners being brought in from the four points of the capital. There was a large group in white coats, doctors and nurses from one of the main hospitals, arrested because they had refused to join right-wing colleagues the previous month in a strike against the government.

We were herded into changing rooms and offices. Soldiers manned machine-gun positions along the corridor which ran the full circuit of the stadium below the stands. We were 130 in our camarín, a team changing room, only able to lie down to sleep at night by lining up in rows and dovetailing heads and feet. Next to us was a cell with women prisoners, some of whom had been horribly abused and tortured, but whose morale and singing would sustain us in the coming days.

Photographs of the period tend to show prisoners sitting in the stands. But these were only a fraction of the total number, while many more remained in the cells below and those selected for interrogation, torture and elimination were taken to the adjacent velodrome.

I was lucky. My family and friends had informed the British Embassy that I was missing, and on my seventh day in the Stadium the British Consul arrived to obtain my release. I hoped to stay in Chile but with no documents and no job (all foreigners at the Institute had been indefinitely suspended by the new military-appointed director) I had little choice but to leave. Most others were much less fortunate. The Brazilian engineer next to me in the camarín was taken out for interrogation, hooded, beaten around the ears with a wooden bat until he could scarcely hear and questioned by both Chilean and Brazilian intelligence. I told Amnesty International about him, but we could never discover what became of him.

Neoliberalism starts here

Returning to Britain, I became involved with the Chile Solidarity Campaign, just being formed with backing from Liberation, the main trade unions, the Labour and Communist Parties, IMG, IS and many others from the churches, academics, artists, musicians and theatre people. At the time, we believed that the dictatorship would be brief, and I personally hoped and expected to return to Chile and resume my life there.

What none of us sufficiently understood was that the Pinochet regime was much more than the sum of its troops, its armaments and repression. It was an entire economic project, perhaps the first full-on attempt to implement a neoliberal revolution by means of the extreme shock of military coup and dictatorship. But the power that underpinned it lay not in Santiago’s Ministry of Defence, but in Washington and Chicago, in corporate headquarters, banks and think-tanks, in the City of London, Delaware and the budding off-shore empires. As so brilliantly documented by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, these would come to dominate not just Chile, but the states and economies of most of the developed world, and the recent recession notwithstanding, they dominate them still.

The fight against this globalised economic dictatorship has barely begun. Even in Chile, more than 20 years after the end of the Pinochet regime, the thousands of students who have taken to the streets in the past few years are clear in their demands: for an end to the neoliberal model in education and other public services and for the resumption of universal provision as a human right.

Mike Gatehouse is a campaigner and journalist. He lived in Chile in 1972-3 and after he left worked for the Chile Solidarity Campaign and the El Salvador Committee for Human Rights. He is now a member of the editorial team of Latin America Bureau.

Kissinger, Nixon and Chile, The Coup's Declassified Record









Kissinger pressed Nixon to overthrow the democratically elected Allende government because his “‘model’ effect can be insidious,” documents show

On 40th anniversary of coup, Archive posts top ten documents on Kissinger’s role in undermining democracy, supporting military dictatorship in Chile

Kissinger overruled aides on military regime’s human rights atrocities; told Pinochet in 1976: “We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 437


Washington, D.C., September 11, 2013 – Henry Kissinger urged President Richard Nixon to overthrow the democratically elected Allende government in Chile because his “‘model’ effect can be insidious,” according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The coup against Allende occurred on this date 40 years ago. The posted records spotlight Kissinger’s role as the principal policy architect of U.S. efforts to oust the Chilean leader, and assist in the consolidation of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.

The documents, which include transcripts of Kissinger’s “telcons” — telephone conversations — that were never shown to the special Senate Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in the mid 1970s, provide key details about the arguments, decisions, and operations Kissinger made and supervised during his tenure as national security adviser and secretary of state.

“These documents provide the verdict of history on Kissinger’s singular contribution to the denouement of democracy and rise of dictatorship in Chile,” said Peter Kornbluh who directs the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. “They are the evidence of his accountability for the events of forty years ago.”

Today’s posting includes a Kissinger “telcon” with Nixon that records their first conversation after the coup. During the conversation Kissinger tells Nixon that the U.S. had “helped” the coup. “[Word omitted] created the conditions as best as possible.” When Nixon complained about the “liberal crap” in the media about Allende’s overthrow, Kissinger advised him: “In the Eisenhower period, we would be heroes.”

That “telcon” is published for the first time in the newly revised edition of Kornbluh’s book,The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, (The New Press, 2013), which has been re-released for the 40th anniversary of the coup. Several of the other documents posted today appeared for the first time in the original edition, which the Los Angeles Times listed as a “Best Book” of 2003.

Among the key revelations in the documents:

  • On September 12, eight days after Allende’s election, Kissinger initiated discussion on the telephone with CIA director Richard Helm’s about a preemptive coup in Chile. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger declared. “I am with you,” Helms responded. Their conversation took place three days before President Nixon, in a 15-minute meeting that included Kissinger, ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream,” and named Kissinger as the supervisor of the covert efforts to keep Allende from being inaugurated. Since the Kissinger/Helms “telcon” was not known to the Church Committee, the Senate report on U.S. intervention in Chile and subsequent histories date the initiation of U.S. efforts to sponsor regime change in Chile to the September 15 meeting.

  • Kissinger ignored a recommendation from his top deputy on the NSC, Viron Vaky, who strongly advised against covert action to undermine Allende. On September 14, Vaky wrote a memo to Kissinger arguing that coup plotting would lead to “widespread violence and even insurrection.” He also argued that such a policy was immoral: “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets .… If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us, e.g. to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the U.S.? It is hard to argue this.”

  • After U.S. covert operations, which led to the assassination of Chilean Commander in Chief of the Armed forces General Rene Schneider, failed to stop Allende’s inauguration on November 4, 1970, Kissinger lobbied President Nixon to reject the State Department’s recommendation that the U.S. seek a modus vivendi with Allende. In an eight-page secret briefing paper that provided Kissinger’s clearest rationale for regime change in Chile, he emphasized to Nixon that “the election of Allende as president of Chile poses for us one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere” and “your decision as to what to do about it may be the most historic and difficult foreign affairs decision you will make this year.” Not only were a billion dollars of U.S. investments at stake, Kissinger reported, but what he called “the insidious model effect” of his democratic election. There was no way for the U.S. to deny Allende’s legitimacy, Kissinger noted, and if he succeeded in peacefully reallocating resources in Chile in a socialist direction, other countries might follow suit. “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on — and even precedent value for — other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.”The next day Nixon made it clear to the entire National Security Council that the policy would be to bring Allende down. “Our main concern,” he stated, “is the prospect that he can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his success.”

  • In the days following the coup, Kissinger ignored the concerns of his top State Department aides about the massive repression by the new military regime. He sent secret instructions to his ambassador to convey to Pinochet “our strongest desires to cooperate closely and establish firm basis for cordial and most constructive relationship.” When his assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs asked him what to tell Congress about the reports of hundreds of people being killed in the days following the coup, he issued these instructions: “I think we should understand our policy-that however unpleasant they act, this government is better for us than Allende was.” The United States assisted the Pinochet regime in consolidating, through economic and military aide, diplomatic support and CIA assistance in creating Chile’s infamous secret police agency, DINA.

  • At the height of Pinochet’s repression in 1975, Secretary Kissinger met with the Chilean foreign minister, Admiral Patricio Carvajal. Instead of taking the opportunity to press the military regime to improve its human rights record, Kissinger opened the meeting by disparaging his own staff for putting the issue of human rights on the agenda. “I read the briefing paper for this meeting and it was nothing but Human Rights,” he told Carvajal. “The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there are not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State.”

  • As Secretary Kissinger prepared to meet General Augusto Pinochet in Santiago in June 1976, his top deputy for Latin America, William D. Rogers, advised him to press the dictator to “improve human rights practices” and make human rights central to U.S.-Chilean relations and to press the dictator to “improve human rights practices.” Instead, a declassified transcript of their conversation reveals, Kissinger told Pinochet that his regime was a victim of leftist propaganda on human rights. “In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,” Kissinger told Pinochet. “We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”


At a special “Tribute to Justice” on September 9, 2013, in New York, Kornbluh received the Charles Horman Truth Foundation Award for the Archive’s work in obtaining the declassification of thousands of formerly secret documents on Chile after Pinochet’s arrest in London in October 1998. Other awardees included Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzon who had Pinochet detained in London; and Chilean judge Juan Guzman who prosecuted him after he returned to Chile in 2000.

THE DOCUMENTS

Document 1: Telcon, Helms – Kissinger, September 12, 1970, 12:00 noon.
Document 2: Viron Vaky to Kissinger, “Chile — 40 Committee Meeting, Monday — September 14,” September 14, 1970.
Document 3: Handwritten notes, Richard Helms, “Meeting with President,” September 15, 1970.
Document 4: White House, Kissinger, Memorandum for the President, “Subject: NSC Meeting, November 6-Chile,” November 5, 1970.
Document 5: Kissinger, Memorandum for the President, “Covert Action Program-Chile, November 25, 1970.
Document 6: National Security Council, Memorandum, Jeanne W. Davis to Kissinger, “Minutes of the WSAG Meeting of September 12, 1973,” September 13, 1973.
Document 7: Telcon, Kissinger – Nixon, September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m.
Document 8: Department of State, Memorandum, “Secretary’s Staff Meeting, October 1, 1973: Summary of Decisions,” October 4, 1973, (excerpt).
Document 9: Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, “Secretary’s Meeting with Foreign Minister Carvajal, September 29, 1975.
Document 10: Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, “U.S.-Chilean Relations,” (Kissinger – Pinochet), June 8, 1976.

HERMAN WALLACE IS A MAN

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Herman Wallace has spent decades and decades in solitary confinement.  Herman Wallace is dying of liver cancer. Herman Wallace isn't looking for your pity.  Herman Wallace is a man (and, in one of the few instances I can think of, I use the word "man" in a positive way).

I have written about Herman Wallace and the Angola Three numerous times.  I merely call your attention to my post"Buried in Cages of Cement and Steel"from January of 2010, for example.  I don't know what to write that I haven't written before.

I will only mention that Wallace was finally released from solitary following his cancer diagnosis.  However, the prison failed to administer the recommended chemo drugs for six weeks until his lawyer raised hell.  By then, however, Herman had lost fifty pounds and was no longer able to respond to treatment.  

Still the state can't see a way to free a man who never should have been locked up in the first place.  

In a statement he made on September 10th, Herman Wallace said, 


"Nothing can be done for me medically within the standard care that (my oncologists) are authorized to provide. They recommended that I be admitted to hospice care to make my remaining days as comfortable as possible. I have been given two months to live.
 
I want the world to know that I am an innocent man and that Albert Woodfox is innocent as well.  The state may have stolen my life, but my spirit will continue to struggle along with Albert and the many comrades that have joined us along the way here in the belly of the beast."

Too many comrades, too long...Makes me so angry, so sick, so disgusted...and so ashamed that we haven't been able to do more.

Herman Wallace is, indeed, a man.

The first post below for Scission Prison Friday is from Hip Hop and Politics. The second is from Slate.


Angola 3 Political Prisoner Herman Wallace Given 2 Months to Live

Attica prison
With so much going on in the world, where we are running around demanding that everyone conforms to rest of the world conform to our so-called standards of governing and we often forget that here at home we mistreat and abuse far too many of our citizens. For all the talk of us being the beacon of freedom and the world’s number one super power that all should emulate, where we fall short the most is the cruelty and torture we put upon those who are incarcerated, in particular political prisoners and those who have partook in the Prison Reform Movement of the 1970s

First we should note that this week Sept 9th- Sept 13th marks the 41st anniversary of the nation’s most violent and disturbing Prison Rebellion.. We’re talking about Attica. The root of the rebellion was folks coming together and asking for what we’re deemed reasonable improvements and an end to the isolation and torture of inmate at the hands of sadistic guards.

The violence was when then Governor Nelson Rockefeller refused to negotiate on key demands  and sent in guards , soldiers and former prison workers who shot and killed 9 of the 10 prison guards who were held hostage.. along with over 20 inmates. After the rebellions prisoners were stripped and cruelly beaten after erroneous reports were put forth that they had killed prison guards. It was later learned the inmates tried to protect them.

Angola 3
Angola 3

1971 was the year the Attica Rebellion took place. It was also the same year that one thousand miles away, Robert KingAlbert Woodfox and Herman Wallacewere sentenced to do time at Angola State Prison  a former slave plantation. Inspired by the Prison Reform Movement and the fact that Woodfox and Wallace had joined the Black Panthers, they began organizing inmates and pushing to demand improvement to the prisons wretched conditions. They called for an end to violence and rapes that were routinely occurring. They called for the prison to be desegregated.

In 1972 the 3 men were accused of murdering prison guard Brent Miller and were placed in solitary confinement for 40 years. All 3 maintained they were innocent which seemed to be supported by the fact there was no physical evidence connecting them to the crime. Over the years it was found evidence used against them was compromised by prosecutors and prison officials who held racial biases and that much of it has since been lost.

Witnesses were later found to be discredited and on 3 different occasions their sentences was overturned only to be appealed by over zealous Louisiana attorney generals who have made it a mission to keep the remaining two Woodfox and Wallace locked up. King who was set free several years ago after spending 29 years in solitary confinement..
Herman Wallace
Herman Wallace

In recent days its come to light that 71 year old Herman Wallacewho was diagnosed with severe  liver cancer has 2 months to live. Even under these conditions he has not been released ..below is a statement he released.

Saturday, August 31st, I was transferred to LSU Hospital for evaluation. I was informed that the chemo treatments had failed and were making matters worse and so all treatment came to an end. The oncologists advised that nothing can be done for me medically within the standard care that they are authorized to provide. They recommended that I be admitted to hospice care to make my remaining days as comfortable as possible. I have been given 2 months to live.

I want the world to know that I am an innocent man and that Albert Woodfox is innocent as well. We are just two of thousands of wrongfully convicted prisoners held captive in the American Gulag. We mourn for the family of Brent Miller and the many other victims of murder who will never be able to find closure for the loss of their loved ones due to the unjust criminal justice system in this country. We mourn for the loss of the families of those unjustly accused who suffer the loss of their loved ones as well.

Only a handful of prisoners globally have withstood the duration of years of harsh and solitary confinement that Albert and myself have. The State may have stolen my life, but my spirit will continue to struggle along with Albert and the many comrades that have joined us along the way here in the belly of the beast.

In 1970 I took an oath to dedicate my life as a servant of the people, and although I’m down on my back, I remain at your service. I want to thank all of you, my devoted supporters, for being with me to the end.”

Here’s some additional information on the Angola 3


Keep in Touch with Herman and Albert
Albert Woodfox #72148 Herman Wallace #76759
David Wade Correctional Center Elayn Hunt Correctional Center
N1 A3 CCR D #2
670 Bell Hill Road PO Box 174
Homer, LA 71040 St. Gabriel, LA 70776

The Sorry Injustice of the Angola Three


Release Herman Wallace—he is about to die of cancer in prison after 40 years in solitary confinement.

Two men watch television in the Angola State Penitentiary, where a majority of inmates are "lifers" (Prisoners for the rest of their life) on April 01, 2002 in Angola, Louisiana.
Two men watch television in the Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, where Herman Wallace, one of the Angola Three, is held.
Photo by Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images

Herman Wallace spent over four decades alone in a 6-by-9-foot prison cell. For 41 years, he has stretched, wretched, ached, medicated, grown, and deteriorated—all in the three paces he could take from his toilet to his closed cell door.

This week, while awaiting a federal judge’s decision on a petition he brought challenging the conviction that put him in solitary confinement, Wallace, who is 73, stopped an ineffective chemotherapy regime for a liver tumor. Because of the cancer diagnosis, Judge Jackson agreed to an expedited ruling over a month ago, but hasn’t issued it yet. Wallace, meanwhile, has been told he has two months to live.

Wallace is one of the Angola Three, a trio of men who have become fixtures in prisoner exoneration lore both for the evidence of misconduct in their cases and for the political undertones of their decades-long solitary confinement. They’ve been held in Louisiana’s legendary Angola prison, which is named for the slave plantation that once occupied the grounds. Angola is also referred to as “the Farm,” and when you enter its gates after a long, lonely drive, you see inmates, mostly African-American, tending fields of cotton, wheat, and corn.

Wallace and Albert Woodfox entered Angola in 1971 for separate armed robbery convictions. That same year, the men co-founded an Angola chapter of the Black Panther Party to fight the systematic rape and violence that plagued the prison in the 1960s and ’70s. In 1972, following the murder of an Angola prison guard, Brent Miller, the men were charged, convicted, and put in solitary confinement for the next four decades. While the men admit to their armed robberies, they have consistently maintained their innocence in the Miller case.

Robert Hillary King, the third member of the Angola Three, was also active in the Black Panther Party. He did not arrive at Angola until after the Miller incident. Yet he served 29 years in solitary confinement for an inmate murder he did not commit before his release in 2001.

The Angola Three have won national and international attention. Amnesty International includes the men on its watch list of political prisoners, and this June, the organization called on Gov. Bobby Jindal to release Wallace on humanitarian grounds. In July, members of the House Committee on the Judiciary, including Rep. John Conyers (Michigan) and Rep. Cedric Richmond (Louisiana), sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, asking for a federal investigation of Louisiana’s punishment practices. They drew particular attention to the Angola Three and called the state’s treatment of Herman Wallace “unconscionable.”

The murder case is embarrassingly weak and rife with evidence of investigative and prosecutorial misconduct, including the bribing of witnesses and the suppression of exculpatory evidence. Even Brent Miller’s widow has come out in support of revisiting the men’s convictions. The case rests on four inmate witnesses, each of whom gave statements inconsistent with their testimony. Wallace’s lawyers learned decades later that the witnesses were promised all sorts of favors, including cigarettes, food, and even the possibility of a pardon in one case, in exchange for their testimony. One of the Angola wardens at the time has been recorded saying of the state’s primary witness, Hezekiah Brown: “you could put words in his mouth.” A bloody fingerprint and a number of other prints found at the scene matched none of the defendants, yet the prison didn’t try to find a match among the rest of the prison population.

In 2009 federal Magistrate Judge Docia Dalby wrote that the extreme length of Wallace’s and Woodfox’s isolation was “so far beyond the pale that this Court has not found anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.” So why has it continued?

In a 2008 deposition, Angola Warden Burl Cain said “Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace is (sic) locked in time with that Black Panther revolutionary actions they were doing way back when, and that they’re still hooked up to that.” Asked to assume Woodfox was innocent of the Miller murder, Cain still insisted he should remain isolated. Otherwise “I would have me all kinds of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks chasing after them. I would have chaos and conflict, and I believe that.” Courts and legislators usually defer to prison officials like Cain—a central reason that 80,000 prisoners are currently in solitary confinement in American jails and prisons.

If Judge Jackson overturns Wallace’s murder conviction, he could be released on bail. Rep. Cedric Richmond wrote a letter Thursday encouraging Jackson to take this step. But Louisiana Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell has indicated he will do what it takes to keep Wallace locked up. Caldwell has also denied that Wallace was held in solitary. "Let me be clear," heconcluded in a statement last spring, "Woodfox and Wallace are GUILTY and have NEVER been held in solitary confinement." In 2008, Judge Jackson overturned Woodfox’s conviction and ordered release on bail, at which point Caldwell requested an emergency appeal. The famously conservative Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed Jackson before Woodfox’s release could even be processed.

Jindal could also let Wallace out of prison, with the consent of a pardon board, by granting him clemency. But the governor won’t discuss the matter, either with Wallace’s supporters or with the press.

After his cancer diagnosis in June, Wallace was moved out of solitary so that he could receive treatment in the prison infirmary without being shackled during transport. He had already lost 45 pounds over a span of six months at that point. He is still out of solitary, living in a prison hospital room, but after three months of chemotherapy, he is quite literally depleted.

Now, nearing the end of his physical battles, Wallace is looking ahead. For years, he has been collaborating with artist Jackie Sumell to design a dream house—a conceptual escape from his solitary cell that is also a project to build a real house that will serve as a youth center in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward. In July, a documentary about the project, Herman’s House, debuted on public television. Wallace is using his last days to focus on fundraising for it. He gave Sumell a bit of encouragement on a recent visit: “Kiddo, you gotta get on your game. You’re going to be the face of this now.”

THE INVENTION OF THE WHITE RACE

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Theoretical Weekends at Scission and here we go.  What, it's a book review.  Ted Allen's The Invention of the White Race (two volumes) is going to be, if it already isn't, a classic.  I recommend to everyone who ever takes a look at this blog.  If you wan't to understand where this whole notion of white skin privilege and white supremacy that I am always talking about comes from, read this book

The following review is from ZNet.

THE INVENTION OF THE WHITE RACE BY TED ALLEN



“I ask indulgence for only one assumption, namely that while some people may desire to be masters, all persons are born equally unwilling and unsuited to be slaves.”
The Invention of the White Race (I, 1)


Introduction


          Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race(2 Vols., I: Racial Oppression and Social Control and II: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America), has been recognized by increasing numbers of scholars and activists as a seminal work since it was first published by Verso Books in the 1990s.  The second edition offers a number of entry points and is designed to attract a broader audience.  It features an expanded index, an internal study guide, a selected bibliography and a biographical sketch of the author all prepared by Jeffrey B. Perry, Allen's literary executor and author of the acclaimed Hubert Harrison The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918.  The expanded index prepared by Perry was particularly helpful in writing this review.

          The Invention of the White Race is a scrupulously documented, fairly argued, and profoundly radical history. It arrives at a propitious moment in the end game of the American Empire and will be of particular interest to educators, students and working people interested in learning the lessons of our past.  It contains the root of a general theory of United States history and the basis for a revolution in US labor history and in social history.  Students of African American history, political economy, Irish American history, gender studies and colonial history will find in Allen’s work much of interest to recommend.

For those considering the projected impact of demographic change in the 21st century, The Invention offers a lens through which to assess how the “white race” was invented and reinvented in the past and the ways in which ruling class-interests may seek to adjust, adapt or reinvent it in the present.  After 300 years of functioning as a ruling class social control buffer, the US bourgeoisie will not, in this writer’s opinion, willingly abandon its tried and trusted guardian, the so called “white race.”


Genesis of the thesis


Allen’s analysis of the “white blindspot” was a critical first step that led him to develop his thesis on the invention of the “white race” as a bourgeois social control formation. His view of the history of class struggle in the U.S. was radically altered by his reading of W.E B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in the early1960's. Dubois described Black Reconstruction as a “normal working class movement, successful to an unusual degree, despite all disappointments and failures.”  Its final defeat was due to “the race philosophy” of white supremacy, which made labor-unity or labor class-consciousness impossible. 


Together with Esther Kusic to whom the Invention is dedicated, Allen developed a new approach that placed the struggle against white supremacy and the white skin privilege system at the center of a strategy for proletarian revolution in the US.


Two quotations from Black Reconstruction will serve to identify the sparks of insight that eventually led Allen to write The Invention of the White Race:


“The south, after the war [Civil War], presented the greatest opportunity for a real national labor movement which the nation ever saw or is likely to see for many decades.  Yet the labor movement, with but few exceptions, never realized the situation.  It never had the intelligence or knowledge, as a whole, to see in black slavery and reconstruction, the kernel and meaning of the labor movement in the United States.”



“It is only the Blind spot in the eyes of America, and its historians, that can overlook and misread so clean and encouraging a chapter of human struggle and human uplift.”

  
Allen came to refer to that “Blind spot” identified by Du Bois as the “white blindspot.”


Informed by Dubois's Black Reconstruction and his reference to the “kernel and meaning of the labor movement in the United States,” Allen set about in the late-1960’s  to re-examine three previous periods of economic crises and intensified class struggle: 1) the Civil War and Reconstruction, 2) the Populist Movement and 3) the Great Depression.  His aim was to discern the effects of the white skin privilege system and the prevalence of white chauvinism in the defeat of past working class and populist movements.  Allen took Du Bois' phrase “the kernel and meaning” as the title for his own unpublished manuscript that set forth his findings.  He shared this manuscript with comrades in the late sixties and early 70's. This background provides some context to The Invention as it led Allen to a critical review of what he termed the reigning consensus on “American Exceptionalism.”  This is in reference to a body of work that offered explanations, all “white blind” in Allen’s estimation, for why there was no working class-based political alternative to the bourgeois parties. Contributors to this “consensus” included socialists and non-socialist students of labor history. Although the old ‘consensus’ was tattered, no alternative had yet emerged. The Invention may be viewed in this context as Allen’s opening contribution “Toward a Revolution in U.S. Labor History.”  In fact this was the working title of Allen’s last book, which he did not live to complete.


The debate over the origin of “anti-negro prejudice” in the US was a central preoccupation of many American historians, not only African American historians, since racism first came to be viewed by much of official society as an evil in itself following World War II. 


The Civil Rights movement and urban rebellions made racial discrimination a central defining issue in the political life of the nation; a central issue that continues down to the present day.  Some of America’s most prominent historians participated in a search for understanding how white supremacy and racial oppression originated in the hope that we might in fact end it. It came to be known as the “Origins Debate.”[Note Allen preferred the singular “Origin,” which he used in the subtitle to volume two.  He saw the origin of racial oppression in class struggle.]


By 1968 with the forces of white supremacy rallying around the George Wallace campaign and other instances of the “white backlash” north and south, “so from the ranks of American historians there emerged a cohort of defenders of the basic validity of the old assumption of ‘natural racism’” (Allen, Invention, I, 4) The fullest expression of this view was put forward by Winthrop D.  Jordan in his 1968 book entitled White over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro 1550-1812.  Jordan’s book was offered in the context of the “Origins Debate” to refute the thesis of Oscar and Mary Handlin that racism was a deliberately contrived ruling class policy rather than the outcome of some inborn or preconditioned “race consciousness.”  Chapter 2 of White Over Black was entitled “An Unthinking Decision” and in it Jordan attributed racism to an inherent, timeless aversion to all things black that existed in the psychological and cultural make up of the English.


The breadth of the counter revolution as evidenced by the well orchestrated “backlash” in the intellectual and political life of the nation led Allen to a comprehensive review of the “Origins Debate” and a more probing consideration of what he came to describe in the volumes under consideration as the invention of the “white race” and the “incubus of white identity.”


As an independent scholar, autodidact, and self-described proletarian intellectual, Allen joined this search in the early 1970s. His startling thesis first presented at a 1974 talk before the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) was published in Radical America and republished with complete annotation as a pamphlet under the title “Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race.” This is available on line at Cultural Logic and in pamphlet form from the Institute for the Study of Working Class Life at SUNY Stony Brook.  It serves the new reader well as a concise introduction to volume two of The Invention of the White Race in particular. 


Over the course of the next twenty years of writing and researching The Invention of the White Race, Allen reviewed a remarkable amount of the scholarly literature and conducted his own exhaustive examination of the primary sources; those colonial records that survived the Civil War.


Thesis Summation


Allen’s thesis on the invention of the white race is based on certain key historical facts that came into focus for him once his own “white blind spot” was removed.  In the acknowledgements section of volume one Allen identifies in first place his “obligation to two fellow proletarian intellectuals in this regard; Charles Johnson and William Carlotti who “cleared away ideological barnacles left from my previous moorings and taught me to say, as Carlotti did, ‘I am not 'white.’” (Note here may be made of Allen’s reference to his own past.  Allen was a West Virginia coal miner and UMW local leader during the heyday of the CIO and a member of the Communist Party from 1936 until the mid-late 50s.  Perry’s biographical essay on Allen is appended to volume one.)


Allen’s thesis posits a causal connection between the “so-called 'white race,' the quintessential 'Peculiar Institution” and bourgeois social control extending from the colonial era to the present:


 Only by understanding what was peculiar about the Peculiar Institution [the “white race”] can one know what is exceptionable about American Exceptionalism; know how in normal times, the ruling class has been able to operate without “laborite” disguises; and know how, in critical times, democratic new departures have been frustrated by reinventions of the “white race.”


Allen’s thesis is not based on his discovery of any formerly unknown facts.  Rather it is his claim that certain aspects of the historical record of great significance were passed over while others of truly minor significance were incorrectly emphasized as the impetus for massive, misdirected scholarly tomes such as was the case with Jordan’s White Over Black.  Additionally he points out that on certain crucial matters even so esteemed a scholar as Edmund Morgan cast a blind eye to facts of great significance in his American Slavery, American Freedom.  These were related to the impact of racial slavery on the class position of the European American laborers after the invention of the “white race.”


Allen's argument presented in his thesis article and fully elaborated in the two volumes rests, in his estimation, on:


          . . . three essential bearing points from which it cannot be toppled. First, that racial slavery constituted a ruling class response to a problem of labor solidarity. Second, that a system of racial privileges for the propertyless ‘whites’ was deliberately instituted in order to align them on the side of the plantation bourgeoisie against the African-American bond laborers.  Third, that the consequence was not only ruinous to the interests of the African-Americans, but was “disastrous” for the propertyless “whites” as well.

  
In Allen's review of the literature only the African American historian Lerone Bennett Jr. in his 1970 Ebony article, “The Road Not Taken,” and in chapter III of The Shaping of Black America (Chicago 1975) had set these three bearing points together.


Volume One


Allen’s introduction to volume one is an excellent literature review of the “Origins Debate” for the specialist and non-specialist alike. He frames the debate as occurring between two groups; the psycho-cultural and the socio economic.  Allen identifies “with” the socio economic category, but “is not altogether of them.”  “This book” Allen states, “is intended as a contribution toward freeing the socio-economic thesis” of “serious compromising ambiguities and inconsistencies.”  He recasts the socio-economic argument in “a new conceptual mode.”  This new mode is based on a definition of racial oppression.


Allen defines racial slavery in volume one “as a particular form of racial oppression, and racial oppression as a sociogenic – rather than a phylogenic – phenomenon, homologous with gender and class oppression.” 


Allen expands this definition of racial oppression as it evolved in the colonial era through what he calls the “Irish Mirror.” “Irish history presents a case of racial oppression without reference to alleged skin color…”  “The assault upon the tribal affinities, customs, laws and institutions of the Africans, the American Indians and the Irish by English/British and Anglo American colonialism reduced all members of the oppressed group to one undifferentiated social status, a status beneath that of any member of any social class within the colonizing population.  This is the hallmark of racial oppression in its colonial origins, and as it has persisted in subsequent historical contexts.”


Allen distinguishes racial oppression from national oppression by reference to the needs of the elite for social control over the subject population.  In societies in which those to be racially oppressed constitute a majority of the population the racial oppressor group had to rely on a purely military/police form of social control in the absence of intermediate buffer control group on which to rely.  Such systems proved to be inherently unstable and costly to sustain and led the ruling elite to co-opt a stratum of the subject population thereby enlisting them in a new social control system based on national oppression. 


In societies where those to be racially oppressed were a minority, a system of racial privileges for the laboring class members of the oppressor group was used to ensure that the lower class would not make common cause with their counterparts among the racially oppressed and would in any confrontation take the side of the elite in keeping the racially oppressed down.   Under national oppression social control rested on an intermediate strata which differentiated itself by class and status and was permitted to manage their own affairs and the control aspects of the society on behalf of the elite.


In contrast to national oppression, racial oppression relied on strata from amongst the laboring class of the oppressor race.  Their enlistment into the oppressor race was based on a system of privileges that did not alter their subordination to the elite.  To the contrary these privileges fastened them more tightly to the ruling class by sealing off the possibility of joining with the racially oppressed in struggle against the system of racial oppression (that had been put in place by the ruling elite) and challenging the existing order.  To the counterfeit of mobility in the 17th century was added the counterfeit of freedom in the 18th but that is not the subject of this review.


Racial oppression took different forms in the colonial era depending on the particular conditions, need for social control and cost benefit calculation of the ruling elite.  After the plantation elite established the system of racial oppression of African-Americans, the Indians in Anglo America, were increasingly displaced from their ancestral home. The African-Americans in the continental Anglo American colonies, who were kidnapped, transported in chains and sold as chattel, became the main plantation labor force after the “white” race was invented. The Irish Catholics in Ireland were reduced to cotters and agricultural laborers in their own land under the rent racking religio-racial oppression of the Protestant Ascendency, absentee English landlord, and Ulster Plantation.  The Indian was not allowed to assimilate as illustrated in the case of the Cherokee Trail of Tears. The African American could not pass even with only one drop of African blood in their lineage.  The Irish Catholic was effectively prevented from converting. 


The common threads linking these examples of racial oppression were the destruction of original forms of social identity and the blockage of the oppressed group from assimilation into the social identity normal to the colonizing power.  Distinctions of rank or wealth within the subject population were accorded no recognition. Civil rights were eliminated. Literacy was made illegal. Family rights were displaced and traditional authorities were denied.  Below the lowest member of the oppressor race, by definition, all members of the oppressed were made subordinate.


 Racial oppression as a form of social control in societies in which the majority is from the oppressor race is based on the counterfeit of social mobility accorded the laboring class members of the oppressor race in the form of racial privileges.  The privileges are the basis on which the laboring class members of the oppressor race are enlisted by the elite to hold down the subject population. They perform this social control function, even though they share a class position with the large majority of the racially oppressed.


Volume Two


In colonial Virginia and Maryland the particular conditions of labor shortage and capitalist monoculture first led the Anglo-American planter bourgeoisie to create a peculiar form of chattel bondage for the largely European-American workforce.


Exploitation of Indian labor as a primary source of profit in Virginia was not possible due to; the initial vulnerability of the English colonialists; to the fact that the Powhatan were not highly organized (as were the Aztec and the Inca); and to the fact that the English lacked the ability to subdue the native population who had an entire continent to their backs.  As the plantation system grew and pushed the Indians off the coastal tidewater plains, the planter bourgeoisie relied on the Indians as a buffer to return escaping bond-laborers and for trade with the interior even while they continued to amass great wealth through expanded land grabs that pushed the native population further inland.


            The reduction of the largely English workforce from wage laborers and tenants to bond servitude was undertaken by the plantation bourgeoisie in the 1620's and is described in volume two, chapter 5 entitled “The Massacre of the Tenantry.”  The interest on the part of the plantation bourgeoisie to extend the length of service of bond-laborers is well documented. The status of the African American bond-laborers prior to the establishment of the “white race” was according to Allen “indeterminate” in that it was being fought out.


     Extending the term of bond-servitude was an effort by the exploiters of labor power to increase their rate of profit under the particular conditions of labor shortage they faced in the pattern-setting Chesapeake Bay colonies in the 17th century. Efforts to extend the term of service to life on African American laborers and even to extend that to their offspring is consistent with such bourgeois aims.  The English had imposed slavery on English vagabonds in England in 1547, Scottish coal miners and salt pan workers were enslaved from the first decade of the 17th century to the last decade of the 18th century and the English were heavily involved in the “Irish slave trade” of the 1650s.  Most importantly from the perspective of the invention of the” white race,” efforts to extend the term of servitude of  bond laborers, European or African, only inflamed the situation and incited further resistance.  High mortality rates also lessened the significance of a limited term versus a life term of bondage.


In volume two Allen relies on the primary sources to show how the “white race” was invented as a bourgeois social control formation by the planter bourgeoisie in the latter part of the 17th century. The “white race” as described by Allen was based on a series of racial privileges first put in place in the latter part of the 17th century by the Planter bourgeoisie to divide and control a rebellious agrarian proletariat composed of European-American and African-American laborers in the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Virginia and Maryland.  The character of these privileges laid the basis for the “white identity” that altered the class stand but not the class position of the European-American laborers (both bond and free), who were  officially now defined as “white” through a series of laws passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1705 and 1723.  Allen finds no mention of the term “white” used in reference to European-Americans in any legal statute or court papers until 1691.  Hence his 1994 volume one book jacket comment-- “When the first African-American arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there.”


The plantation was a capitalist enterprise.  Although the bond labor form was a contradiction of the basic requisites of capitalist development it was necessitated by the conditions of labor shortage that prevailed in the colonial period.  There was no reserve army of labor and a thirst for profit did not incline the planter bourgeoisie to wait for one.


Although bond-labor had existed in surplus producing societies prior to capitalism the bondage that prevailed in pre-capitalist societies was a two-way bondage; the workers could not leave and the master could not send them away. Bond-labor in the capitalist monoculture plantation society in the Anglo American continental colonies created a one-way bondage in which the worker could not quit, but the capitalist could end the tie with the worker through their sale or exchange.


The profit motive and the crisis of overproduction which depressed the price of tobacco for much of the 17th century combined to lead the planter bourgeoisie to increase the term of servitude by recourse to a number of ways that fomented rebellions and resistance from the bond laborers themselves. The planter bourgeoisie, following the drive for capital accumulation, was in the process of digging their own graves.


There is much more in the way of specific content that shows in detail how the “white race” was invented by the ruling elite that no single review can summarize, but there is one crucial piece related to family life that is instructive.  The imposition of lifetime hereditary bond-servitude on the African American was dependent on the denial of the English Common Law principle of partus sequitur patrem. (the status of the child follows that of the father).  


In 1656 Elizabeth Key a bond-laborer, daughter of an African American bond-laborer and a European-American father to whom her mother was bound, successfully sued for her freedom dues by asserting the right under English common law that  “the child of a woman slave begotten by a freeman ought to be free.” Both of her parents had died and her father’s estate had passed through a number of overseers. 


Although her father’s will left specific instructions for her release from bondage, the overseers of the estate refused to grant Elizabeth Key her freedom.  In the Northumberland County court the defense claimed that the status of the child (Elizabeth Key) should follow that of her mother who was alleged to be that of a lifetime bond laborer. A jury of 12 men supported Key’s claim for freedom and arrears for the excess time she had been held following English common law. 


The Northumberland ruling was appealed to the Virginia General Court by the overseers of her father estate.  The exact ruling of the General Court was destroyed by fire in 1865 but a transcript made in 1860 and dated 12 March 1656 is believed by historians to refer to the General Courts   acceptance of the defense’s and overturning of the Northumberland County Court ruling.  Only days later a special committee of the Virginia Assembly was chosen to make a determination of the matter and expressed the sense of “of the Burgesses of the present Assembly,” holding that Key was entitled to freedom, freedom dues and compensation “for the time shee hath served longer than shee ought to have done.” 


One of the estate overseers appealed to Governor Berkeley who ordered a suspension of further proceedings pending a rehearing by the General Court.  There is no record of any further rehearing but the Northumberland Court that had initially supported Key’s suit, disregarded Berkeley’s instructions and ordered that Key be released immediately and compensated.  The attention and controversy indicated by the surviving records gives us a sense of the importance of the case to both planters and laborers at the time.


 Six years later, the Assembly, in 1662, reversed itself and English common law by asserting that “all children born in this country shall be held bond or free by the condition of their mother.”  The reversal of this long standing law of patrilineal descent was not done for the sake of egalitarianism. The 1662 ruling of the Assembly followed pragmatically as a matter of course from the proprietary interest of the owners of bond- labor in securing control over those laborers and extending it to their offspring. It removed a major legal obstacle to the later imposition of lifetime hereditary chattel bond- servitude.  In Allen’s view:  “If the principles affirmed in the findings of the Northumberland County jury and the special committee of the General Assembly had prevailed, the establishment of racial slavery would have been prevented.” (II, 196) 


The following year in 1663 the English Government re-chartered the Company of Royal Adventurers to Africa to challenge the Dutch monopoly over the trade in human chattels.  This challenge led to the Second Anglo Dutch War, concluded with The Treaty of Breda (1667) that gave the Anglo-American colonies direct access to African labor.  In 1672 the Royal Africa Company was given the monopoly by England to supply African labor to the Anglo American colonies. 


The reversal of English common law and the increase in the supply of chattel labor from Africa were crucial steps towards the imposition of lifetime hereditary chattel bond servitude but merely increasing the numbers of lifetime bond servants did not establish racial oppression or racial slavery and in fact actually stoked the spirit of rebellion among the laboring population, European and African.  In the latter part of the 17thcentury in Virginia that spirit reached a peak during the civil war phase of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676-1677.


Racial slavery in the Chesapeake was not according to Allen an “unthinking decision,” but rather it was the solution developed by the plantation bourgeoisie in the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) to the two over-riding challenges faced by them in 17th century Virginia since the establishment of the tobacco monoculture, namely labor shortage and social control.


Allen cites the numerous examples and forms of common resistance by the European- and African American proletarians as prima facie evidence that the “white” race did not exist.  The most significant and widespread example of this resistance was the second phase of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 when an army composed of European-American and African American bondservants and freemen, drove the planter bourgeoisie from the mainland to the safety of ships offshore and burnt the capital city of Jamestown to the ground.


Sir William Berkeley, the Royal Governor of the Virginia Colony during Bacon's Rebellion, that very same Governor who 20 years earlier had tried and failed; to block Elizabeth Key from attaining her freedom; to overrule the finding of the special committee of the Assembly; to stop the Northumberland County court from following through on the decision of a jury, now gazed woefully on the shore from which he had been force to flee by an army of Elizabeth Keys.  Berkeley wrote in despair to a friend “How miserable that man is that Governes a People where six parts of seaven are Poor, Endebted, Discontented and Armed.”  May we live to hear the plaintive cries of woe from the oligarchs of our own day!  Bacon’s Rebellion was the turning point that brought home the necessity of social control to the planters, without which as Allen notes, “no profit may be derived.”  


Through the guile of the elite and their own faltering leadership the rebels were eventually subdued and subjected to vicious reprisals.  Charles II is reported to have reacted to news of Berkeley’s vendetta by noting that “that old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I did for the Murther of my father.” (II, 370n104)  Subsequent revolts only highlighted the instability of elite power in the face of labor unrest.  Their answer to the problem took shape early in the acts of reprisal taken against the rebels that took the harshest form against the African-American.  Gradually a body of laws and customs were drummed up to divide the European from the African through the gradual imposition of a series of privileges for the European bond-servants and severe racial proscriptions on the African.


The planter bourgeoisie response over the course of the next 30 years was to create a new status for European American bond labor increasingly referred to as “whites,” a new term that does not appear in the Virginia statues until 1691. Nascent ‘white’ laborers were marked as favored through the degradation of the African American.  In this way, combined by the force of laws and all the powers that accrue to the wealthy, a counterfeit of mobility was cast like a veil over European American laborers and a spike was driven through the incipient solidarity that had joined them in arms together with the African Americans during Bacon’s Rebellion.


The white race was enshrined by statute in 1705 and 1723.  English lawmakers charged with reviewing the laws and rulings of the colonial courts and Assembly questioned why property owning African Americans should be denied the right to vote and acquire property like other free persons.    


The Governor of Virginia at this time, William Gooch responded and declared that the Virginia Assembly had decided “to fix a perpetual Brand upon Free Negros & Mulattos.”  Allen considers Gooch’s response to be an important example from the historical record that has been given scant notice by historians.  An analysis of Gooch’s explanation, in Allen’s view, “gets to the heart of the motives of the Anglo-American continental plantation bourgeoisie in imposing not just a system of lifetime bond-servitude only on persons of African descent, but a system of racial oppression, by denying recognition of, refusing to acknowledge, delegitimizing, so far as African-Americans were concerned, the normal social distinctions characteristic of capitalist society.” (II, 242)  This was no “Unthinking Decision.”


Gooch also defended the law of 1723 on grounds that bring to mind the case of Elizabeth Key, the “mulatto” offspring of an African American mother and European American father whose suit for freedom was upheld by a jury. Gooch had prefaced his defense of the law by reference to an alleged revolt plot among African American bond laborers in 1722, “wherein the Free Negros & Mulattos were much suspected to have been concerned…”  Gooch added that the law was passed to “make the free Negros sensible that a distinction ought to be made between their offspring and the descendants of an Englishman.”  “Those descended from a white Father or Mother,” were in his estimation “the worst of our imported Servants and convicts.”  Gooch argued that the law served as a way of “discouraging that kind of copulation.”   


The Act of 1723 also specifically denied, amongst a host of other things, the right of any Negro to defend him or herself against any “white” person, or to bear witness against the attacker in a court of law. 


Allen points out that the denial of the right of self defense to all African-Americans also becomes a point of convergence between white supremacy and male supremacy.  It essentially legalized the rape of any African American woman by any European- American male.  The American form of male supremacy develops into the peculiar form of white male supremacy from this point on.


These statutes capped over two generations of effort on the part of the Planter bourgeoisie to extend chattel bond-servitude to lifetime hereditary bond servitude and now they had found the means to an end; one that divided European against African laborers and enlisted the former as captor and enforcer of the system over the latter.


In churches and from the courthouses the new laws were read out to drive home the message of the new racial order. What had been the rights of Englishmen now became the privileges of “whites.”  A counterfeit of social mobility was the privilege created by the imposition of racial slavery on the African American.  Additionally to that counterfeit of social mobility was added the very clear cut “right” of any white male to assume familiarity with any African-American woman. Racial oppression is merged with gender oppression.  


For the plantation elite this right added rape as a form of exploitation that increased their wealth and they exercised this form of exploitation with abandon. We have that rapist of Monticello, author of the Declaration of Independence, still hailed today in classrooms across America as the apostle of American Democracy.  For the poor white male however, this “right” further obscured the injustice and cruelty of the system that the “white identity” was established to defend.  It was a “right” that planted the seed of hatred between men and women that deepened the divide between the poor “white” and the racially oppressed Black, woman, man and child.  A hatred that comes down to us through that strongest invective of American slang: Motherfucker!      


The plantation elite prospered off the labor of the enslaved but the majority of the “whites” who did not own slaves did not. But, as Allen describes in detail, the effect of the invention of the “white race” secured the dominance of the plantation bourgeoisie whose wealth and plantations grew in inverse proportion to the impoverishment of the “free white” laborer.  The counterfeit of mobility did not allow the poor white to rise upwards in the social order, only to flee to the mountains, the west, to drive the Indians further inland and then squat on “unclaimed” land, clear it, only to be displaced again by the land engrossing plantation bourgeoisie who had taught them to hate the enslaved rather than the system of racial slavery that was responsible for their own marginalization and impoverishment.


The poor whites fled a system that had little place for them except as patrols and overseers over the enslaved whom they had once fought side by side with as European-Americans, (not as “whites”) for a true freedom. They fled from a system, they did not understand but they carried with them the seeds of their own misfortune, the white identity. The transformation of the misery of the Berkeley's to the Golden Age of the Chesapeake was achieved by the invention of the white race which has come down to us as the “Ordeal of America.” 


Edmund Morgan’s, American Freedom American Slavery had done so much to challenge the natural racism of the psycho cultural group, now dropped the ball.  He claimed that the enslavement of the African left “too free poor [Europeans] to matter,” thereby leaving open the interpretation that enslavement of the African had benefited the “white” laborer.


Conclusion


Theodore W Allen’s The Invention of the White Race began as a spark of intuition that came to him “in the charged ambience of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.” The concluding paragraph from Volume Two points the reader to the author’s motivating impulse:


“… the present day United States bears the indelible stamp of the African-American civil rights struggle of the 1960s and after, a seal that the “white backlash” has by no means been able to expunge from the nation’s consciousness. Perhaps in the impending renewal of the struggle of the “common people” and the “Titans” the Great Safety Valve of white skin privileges may finally come to be seen and rejected by laboring-class European-Americans as the incubus that for three centuries has paralyzed their will in defense of their class interests vis-à-vis those of the ruling class.” 


          Frankly speaking, three centuries of paralyzed will does not exactly inspire hope in the laboring class European-American’s prospects for a successful defense of their class interests.  Allen’s reference here to labor history is sure to incite outraged responses that damn him as a reprobate and recite the list of past martyrs for labor’s cause.  But as Allen said at the beginning of his project in 1969, “If it was Solidarity Forever, why must it be again?” 


          The intent of his reference to “paralyzed will” in the concluding paragraph cited above is not to disparage the revolutionary potential that inheres in the European- American sector of the proletariat, but only to free its putative leaders, the so called conscious element, from their “white” identity.  The issue at stake is not whether or not the European-American worker can be radicalized, but whether the “white” radical can be.       


          Allen’s use of the terms “perhaps” and “may” in the concluding paragraph admits the possibility for change but it is a far cry from any pre-determined optimism that the choice made will be the right one from the perspective of proletarian solidarity.  The right choice is an informed, conscious one based on particular conditions, strategic and tactical considerations all viewed in the light of history.  Yet regarding the impending renewal of the struggle between the “common people” and the “Titans” there is no doubt in
Allen’s view as expressed here that this conflict is indeed irrepressible and that where there is repression there is resistance. Nor is there any doubt expressed concerning the immediate and long-term interest of the European-American proletarian in seeing and rejecting what he terms the “Great Safety Valve of white skin privileges.” 


          The revolutionary prospects for the European-American proletarian then hinges, in Allen’s view, on the urgent necessity and willingness to see, for once “seen,” the “white” identity, which seemed solid and timeless, a “natural attribute,” shows itself to be the  “incubus” that has “paralyzed their will.”


          While it has not been common for privileged laborers of the oppressor race to have thrown off their privileges and their oppressor race identity and made common cause with the oppressed race, there has also not been such a well supported case made for why it is in their interests to do so and for this we may be thankful to Theodore W. Allen for never giving up even when he knew he would not live to see the day. 



Sean Ahern is a NYC parent and public school teacher/United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2, AFL-CIO


Note:  Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race (2 Vols., I: Racial Oppression and Social Control and II: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America), has been recognized by increasing numbers of scholars and activists as a seminal work since it was first published by Verso Books in the 1990s.  The second edition offers a number of entry points and is designed to attract a broader audience.  It features an expanded index, an internal study guide, a selected bibliography and a biographical sketch of the author all prepared by Jeffrey B. Perry, Allen's literary executor and author of the acclaimed Hubert Harrison The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918, and editor of A Hubert Harrison Reader.


Theodore W. Allen’s “Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race and selected other writings are available online. 
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