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INTERNATIONAL PROTEST AGAINST GREYHOUND RACINGS AWARDS GALA

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Okay, my greyhound bud, Hawk, informs me it is time for Scission to talk about the exploitation and abuse of his brothers and sisters again here.

The news today concerns an international protest against the Greyhound Board of Great Britain awards on January 26th where the racing industry will be spitting on the graves of thousands of greyhounds and patting themselves on the back.  The "ceremony" will take place in Manchester. While the dignitaries are dining, greyhounds are dying.  While these "people" feast  most of the greyhounds that earned the greed driven industry money to pay for their little event will be kept in cold outside kennels in the middle of winter.

 Outside the Hilton Hotel site many will gather to "Give the Dogs a Voice." Those gathered will attempt to raise public awareness of the cruelty that goes on behind the scenes of the greyhound racing industry, the injuries and suffering on the tracks, the exploitation of dogs for financial gain, and the complete failure of current legislation in Britain to protect the dogs.

The Campaign Against Greyhound Exploitation and Death (CAGED) writes:


Every year the Greyhound Board of Great Britain hold an awards ceremony to congratulate themselves and the greyhound trainers for exploiting greyhounds over the year. Whilst this is happening most of the greyhounds that earned the greed driven industry money will be kept in cold outside kennels in the middle of winter. The GBGB usually has its fancy do in London but this year they are coming to Manchester. We will be working with the guys from the Shut Down Belle Vue group,GreytexploitationsPet Levrieri & Pro Greyhound to make sure the whole of Manchester will be made aware of the monsters they are allowing into their city. 

Everyone who is against the racing industry, everyone who has rescued a greyhound, everyone who thinks exploiting these beautiful animals is wrong UNITE make this protest and show the industry how hated this industry really is. 

The Hilton Manchester are hosting this farce of an awards gala.

Manchester is also the home of the Belle Vue Greyhound Stadium which was the first oval track in Great Britain opening in 1926.  Tens of thousands of greyhounds have been raced there and they still do.

Similar vigils and protest will take place in Italy, Argentina, and Germany at the same time.


CAGED says:

It is estimated that between Ireland and the UK around 10,000 greyhounds are euthanized or disappear each year, either ‘culled’ as pups because deemed unsuitable for racing, eliminated due to being too slow or because of injury, or simply because of having reached the end of their racing careers. Only a small percentage is given up for adoption.

These dogs spend their lives caged and often muzzled, deprived of human contact and the opportunity to play. For these reasons, racing is an inherently cruel ‘sport’, which must be banned. 



Meanwhile Pet Levrieri reports in Australia (and it is the same everywhere):


Thousands of healthy greyhound puppies are disappearing, presumed killed, every year, but their deaths are not reported or investigated by the $144 million greyhound racing industry.

Shocking details about puppy farming and the mass killing of the pups have emerged as a record number of people and organizations told a NSW parliamentary inquiry about the dark practices of the greyhound industry.

In one submission, a former industry participant, who did not want to be identified because he said he feared for his safety, said: “I actually found a brown sack one day, when washing my hands in the river that ran through the property, full of dead newborn pups.”

In 2011, up to 3440 puppies were born in registered litters but disappeared before they were named. Naming is a prerequisite for the dogs to race.

Rescue and adoption group Amazing Greys says the industry is one of the largest puppy mills in Australia and relies on breeding a huge excess to find a few champions. ”The industry is characterized by routine killings of puppies and dogs, greed and profits,” its submission said.

The following is from Pet Levieri.


SAY NO! TO GREYHOUND RACING. NO EXCUSE FOR ANIMAL ABUSE

Greyhound racing is an abomination. No animal should be subject to the greed of the gambling industry. Thousands of dogs bred to fed the gambling machine, token dogs selected for adoption to appease the welfare issue.
Greyhounds come under the legislation of livestock, and are treated like livestock, which in their case includes the heinous crime of human greed, unscrupulous practices & protection of those unscrupulous practices, and in the name of human entertainment, and are disposed of just like livestock.
Greyhounds are essentially domestic dogs, just like any other domestic dogs. From puppies, they yearn for what all other dogs do – a home/pack to belong to. Instead, they endure cramped, caged living conditions and the rigors of becoming a racing dog through a training regime that has many injuries in itself, plus track injuries – to inevitable euthanasia, because of this or simply because they show no inclination to run & don’t cut it at the track. Every year, thousands of greyhounds are disposed of, because they are commodities to the racing industry.
It is unethical and immoral to think that entertainment involves the maltreatment and eventual blood of this beautiful, loyal, gentle, regal and even tempered dog – and turn a blind eye. Be their voice. 


"THE STRUGGLE TO FREE MUMIA IS BOUND UP IN THE STRUGGLE TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD"

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The truth is I can't think of any way to introduce an article which has to do with Mumia Abu-Jamal that has not already been done.  The truth also is that I have not done many articles concerning Mumia simply because plenty of other people are doing an excellent job working to support him.  All that said, its time, its prison friday at Scission and the following is from the San Francisco Bay View.


WHAT FOX NEWS AND HANNITY BLOCKED ME


 FROM SAYING: MUMIA AS FUEL FOR RIGHT-WING AGENDA


Mumia Abu Jamal 2013, web
Mumia Abu Jamal in a photo taken last year. He was forced to cut his hair when he left death row.
On Wednesday afternoon, Jan. 8, I received an email from Fox News’ show, Hannity, about the possibility of an interview with me on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The heat was turned up at Fox in response to the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing that day where Debo Adegbile was being confirmed as President Barack Obama’s nominee for assistant attorney general of civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Before long I was on the phone with one of the producers, who grilled me on my take on Adegbile’s appointment and his connection to Mumia Abu-Jamal.
I said that I am part of Mumia’s legal team, that Adegbile was never part of the small group of lawyers and staff working on the Mumia case at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, that Adegbile did not lobby for the Legal Defense Fund to take on the case, and that he simply happened to be working with the organization that had decided to take it on. I added that Fox should, however, explore why one of the most respected legal civil rights organizations in the nation, of Brown vs. Board of Education fame, would deem the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal important enough to take on.
Moreover, I added, the issue around which Adegbile is being attacked surrounds a federal appeal that challenged Mumia’s death sentence, not his conviction, which was pursued rabidly and illegally by prosecutor Joe McGill in a manner that desecrated the Constitution of the United States. The federal judges agreed with the brief, and the death sentence of this world-renowned journalist was commuted to life without parole.
Occupy Justice Dept march for Mumia, Trayvon 042412
On Mumia’s birthday, April 24, 2012, supporters marched and rallied to “Occupy the Justice Department” and demand an investigation into his case.
On this basis alone – that for over 28 years Mumia was unconstitutionally subjected to inhumane and torturous conditions on death row – Mumia should immediately be released. But in addition to being railroaded in a trial that, according to anAmnesty International Report on the case, “failed to meet minimum international standards safeguarding the fairness of legal proceedings,” the evidence in Mumia’s case suggests that an innocent man has now been imprisoned for 32 years.
As the long history of Black criminalization in the U.S. demonstrates, just because a Black person is convicted doesn’t mean he/she is guilty. Ask The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.
Back to Fox News. In classic Fox form, the interview with me would not be about the case or about the appointment of Adegbile. Hannity gave ample time to Katie Pavlich, who was representing the views of the prosecution and who was clearly committed to simply echoing its conclusions.
'Fry Mumia and his supporters' white woman
“Fry Mumia” is the response of Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police supporters to the sea of “Free Mumia” signs that regularly fill the city’s streets.
In the end, the point of the segment was for Fox to call Mumia “a thrice-convicted cop killer” as many times as possible, and to associate that with Debo Adegbile so as to strategically energize a right-wing agenda against the gains of the civil rights movement – following the same pattern as in their successful campaign to decommission Van Jones.
At the end of the segment, I wanted out of the studio immediately, got up to walk off the set and was stopped by producers because I was about to walk through the camera as Hannity introduced the next segment. Then, while I was standing there, I decided to stay a while longer to let Hannity have it when the cameras went down.
I told him that his crafty staging of inflammatory propaganda parading as political debate was cheapening a desperately needed public discussion in the U.S. and destroying the project of democracy on which it depends. Hannity’s is a false front for news, journalism and debate, in which the opposing viewpoint is rudely cut off and is then pummeled to the ground with a battery of lies.
True to its form, Fox News manipulated the facts of the case to depict Mumia as an unrepentant cop-killer. For example, Ms. Pavlich claimed that Mumia did not enter a not-guilty plea in court during the trial. In fact, Mumia’s attorney entered a not-guilty plea and later in the trial Mumia himself twice upheld his innocence.
But as the trial began, Mumia took a vow of silence in protest of prosecutorial misconduct – the failure of the prosecution to honor its pre-trial agreement to release to the defendant important photographs and records before the start of the trial. Mumia also took a vow of silence because he wished to be his own attorney and to make an opening statement to the court – all requirements of fair trial proceeding under the Constitution, but denied to Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mumia 30th anniv. imprisonment rally Nat'l Constitution Center Philly 120911 by Joseph Piette, Workers World, web
On the 30th anniversary of Mumia’s imprisonment, supporters packed Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center on Dec. 9, 2011. – Photo: Joseph Piette, Workers World
After the Hannity interview, Fox’s The Kelley Files interviewed Officer Daniel Faulkner’s widow, Maureen Faulkner. Mrs. Faulkner said on air that Obama’s appointment is tantamount to “spitting on all of our officers.”
As I watched, I was reminded of a heart-wrenching interview I conducted a few years ago with Mumia’s sister, Lydia Barashango, who was dying of cancer. She told the film crew of “Justice on Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal” that “justice for Maureen Faulkner is tied to finding out who killed Officer Daniel Faulkner. Mumia is not that person.”
Justice for Daniel Faulkner and justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal depend on an uncompromising commitment to facts, due process and truth; to date, that commitment has not been realized. As with so many other defendants, the courts failed Mumia. He was not tried by a jury of his peers, police officers tampered with evidence and the prosecution suppressed exculpatory evidence.
The most important and least known fact of the Abu-Jamal case is that a fourth person was present at the crime scene, and the prosecutor and the presiding judge repressed his presence at trial. Former TV Guide reporter and independent crimes-investigation journalist Patrick O’Connor argues convincingly in his book about the case, that that fourth person, Kenneth Freeman, killed Officer Faulkner.
Mumia Panthers Min. of Info 1970 by Phila. Inquirer
In 1970, Deputy Minister of Information Mumia Abu Jamal, 15, was featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Also alarming is that 15 of the 35 officers involved in collecting evidence in the case went to jail for corruption and evidence tampering within weeks of the end of Mumia’s trial. In fact, the photos taken by Pedro Polakoff, an independent photojournalist who took the first photographs of the crime scene, show evidence tampering on the part of the police and disprove the prosecution’s entire theory of the case.
Sadly, despite the overwhelming evidence of innocence in this case, Mrs. Faulkner is denouncing Obama’s appointment of Adegbile and trying Mumia before the court of public opinion on the basis of his political affiliation with the Black Panther Party, which he joined when he was a 14-year-old. Incidentally, this was the same illegal strategy used at trial by prosecutor Joe McGill to secure the death penalty in Mumia’s case.
Deploying the language that has historically been used to silence those who fight against injustice – the language of McCarthyism – Mrs. Faulkner denounces Mumia as “a radical and a Black Panther.” But the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States protects freedom of speech and association and also protects against the use of political affiliation as proof of a defendant’s guilt if it is not germane to the case.
Mrs. Faulkner’s life-long campaign against Mumia Abu-Jamal is fueled, yes, by pain, but also by a blind anger that has been nurtured, misdirected and manipulated by the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). Her statements are, in part, a response to the new petition, launched by The Campaign to Bring Mumia Home that calls on the Department of Justice to support the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Our aim is to get a million signatures. Please help us reach that goal by forwarding the link to your networks.
London march to Free Mumia 120911 by Getty Images
Mumia’s supporters are all over the world. Here they march to free Mumia in London on Dec. 9, 2011.
Those whose careers would be destroyed if the truth surfaced in this case argue that the failure of the appellate process to grant Abu-Jamal relief on his conviction is proof of his guilt. However, as was recently demonstrated in the case of Herman Wallace of the Angola 3, the appellate system in the United States very often fails the defendants.
The problem with the appellate process is that following a series of regressive, states’ rights laws passed in the 1990s, such as the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, appellate judges are forced to accept the “factual” rulings of lower courts, without regard for the tampered and falsified evidence often manufactured by the police and relied upon by the lower courts.
Because the appellate process is stacked against Mumia Abu-Jamal and hundreds of thousands of other defendants, the only available route to justice amidst the crisis of mass incarceration and political imprisonment in the U.S. is open debate and discussion – precisely what Hannity and his friends at Fox are intent on crushing.

The new petition, launched by The Campaign to Bring Mumia Home that calls on the Department of Justice to support the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Our aim is to get a million signatures. Please help us reach that goal by forwarding the link to your networks.

Mumia is a present-day Scottsboro Boy, and we must demand that Pennsylvania reveal his innocence now, not 80 years later the way Alabama did with the Scottsboro Boys.
Rue Mumia Abu Jamal 5th anniversary celebrated in Saint Denis, France 050811
On May 8, 2011, supporters in Saint Denis, France, a Paris suburb, celebrate the fifth anniversary of the renaming of a street Rue Mumia Abu Jamal.
In the 1990s, the Movement to Free Mumia brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets and deployed the political pressure that stopped Mumia’s execution – twice! After Mumia’s death sentence was ruled unconstitutional, Philadelphia DA Seth Williams decided not to pursue the death penalty once again.
He feared that doing so might galvanize an international movement that would descend on his city and expose the manner in which the courts, politicians and the police conspired to silence and imprison this radical journalist who is arguably the Nelson Mandela of our time.
Victories like these are rare during downturns in struggle, but our victory in winning Mumia’s release from death row coincided with a shift in consciousness in the U.S. occasioned by the economic crisis that began in 2008, the execution of Troy Davis, the emergence of the Occupy Movement, the murder of Trayvon Martin, the struggle against Stop and Frisk and the emergence of a new, embryonic but growing movement against mass incarceration.
Jorge Salinas, former PP, Mumia Solidarity Week, Mexico 120908
In Mexico City, a Mumia Solidarity Week is held every December. Here, Jorge Salinas, a former political prisoner, sings for Mumia’s freedom on Dec. 9, 2008.
Given this shift, The Campaign to Bring Mumia Home believes that it makes more sense than ever to begin to imagine a world in which Mumia Abu-Jamal walks among us. For this reason we are hard at work building a strategic grassroots movement that takes the streets and shifts the current media representation of this case, nationally and especially in Philadelphia.
Like the struggle that freed Mandela, the fight to free Mumia is bound up in the struggle to build a better world.
For those who watched my interview with Fox News, this is what I would have said on Hannity if I hadn’t been interrupted. These are the talking points that will bring Mumia home:
1. Mumia is innocent.
2. On the night that Officer Faulkner was shot, there were four persons at the crime scene. But the prosecutor, Joe McGill, and the trial judge, Albert Sabo, concealed the presence at the crime scene of that fourth person at trial. In fact, the presence of that fourth person, the passenger in the Volkswagen which Officer Faulkner had stopped, was acknowledged by prosecutor Joe McGill in another trial that was happening concurrently, surrounding the same crime scene. This key, exculpatory evidence – that there was another person at the crime scene who was the passenger – was hidden from the defense and the jury. Why?
3. It is well documented, in declassified memos, that the Philadelphia police in consultation with COINTELPRO had for many years been trying to peg a crime on former Black Panther and muckraking radio journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose reporting on police brutality, corruption in City Hall and the MOVE organization had long been a thorn in the side of the establishment. Now the Philadelphia police had their man and they were going to do everything in their power to frame him.
Mumia crime scene photo, guns in copGÇÖs bare hand, by copyright Pedro P. Polakoff III, web
This is the photo that blows the prosecution’s argument by showing guns in a police officer’s bare hand. – Photo: Pedro P. Polakoff III
4. The clearest sign that the Abu-Jamal trial was a miscarriage of justice came only two weeks after the end of the trial, when its lead investigator, police inspector Alfonzo Giordano, was tried and eventually convicted of rank corruption, extortion and tampering with evidence.
5. Because almost all the jurors that heard Mumia’s case were white, they believed the testimony of the police. A jury of Mumia’s peers would have known better. Shortly after Mumia’s trial, one third of the police officers involved in collecting evidence in his case were convicted of corruption and tampering with evidence to obtain a conviction.
Happening concurrently was also an investigation of the Philadelphia Police Department by the U.S. Department of Justice – the largest ever conducted of a police department in the United States. That investigation concluded that the level of corruption and tampering with evidence on the part of the Philadelphia police and its homicidal behavior against Black and Brown detainees “shocks the conscience.”
6. Upon arrival at the scene of the crime, the police who found Mumia on the ground with a bullet from Daniel Faulkner’s gun in his gut proceeded to beat Mumia to a pulp and throw him into a paddy wagon where they beat him up some more. Approximately an hour later, they drove him to the hospital and threw him on the ground at the entrance of the Emergency Room.
Lydia Barashango, Mumia's sister, 102106 by PDC, web
Lydia Barashango, Mumia’s sister, speaks at a rally on Oct. 21, 2006.
7. The prosecution pegged the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner on Mumia based on the perjured testimony of three witnesses, who said, 60 days later, that Mumia confessed to the shooting while in the hospital. This was contradicted, however, by the testimony of Dr. Anthony Coletta, who was with him from the moment he entered the hospital.
Dr. Coletta said that Mumia was barely conscious and in a state of shock, and that the trauma produced by Mumia’s bullet wound and the beating he had endured at the hands of the cops meant that medically, Mumia was incapable of speaking. In addition, the police report written on the night of the incident by the officer assigned to Mumia at the hospital, Gary Wakshul, states, “The Negro male made no comment.”
8. The first photographs taken of the crime scene were taken by a regularly published freelance photographer, Pedro Polakoff. He repeatedly called the police to give them those photographs, but the cops never responded. Polakoff assumed that Mumia was guilty and forgot about the issue.
In 2006 these photographs were discovered and studied by Dr. Michael Schiffman of Heidelberg University in Germany. The photos disprove the prosecution’s entire case theory.
Mumia rally Philly filmmaker Johanna Fernandez 110910 by Diane Bukowski
Attorney Johanna Fernandez speaks at a rally for Mumia in Philadelphia on Nov. 9, 2010. – Photo: Diane Bukowski
They also show that the police lied and tampered with evidence. Officer James Forbes, who testified in court that he had properly handled the guns allegedly retrieved at the crime scene, is photographed holding the guns with his bare hands, destroying all potentially significant fingerprints.
Most importantly, the Polakoff photos also point to the presence of a fourth person at the crime scene: Officer Faulkner’s hat is pictured resting on top of the Volkswagen on the side of the passenger seat, suggesting that he may have had a conversation with the passenger.
9. Exonerating evidence abounds in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Because Mumia is known the world over for his commentaries and writings on inequality and because he has spent so much of his time in prison offering a radical critique and analysis of mass incarceration, a victory in Mumia’s case would open up a much larger conversation in the mainstream about the crisis of mass and political imprisonment in the U.S.
Johanna Fernandez is a professor of history at Baruch College (CUNY). Follow her on Twitter:www.twitter.com/JohannaFernand. This story first appeared in the Huffington Post.
Johanna’s note: BRING MUMIA HOME! We need a media strategy and a campaign in the streets, fast! Please forward this link to your contacts: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/60-for-mumia-s-60th-birthday. Make the “60 for Mumia’s 60th Birthday” campaign a success. Join the campaign to Bring Mumia Home. We need your help to build the campaign that will free Mumia Abu-Jamal.

"RACE BEHIND BARS" FROM THE JOURNAL RACE TRAITOR

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It is theoretical weekends at Scission and I am going back ta decade or so to the journal Race Traitor.  The article which I am reproducing here  refers to an earlier piece in the journal.  To save space, I am not going to print the earlier piece "Black and White and Dead All Over. " However what I am printing contains a link to that article and I would suggest taking a look see.  It might help obviously with understanding where the interaction that occurs in what I am printing comes from.  Have I made this as confusing as possible.  Probably.  Anyway, the piece I am printing from 2001 can, I think, stands on its own.

The following is from Race Traitor.


Race Behind Bars

Editors' note. Race Traitor 8 (Winter 1998) carried an article by Staughton Lynd entitled "Black and White and Dead All Over" about the so-called riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio in April 1993. The article emphasized the extent to which black and white prisoners overcame racial antagonism to present a united front to the prison authorities. A reader replied. The editors asked Staughton to write a response. What follows is the letter from the reader, Staughton's response, and a comment by the editors. First the letter from the reader:


I just read about George Skatzes and the prison riot. I think this should in itself make self-evident the importance of pride in one's own race, be it white, black or other, as well as the importance of unification of all races against our oppressive system. The reason why George Skatzes, a white, and a member of a white pride organization, was so severely punished is because he didn't fall into the trap of divide and conquer, he kept his white pride, and joined hands with his black brothers in their own pride as well, and together they made a brave stand against the system that seeks to have them hate and kill each other in the name of racial hatred.

I find it contradictory that you [this refers to Race Traitor] would preach hatred of the white race, and take the same stand as the oppressors who wish to divide and conquer all races by this kind of attitude. You have a perfect example here in your own published article of the "Black and White and Dead All Over," yet you yourselves miss the entire point of that article in your preaching of hatred against whites. If those heroes in that prison uprising, both black and white, were to listen to this website's ideology, they would most certainly have been killing each other off just as the system whose ultimate goal is total slavery and control of all humans would want it, rather than see all humans, proud of their race or not, unite and fight them together. You people better get with the program, and realize that every race has the right to be proud, every race has shameful deeds in their past, and every race's only hope is to be both proud and proud enough to accept each other, faults included.


Staughton's response:

It has taken me a long time to feel able to respond to this letter. Recently I have read two documents that seemed helpful. The first was the unsworn statement of a defendant in one of the Lucasville trials. The other is a letter from a young man at the Ohio State Penitentiary (O.S.P.). In the hope of stimulating responses from prisoners themselves, I offer below a summary of the unsworn statement and an excerpt from the letter.

In the unsworn statement, a white man now in his early thirties described his arrival at Lucasville while still in his teens. Before incarceration he had little contact with blacks. At Lucasville, when he came back from commissary with a net bag of purchases, black prisoners would sometimes come up behind him, cut the bag, and take his things. He stopped going to the day room after witnessing a knife fight there. Then one day some big white men came up to him in the chow hall, and said, in effect, "Kid, we like your spirit. But you need protection." He joined the Aryan Brotherhood.
The AB advocated racial superiority. The new member had a work assignment at the prison that brought him into contact with a black nationalist. It seems the two men decided that what they believed was similar: not racial superiority, but racial separation. As the member of the AB put it, when you have two men in a cell and one is into country and the other is into rap, it doesn't work.
The letter writer also came to prison as a young white man.


I have to say that I came to O.S.P. a stone cold racist. I wasn't racist when I was first imprisoned, but prison quickly turned me into one because of who was picking on me. I perceived blacks as "ignorant,""primal," and "pathetic." 
Three years at O.S.P. has changed that 100%. It's the WHITE police, administrators and nurses who treat me like a "nigger"; treat all of us like that. It is so frustrating to live under such an intense, voiceless oppression; to be picked on just because I'm an inmate; to be pushed and harassed, physically, while I'm in full restraints, and to be antagonized non-stop.
I used to be proud of white historical domination, the way whites just crushed and conquered all who stood in their path historically. The European race was a juggernaut of conquest.
But now when I watch documentaries on PBS like "Conquistadors" or "The West" it makes me mad because in those conquests and legal genocides I now see the arrogance of Lt. C----- or Lt. C------ or the administrators at O.S.P., with the blind assumption of superiority by all the frontiersmen/conquistadors/correctional officers. It's the same mentality really. Nothing on this planet has equalled the juggernaut force of white violence, ingenuity, conquest and superiority-through-numbers moving in coordination, but in that there was an ignorance that led to the death of millions and the extinction of entire cultures and animal species. And this continues still today.
I guess living under this O.S.P. stuff has sapped my view of white nobility and made me realize just how impossible it is to fight the entrenched administration (on all levels of life) of an established majority. It makes me respect the Indians who fought to the death when the white man just wrote up a document (manifest destiny) which made it perfectly legal to annihilate the Indians; or the Incan/Aztec natives who stood up to the conquistadors (and were mauled as a society); or the slaves who found the courage to revolt, knowing that there was no real win to be had except self satisfaction. 
That's not to say I'm a bleeding heart liberal now, but I have a new perspective now when I see black ignorance because I see "the machine" that maintains that level of oppression and ignorance on others; I see how the foot is on the necks of second class citizens; how the whole set-up is impossible to defeat until the entire administration of all levels (president, judges, police, etc.) has been renewed by several generations. Sadly, I fear that whites will have a tough time once that overhaul takes place.


The honest reporting of these two men suggests the following to me:

1. Many young whites who are imprisoned have had relatively little experience with blacks on the street.

2. In prison, the young white man finds himself in a situation where whites do not outnumber blacks eight to one (as in the United States as a whole) but (as in the Ohio prison system) blacks and whites are approximately equal in number. Moreover, in the prison system blacks may occupy more important administrative posts, relative to whites, than they would be likely to hold outside the walls. At the time of the Lucasville uprising the director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the Lucasville warden, and the Lucasville deputy warden, were all black.

3. This combination of circumstances may cause such young white men, when they experience harassment from black prisoners, to become more racist than they were before incarceration and to join a whites-only group for protection.

4. From the point of view of the black prisoner, in contrast, the white oppression that existed before he went to prison continues behind the walls. Most of the guards are white. The prisoners killed by guards at Lucasville in the years leading up to the disturbance were all black.

5. In the long run, the common oppression experienced by black and white prisoners may cause them to join together in resisting the authorities.

6. It can be a step toward such a common front for white and black "gangs" to enter into agreements to settle disputes without violence, to make joint demands on the prison system, and the like. At this point, the ideology of both groups will likely be: you respect our autonomy, we will respect yours. Thus at Lucasville both whites and blacks opposed forced interracial celling.

7. Ultimately, prisoners stand together against dehumanizing treatment not as blacks or whites, but as human beings. The qualities all prisoners respect are: courage; the ability to "maintain," to "stay strong"; respect for oneself and for others; refusal to snitch. Not all prisoners display these qualities, and those who do are not all of one skin color.

As the process unfolds, black and white prisoners -- like the young white man in his letter -- will begin to feel solidarity not only with each other, but with people outside prison who are struggling against the same oppressive system: for example, rank-and-file workers; farmers displaced from their land in the Third World; Puerto Ricans struggling for self-determination; young people protesting the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.
What do you think?


Editors' comment. We think Staughton's response is a good one as far as it goes. Where black and white share a common condition, both can reject ideas of racial supremacy as tools of the oppressor and join together in a struggle for common ends. As the writer quoted by Staughton points out, white pride cannot be separated from white conquest and genocide, and its rejection is therefore part of creating a common front.

But bad ideas are not the source of the race problem. In America even down-and-out whites have an edge over blacks as a result of the advantages accumulated in the past. Even if old-fashioned racial discrimination were to disappear entirely, someone whose grandfather had formal education or a trade would still be in a better position in the rat-race than someone whose grandfather walked behind a mule. Hence a common front against common oppression is not enough. It is necessary to go further, to look for struggles that directly address the gap between black and white. Whites will never be able to take part fully in a proletarian revolution until they demonstrate their willingness to go through what the black workers have gone through. Does this mean that whites should volunteer for the worst jobs and neighborhoods, to be beaten by cops, sent to prison at the same rate as black people, etc.? Of course not. It means that they must act on the old admonition, An injury to one is an injury to all, and fight as hard against the oppression of black people as if it were directed at them (which in a sense it is). Acting that way will mark them as race traitors, jeopardize their ability to draw upon the advantages of the white skin, and call into question their membership in the white race. But it will also open the door to their own emancipation.
RACE TRAITOR - Fall 2001

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING: ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS MEN IN AMERICA...ABSOLUTELY

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Today is set aside to honor the memory and the work of Martin Luther King, Jr.  All across America celebrations will be held.  The problem is that very few of those will  "celebrate" the real Martin Luther King, Jr.  There will be singing and dancing and politicians and religious figures galore.  Everyone loves Martin Luther King, Jr. TODAY.  

They didn't all love him when he was alive.  J. Edgar Hoover thought he was the most dangerous man in America.  He didn't mean that as a compliment.  He wasn't alone in that thought.  I remember the racial slurs directed his way at my high school by the majority of kids there.  I won't repeat them here.

Confession of my own.  I thought of myself back then as a Malcolm X guy.  I loved the Panthers.  Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael were heroes to me.  All of that is still true.  What isn't true today is the simple fact that I didn't understand Dr. King.  The more militant I grew then, the more I though of him as a man preaching a sermon of non violence at a time when turning the other cheek had to end.  I dismissed, in my young mind, Dr. King as just way too moderate and as a man whose days had passed him by.  Fortunately, I did have enough sense to realize that it wasn't up to a white guy like me to really even make such decisions privately, let alone publicly.  I pretty much kept my big mouth shut.  

I didn't get it.  It took a while for me to get it.  I did eventually have the brains and experience to realize there was so much more to Dr. King then I realized.  I was blinded by what I thought was my own revolutionary zeal.

I am a person who dismisses the "great person" theory of history, but really, can you imagine what might have been if both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had lived?  Can you imagine those two, whose directions were moving toward each other, alive would have meant?  I know they were just two human beings, but I honestly believe the world could have been much different...not just because of  these two human beings, but of what they meant to so many.

But that just could not be.

Those were the two most dangerous men in America and America knew it.

And the rest is history.

So today while so many are talking about a Martin Luther King who everyone always loved, I will share a kept of articles about the Martin Luther King, Jr. who so many feared.

And I apologize for the misguided opinion I held as a youth.

The first article below comes from the San Francisco Bay View.  The second is from the American Prospect.  Neither is particularly current, but both tell us about a Martin Luther King, Jr.  the powers that be wanted to erase back then and still want to erase today.


Beyond the dream: Martin Luther King Jr. and Africa

August 27, 2013
by Harold Green
“In this period when the American Negro is giving moral leadership and inspiration to his own nation, he must find the resources to aid his suffering brothers in his ancestral homeland.” – Martin Luther King Jr., Hunter College, New York City, Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, 1965

When discussing the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., especially his “I Have a Dream Speech,” what is often missed is his concern for global justice, particularly in Africa. While Dr. King’s outspokenness about the Vietnam War toward the end of his life has been well documented and discussed, his views about the need to support anti-colonialism and anti-Apartheid in Africa is less so.
Martin Luther King, Coretta in Ghana 0357
Dr. King and Coretta King attend the independence celebration in Ghana in March 1957. Six years later, speaking at Western Michigan University on Dec. 18, 1963, he said: “I can remember when Mrs. King and I first journeyed to Africa to attend the independence celebration of the new nation of Ghana. We were very happy about the fact there were now eight independent countries in Africa. But since that night in March 1957, some 27 new independent nations have come into being in Africa. This reveals to us that the old order of colonialism is passing away, and the new order of freedom and human dignity is coming into being.”
Dr. King was very much aware of our connection to Africa and clearly understood the parallels between our struggle for freedom here and the struggle for freedom on “the continent.” Having attended the inauguration of Kwame Nkrumah as prime minister of newly independent Ghana – King was in Ghana from March 4-27, 1957 – Dr. King was quick to recognize this connection.
Dr. King spoke of being overcome with emotion during the independence ceremony, as he understood the historical significance of the moment on the one hand and the source of inspiration Ghana’s independence meant for the fight for freedom of Black people in America on the other.

Dr. King was very much aware of our connection to Africa and clearly understood the parallels between our struggle for freedom here and the struggle for freedom on “the continent.”

Upon his return to America, Dr. King would talk about his impressions of his trip to Ghana in a sermon entitled, “The Birth of a New Nation.” Within that sermon, Dr. King talked about continuing to fight not just against segregation but also against colonialism, imperialism and exploitation in Africa. We forgive Dr. King who did not have the benefit of African centered scholarship at the time for his historically inaccurate references to Egypt in this sermon. Dr. King would eventually speak out against Apartheid in South Africa and as early as 1964 was calling on “Western” powers to impose economic sanctions on the racist regime.
I have to admit that as a young student activist, I never embraced Dr. King’s philosophy of passive resistance; nonetheless, time has allowed me to take full measure of the man and recognize that this monumentally heroic figure, was far more complex and engaged in the world – especially the African world – than his iconic “I Have a Dream Speech” reveals.
King was in the audience in Ghana and heard Kwame Nkrumah say, “Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa,” during Nkrumah’s Independence Day speech. It has even been suggested that the phrase “free at last” was influenced by similar words Nkrumah spoke in that speech.
Dr. King was also extended and accepted an invitation from Nnamdi Azikiwe to attend Azikiwe’s appointment as governor general of Nigeria on Nov. 16, 1960. Nigeria had declared its independence from Britain on Oct. 1, 1960.
Dr. King was no doubt an internationalist when it came to the issue of human rights. His views and concerns were not confined to the geographical boundaries of the United States. Dr. King would visit the United Nations, where he met with many leaders of the world, but specifically those African leaders of newly independent countries and those whose independence had not yet been achieved.
Thus, what should not be overlooked is the view that Dr. King shared with Malcolm X, that the plight of the Black man in America was one of a violation of his “human rights” and not just civil rights and that America should be brought before the United Nations, where the plight of African Americans could be raised. Part of this strategy involved the solicitation of those newly independent African countries, which could offer resolutions condemning “Apartheid in America” and embarrass America before the international community.

Dr. King was no doubt an internationalist when it came to the issue of human rights.

What should also not be overlooked is the inspiration the civil rights and Black power movements in America provided to the various independence movements in Africa. Dr. King, like Malcolm X, sought to grow this connection as the above quote clearly indicates and understood the system of “white supremacy” was global and needed to be defeated globally.
Additionally, Dr. King realized the importance to Blacks in America, having been snatched from Africa and having lost our culture and identity, of reclaiming that culture. It is through this process of reclaiming African culture, Dr. King would go on to say, that we will regain our humanity. Dr. King’s growing international views would not be welcome by the system of “global white supremacy,” of course, and even some of his close Black associates would eventually become detractors.
When J. Edgar Hoover described Dr. King as “the most dangerous man in America,” those were foreboding words. But with Dr. King’s growing outspokenness on international matters, J. Edgar Hoover’s view was no doubt shared by forces involved in exploiting Black people and other people of color in other parts of the world.
As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech,” let us not forget it was a speech inspired by his desire to see all people in the world free from injustice, but especially those of African descent – at home and abroad – something not lost on many Africans on the continent today.
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Dr. King, Forgotten Radical





Long before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, America began to forget his true legacyAmerica began perverting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s message in the spring of 1963. Truthfully, you could put the date just about anywhere along the earlier timeline of his brief public life, too. But I mark it at the Birmingham movement's climax, right about when Northern whites needed a more distant, less personally threatening change-maker to juxtapose with the black rabble rousers clambering into their own backyards. That's when Time politely dubbed him the "Negroes' inspirational leader," as Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff point out in their excellent book Race Beat.
Up until then, King had been eyed as a hasty radical out to push Southern communities past their breaking point -- which was a far more accurate understanding of the man's mission. His "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is in fact a blunt rejection of letting the establishment set the terms of social change. "The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation," he wrote, later adding, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
Shame that quotation rarely makes it into the sort of King remembrances that will mark today's 40th anniversary of his assassination. Generations after the man's murder, our efforts to look back on his life too often say more about our own racial fantasies and avoidances than they do about his much-discussed dream. And they obscure a deeply radical worldview that remains urgently important to Americans' lives. Today, I don't mourn King's death so much as I do his abandoned ideas.
We've all got reason to avoid the uncomfortable truths King shoved in the nation's face. It's a lot easier for African Americans to pine for his leadership than it is to accept our own responsibility for creating the radicalized community he urged upon us. And it's more comfortable for white America to reduce King's goals to an idyllic meeting of little black boys and little white girls than it is to consider his analysis of how white supremacy keeps that from becoming reality.
Take, for instance, his point that segregation's purpose wasn't just to keep blacks out in the streets but to keep poor whites from taking to them and demanding economic justice. There's a concept that's not likely to come up in, say, the speech John McCain was rumored to be planning for today. "The Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow," King lectured from the Alabama Capitol steps, following the 1965 march on Selma. "And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man."
It's thoughts like those that made him decidedly less popular at the time of his death than today. The bloom started to wear off King's media rose when he turned his attention to Northern racism. The central defense Southern segregationists offered when thrust on the national stage was that their Jim Crow was no more of a brute than the North's. King agreed, and in announcing his organization's move into Chicago, he called the North's urban ghettos "a system of internal colonialism not unlike the exploitation of the Congo by Belgium." And he named names, pointing to racist unions as one of a dozen institutions conspiring to strip-mine black communities. So much for "inspirational." But then, like now, nobody wanted to hear such talk -- only the black press paid any attention.

Later, when a white mob hurled bricks and cherry bombs at marchers in Chicago, King told reporters that the scene outdid anything below the Mason-Dixon Line. "I have never in my life seen such hate," biographer Taylor Branch quotes him as saying. "Not in Mississippi or Alabama." Today, we hear little about the ideas that experience provoked for King: His deathbed blueprint for changing America's caste systems included a three-pronged attack on racism, poverty, and war.
It's that last charge, to fight war-making, that got him in the most trouble during his time and that gets most readily ignored today. Despite grenades of criticism from his fellow civil-rights leaders, his erstwhile ally in the president, and the press, King declared he had no choice but to stand up against the Vietnam War. But what's striking is the still red-hot relevance of his reasoning, a perspective also likely to be left out of the dreamy platitudes delivered on days like today.
King called the armed forces a "cruel manipulation of the poor" and likened war funding to "some demonic destructive suction tube," siphoning off resources needed to deal with pressing domestic issues. And he warned that our zeal for the fight reflected "a far deeper malady in the American spirit," one which drives us to consider the protection of our "overseas investments" to be a greater imperative than the preservation of life. The 1967 speech bears quoting at length:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
It's to our detriment that we whitewash all of these valuable ideas from our national memory of King. But the greatest tragedy may be that African Americans have morphed his belief in the power of community into a follow-the-leader obsession. Each King holiday and memorial spawns another round of "Where's Waldo?" pondering over who our new leader is, or should be, or if one exists at all.
I suspect King's answer would be who cares? Indeed, while the rest of the civil-rights establishment cringed when black college students launched their own, amorphous movement of sit-ins, King applauded it. He called the student movement "a revolt against Negroes in the middle class who have indulged themselves in big cars and ranch-style homes rather than joining a movement for freedom," according to Branch. Today's preoccupation with naming King's successors seems similarly trivial.
Black America first anointed King its savior after he stormed onto the national scene in Montgomery, holding together the prolonged 1954 bus boycott with nightly speeches in which he exhorted everyone to stay the course. Jet magazine called him "Alabama's Modern Moses." We've been waiting for another prophet since he was gunned down on April 4, 1968. I just wish our last one would come back and remind us that our power lies not in leadership but in a collective refusal to be oppressed.

THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN'S LIBERATION, REPRODUCTIVE AND ABORTION RIGHTS IS NOT FOR THE TIMID

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Reproductive freedom and abortion rights were NOT won in the courts, they were won in the streets.  They weren't won by using nice sounding moderate language, they were won by shouting the truth, clearly, plainly, in a way that could not be misunderstood.  I know this.  I was around.  I supported and was taught more  than a few lessons by the women's liberation movement of the 60s and 70s.  It was a time of radicalism and revolution and the movement for women's liberation was a true part of all that.  The courts showed up because they had no choice but to do so.  Women weren't on the defense, they were the offense.  Somewhere along the line too many grew too content, too many forgot or never knew a time before 1971, too many take too much for granted.  I am not lecturing women.  I am lecturing all of us.  Let the moderate women's rights proponents go about their business in the legislatures, in congress, and in the courts.  Fine, no problem.  However, we must get back to where WE came from.  The battle for reproductive rights, for the true liberation of women will be won or lost in the streets...not in a courtroom, not on Facebook, not with a bunch of tweets.  It is time, as Stop Patriarchy writes, "... to wage fierce cultural and political resistance to wake others up, and to celebrate, fight for, and win the full equality and liberation of women."

The current right wing, reactionary onslaught on women in general and abortion and reproductive rights in particular must be met, turned back, and crushed.  Again from Stop Patriarchy:


Fetuses are not babies. Women are not incubators. Abortion is not murder. 

Women are not objects. Women are not things to be used for the sexual pleasure of men NOR are they breeders of children. WOMEN ARE HUMAN BEINGS CAPABLE OF FULL EQUALITY IN EVERY REALM!

Socialist World Net. reminded us ten years ago (and I will quote at some length),


Women made the right to abortion a central demand of their movement because they understood that women could never be equal with men without control over their reproductive lives.



... Nothing inspired the birth of the women’s movement more than the anti-Vietnam War movement and especially the civil rights movement. African Americans’ determination to achieve equality through actions such as the famous sit-in at a Woolworth’s segregated lunch counter had a contagious effect. Women became radicalized as they participated in mass protests...


Young radical women formed women’s liberation groups in 1967, which spread to over 40 cities by 1969, organizing one of the most liberating activities of the new movement, consciousness-raising. The terms “liberation” and “consciousness-raising” were inspired by the black and colonial liberation movements as well as socialist ideas.

Consciousness-raising groups came together to question unequal gender roles and to talk frankly about sexual issues which had long been hidden causes for shame and embarrassment, turning depression into anger and building self-confidence and strength together. They also debated issues and strategies to focus their movement around and how to eradicate sexism and overthrow capitalism.

These younger radicals considered NOW’s emphasis on courtroom tactics too stodgy and conservative. Instead, they organized large demonstrations in the streets and took direct action to confront instances of sexism, making far-reaching demands for changing society with the intention of raising other women’s consciousness, confidence, and expectations. Anything that degraded women became a target for protest.

The victories of the women’s movement, such as Roe v. Wade, were not handed down by enlightened judges or politicians from either party, but were won in spite of them. Women had to fight hard for these gains by building their own independent mass movement and large-scale protests.

Women also multiplied the power of their movement by linking their struggles together with other social movements. The women’s movement would never have won the right to abortion if it had not been for the millions of others who protested against racism, the Vietnam War, and low wages and benefits...

The victories of the women’s movement prove that radical social change is completely possible. In spite of the politicians, courts, corporations, media, educational system, and FBI all being stacked against the women’s movement, a small minority of determined women were able to build a mass movement that won to their side the majority of ordinary Americans – the same working-class people who are so often dismissed as hopelessly conservative and consumeristic.

The explosive growth of the women’s liberation movement disproves the idea put forward by many liberals – then and now – that change only happens gradually, step-by-step...


 The liberal strategy of lobbying politicians for only gradual changes and the partial reform of abortion laws dominated the early years of the women’s movement. But as the movement grew and learned through experience, the radical and socialist wings of the movement rapidly gained support. The “realistic, practical” liberal strategy was quickly discarded as it became apparent that it was anything but practical, and the “extreme” socialist strategy of mass struggle and demanding the full legalization of abortion was adopted. 

We can learn from the younger, militant women’s insistence on calling for radical changes, such as free abortion on demand, free childcare and equal pay for equal work, as opposed to the pragmatic outlook of today’s women’s leaders who continually preach “moderation” and “realism.” The radicals’ bold, unapologetic case for abortion rights raised the confidence of millions of women and changed the terms of public debate. This stands in stark contract to the increasingly apologetic, timid defense of abortion by today’s leaders of NOW and NARAL Pro-Choice America.


Although the movement did not succeed in achieving free abortion on demand, subsequent events have confirmed how correct the socialist feminists were to argue for it. The experience of the past 30 years since Roe has demonstrated beyond a doubt that the legal right to an abortion is not enough if abortion services are not also accessible and affordable.

The religious right has seized on this by focusing its strategy on rolling back access to abortion services in order to make them more and more difficult to obtain. The lesson is clear – as we re-build the women’s movement, we need to defend the right to an abortion but also explain that real choice means free and accessible abortion.

The experience of the past 30 years shows that reforms won under capitalism will always be temporary and partial. The ruling class can be forced to make certain concessions (such as legalizing abortion) under the pressure of mass movements, but as soon as these movements subside, the capitalists will move to claw back the reforms.

We must fight for every reform possible, but clearly reforms are not enough. To secure real reproductive freedom and put an end to sexism, we must overthrow the capitalist system itself.

But there is more to it than even this. As is too often the case, the above analysis and history pretty much leaves out the role of women of color.  We can't do that.

 Michelle Moravec writes in a review that  in her book "Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement,


(Jennifer) Nelson sets out to place women of color in the center of the movement to secure reproductive rights for women in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Nelson's thesis is that women of color were responsible for moving a discourse centered on access to legal abortion to one that more broadly defined reproductive rights to include an end to forced sterilization and the right for all women to bear as many children as they chose. She does a fine job of illustrating how Puerto Rican and African-American women advocating for reproductive rights addressed the controversial issues of population control and racial genocide within their own communities.

Nelson contends, I believe correctly,  the reproductive rights movement was made more inclusive through the efforts of women of color to push white feminists further in their analysis.  Moravec adds:



Nelson begins her study with an overview of The Redstockings, a New-York based radical feminist group formed in 1969, which she uses to represent "white" feminism. Because the Redstockings's analysis of patriarchy led them to conclude that the root of women's oppression lay in lack of control of their bodies, much of their early agenda focused on legalizing abortion. Freedom from unwanted pregnancies, the Redstockings reasoned, would free women from sexist roles and allow women to participate more fully in the sexual revolution. This exclusive focus on abortion would have profound implications for both the emerging reproductive rights movement and the increasingly popular women's liberation movement, as Nelson makes clear in subsequent chapters.


 Nelson's second and third chapters explore the controversial charge that birth control and abortion were tools of genocide against the black community. She argues that these debates must be understood within the larger discussion that occurred about the black family in the 1960s and 1970s. Nelson shows how African-American women attempted, with varying degrees of success, to push nationalist groups, such as the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam, towards a more feminist reproductive rights agenda. She details their critique of a black masculinity dependent on controlling women's fertility and limiting women's economic and political role. This analysis draws on both organized black feminists--the Black Women's Group of Mount Vernon, the Black Women's Liberation Committee of SNCC which became the more inclusive Third World Women's Alliance, the National Black Feminist Organization, and the Combahee River Collective--and prominent black feminist theorists such as Cellestine Ware and Toni Cade Bambara, and women within black nationalist groups, including Angela Davis.

In 1970, the Third World Women's Alliance wrote:

It is women who must decide whether they wish to have children or not. Women must have the right to control their own bodies. And this means that we must also speak out against forced sterilization and against compelling welfare mothers to accept contraceptive methods against their will. There is now a women's liberation movement growing in the United States. By and large, Black women have not played a prominent role in this movement. This is due to the fact that many Black women have not yet developed a feminist consciousness. Black women see their problem mainly as one of national oppression. The middle class mentality of some white women's liberation seem to be irrelevant to Black women's needs. For instance, at the November 1969 Congress to Unite Women in New York, some of the participants did not want to take a stand against the school tracking system fearing that "good" students thrown in with "bad" ones would cause the "brilliant" students to leave school, thus lowering the standards. One white woman had the gall to mention to me that she felt women living in Scarsdale were more oppressed then Third World women trapped in the ghetto! There was also little attempt to deal with the problems of poor women, for example the fact that women in Scarsdale exploit Black women as domestics.


The movement must take a clearer stand against the horrendous conditions in which poor women are forced to work. Some women in the movement are in favor of eliminating the state protective laws for women. However, poor women who are forced to work in sweatshops, factories and laundries need those laws on the books. Not only must the State protective laws for women remain on the books, but we must see that they are enforced and made even stronger.


Women in the women's liberation movement assert that they are tired of being slaves to their husbands. confined to the household performing menial tasks. While the Black woman can sympathize with this view, she does not feel that breaking her ass every day from nine to five is any form of liberation. She has always had to work. Before the Emancipation Proclamation she worked in the fields of the plantation, as Malcolm X would say, "from can't see in the morning until can't see at night."


And what is liberation under this system? Never owning what you produce, you are forced to become a mere commodity on the labor market. Workers are never secure, and their length of employment is subject to the ups and downs in the economy. Women's liberation must relate to these problems. What is hampering it now is not the fact that it is still composed of mainly white middle class women, Rather it is the failure to engage in enough of the type of actions that would draw in and link up with the masses of women not yet in the movement., including working and Third World women. Issues such as daycare, support for the striking telephone workers, support for the laws which improve working conditions for women, and the campaign to free Joan Bird are a step in the right direction. I don't feel, however, that white women sitting around a room, browbeating one another for their "racism," saying, "I'm a racist, I'm a racist," as some women have done, is doing a damn thing for the Black woman. What is needed is action.


Women's Liberation must not isolate itself from the masses of women or the Third World community. At the same time, white women cannot speak for Black women. Black women must speak for themselves. The Black Women's Alliance has been formed in New York to begin to do this. We felt there was a need for a revolutionary Black women's movement that spoke to the oppression of Black women as Blacks, as workers, as women. We are involved in reading, discussion, consciousness raising and taking action. We feel that Black women will have a difficult time relating to the more bitter anti male sentiment in the women's liberation movement, fearing that it will be a device to keep Black men and women fighting among themselves and diverting their energies from the real enemy.


Many Black women realize it will take both men and women to wage an effective struggle. However, this does not negate the necessity of women building our own movement because we must build our struggle now and continue it after the revolution if we are to achieve real emancipation.

When the Third World woman begins to recognize the depth of her oppression, she will move to form alliances with all revolutionary forces available and settle for nothing less than complete destruction of this racist, capitalist, male-dominated system.

 As Redstockings, the  radical feminist group mentioned above, said in its 1969 Manifesto, “Men have controlled all political, economic and cultural institutions. They have used their power to keep women in an inferior position. All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women."

Well, many battles have been fought.  Many battles have been won.  However, all of the above are still true and that means many more battles must be waged.  Moreover, more than the above is true. It is not just patriarchy that needs to be abolished.  It is global capital as well.  What we are really fighting is a form of global patriarchal capitalism and white supremacy.

It isn't 1970 anymore.  What was was, what will be is up to us.  

Okay, when I started this rant, I intended it to be an introduction to something about the anniversary of Roe V. Wade.  That isn't going to happen it seems.  The hodge podge I have thrown together will have to suffice.  I have no article that really fits with it.

All I really wanted to say to begin with  I said in the first paragraph, long ago, and I will repeat here so it isn't totally lost:

"The battle for reproductive rights, for the true liberation of women will be won or lost in the streets...not in a courtroom, not on Facebook, not with a bunch of tweets."









WONDER AND AWE AND SIMPLE JOY

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Sometimes even this old dude sees something that leaves him in awe.  The video here, which you may have already seen, is one of those times.  I happened upon it this morning as if by chance, perhaps.  It is this sort of phenomenon caught here on a video that makes me happy to have been so lucky as to actually exist at all (by the way the odds of any one of us existing is, well, far beyond imaginable itself).  

Scientists make be figuring out some of how this works - what they call "murmuration".  Maybe one day, they will figure out all of how it works. The bigger question though is WHY.  They may tell us they move as an intelligent cloud as a means of safety.  But still, really...quite a spectacular safety mechanism the universe has given to these birds...far better, far more astounding than some story about parting the Red Sea or some tale about never ending loaves of bread.

Scientists studying this say,


Measuring how a change in direction by one bird affects those around it, the team discovered that one bird's movement only affects its seven closest neighbors. So one bird affects its seven closest neighbors, and each of those neighbors' movements affect their closest seven neighbors and on through the flock.

So, okay.  Why seven???  All they say is that it is one of those numbers that just works.

Uh, huh, just works 

And, yeah, how come it is virtually instantaneous?

I spend too many hours, I sometimes think, chronicling so many awful things on this blog.  The truth is I do get sick of it from time to time.

The other me, the one you don't know, loves WONDER...loves to be filled with a sense of AWE.   It is why I am so drawn to the incredible (and for me joyous) science of  quantum physics and things like String Theory.  If I have a spiritual side, this is where it is found.  The science of quantum particles and fluctuations, multiverses, multiple dimensions... or the actions of a bunch of starlings...WONDER AND AWE...

Everything came from nothing, a weirdness all its own, but sometimes what is here is enough to make it all worthwhile.

PS: the bird show is amazing, but the expression on the young women's face at the end of the video, well, you tell me.

I've never done anything remotely like this on my blog before, but what the hell...have a wonderful day...


The following is from Wired.  If for some reason you can't actually see it on the blog, then just go to here.


The Startling Science of a Starling Murmuration

Video of a massive starling flock turning and twisting over a river in Ireland has gone viral, and with good reason. Flocking starlings are one of nature’s most extraordinary sights: Just a few hundred birds moving as one is enough to convey a sense of suspended reality, and the flock filmed above the River Shannon contained thousands.
What makes possible the uncanny coordination of these murmurations, as starling flocks are so beautifully known? Until recently, it was hard to say. Scientists had to wait for the tools of high-powered video analysis and computational modeling. And when these were finally applied to starlings, they revealed patterns known less from biology than cutting-edge physics.
Starling flocks, it turns out, are best described with equations of “critical transitions” — systems that are poised to tip, to be almost instantly and completely transformed, like metals becoming magnetized or liquid turning to gas. Each starling in a flock is connected to every other. When a flock turns in unison, it’s a phase transition.
At the individual level, the rules guiding this are relatively simple. When a neighbor moves, so do you. Depending on the flock’s size and speed and its members’ flight physiologies, the large-scale pattern changes. What’s complicated, or at least unknown, is how criticality is created and maintained.
It’s easy for a starling to turn when its neighbor turns — but what physiological mechanisms allow it to happen almost simultaneously in two birds separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds? That remains to be discovered, and the implications extend beyond birds. Starlings may simply be the most visible and beautiful example of a biological criticality that also seems to operate in proteins and neurons, hinting at universal principles yet to be understood.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THE UKRAINE

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The Ukraine is now and has long been, in my book, a big mess and a breeding ground for nazi like fascism.  The "protests" we see on TV are not all protests of liberation, as I am sure you know.  A few days ago the media showed us images of cops battling with protesters trying to take over the parliament building in Kyiv.  What they mostly neglected to mention was that the cops (who are no friends of working people), in this instance, were fighting with neo-nazis and other reactionaries.  What are the reactionaries and nazis upset about?  According to one writer at Revolution News:


The “Right Sector”... is guided in these events by the sincere feeling of insult. Yanukovych “stole their culture” and started implementing the fascist program without their participation. If they came to power, they would pass the same bills as those passed by the Party of Regions and the “Communist” Party, only with a racist agenda.

However, it isn't as simple as I or some others make it out to be.

The Autonomous Workers Union of Kyiv make clear to me and others in a letter addressed to European leftists:


We, the members of leftist, trade union and human rights organizations in Ukraine, as well as individual activists, would like to draw your attention to the recent events in our country.

On Thursday, 16th of January 2014 without the discussion and contrary to its own regulations and to the Constitution of Ukraine, the Ukrainian parliament, passed a series of laws directed at limiting freedom of speech and citizens’ right to peaceful protest. One of the approved items is the infamous amendment to the Criminal Code which bans so-called “extremism”. In this amendment “inciting social discord” is defined as “extremism”. It is clear that any kind of drawing attention to social problems, to the blatant inequality that exists in Ukrainian society, can be qualified as “inciting social discord”, therefore the activities of left, trade union and social activists in Ukraine can be criminalized to a large extent.

The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) plays a particularly shameful part in these events. Not only did the Communist Party’s faction unanimously voted for the repressive bills, but the CPU official website also features materials that condemn the recent protests as being inspired by foreign actors with the aim of destabilizing Ukraine. Spreading such opinion, the CPU in fact fulfills the task of the whitewashing of Yanukovych’s regime.

It is true that open anti-communists do play a significant role on Maidan, but this anti-communism is caused mostly by the arrogant position of the Communist Party itself. It is not the first time the CPU has tried to de-legitimize civil protests and adopted a conservative position. In addition to this, in the country that suffered the catastrophic losses caused by hunger and repressions during the Stalinist regime, the CPU refuses to condemn the actions of the USSR’s leaders or at least apologize for them, which makes socialist ideas less popular in Ukrainian society.

Yanukovych’s regime has demonstrated its readiness for repressions. It is evident today that the CPU will use its international connections in order to justify this regime’s actions. That is why we believe that the left all around the world and especially in the European Union must terminate any relations with the Communist Party of Ukraine and condemn its actions.

We believe that the party that treats popular uprisings with open hatred, the party that speaks out against “inciting social discord”, is not fit to be called communist or leftist and is “communist” in  name only.

We ask you to bring this letter to the attention of the leadership of the parties which are members of your Union.


Confused, me, too.  I just have not paid the required attention to all this that I should.

Consequently, rather than drone on about something I myself need more education about, I will leave you with two different articles.

The first is from Revolution News. The second from the Nation. 


Russian & Ukrainian Antifa Rallies Held, Nazis Riot in Kyiv


1425623_804577886225449_526572716_nNeo-nazis attacked about 30 antifascists in Kharkov, Ukraine who were commemorating the lives of comrades assassinated in Moscow 5 years ago. Those remembered were Anastasia Baburova – an anarchist and journalist, who was a member of the Autonomous Action, and relentlessly investigated the Neo-nazis – and Stanislav Markelov, a human rights lawyer. Nazis retreated behind police lines for protection, after being beaten back by the antifascist group. Shortly after, police forced two antifascists to write accounts of them beating back the fascists, clearly in favor of the nazis who attacked.
Kharkov: a nazi runs to his police allies for protection from anarchists
Kharkov: a nazi runs to his police allies for protection from antifascists
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Kyiv: Neo nazis clash with Berkut police forces at parliament
Meanwhile, in Kyiv, cops clashed with Neo-nazis as they tried to take over the Parliament during a protest against recent legislation. Mainstream media widely reported these clashes, victimizing the Neo-nazis who were holding crusader shields bearing the white pride cross and “Heil Hitler” nazi symbols, as well as the symbol for white supremacist David Lane’s 14 words (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.”) Writers for Nihilist.li have referred to these riots as an “involuntary ejaculation of fire,” explaining that ”This is the natural act of desperate people who are sick of all politicians and who are not ready to accept the state of emergency. This is not a revolutionary act of the people, this is not parliamentary masturbation – simply an involuntary ejaculation due to long lasting abstinence from sensible and purposeful actions.” Images emerged of nazis beating cops, as can be seen in this video.
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Anastasia and Stanislav were investigating the crimes committed by Yuri Budanov, a Russian officer convicted of war crimes in Chechnya. Two members of a neo-Nazi group, who confessed to their murders, were convicted later, though the entire circumstances of the double assasination remain murky. ”Stanislav Markelov was shot dead after attending a press conference at which he had discussed plans to appeal against the early release of a Russian former colonel who was imprisoned for the murder of a Chechen girl. Anastasia Baburova, a journalist from the newspaper Novaya Gazeta who was accompanying Stanislav Markelov, was seriously injured when she tried to stop the killer. She died later that day in hospital, without regaining consciousness.“ 
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The International Federation of Journalists documented that over the past 20 years, 300 journalists were killed or have disappeared in Russia.
“To remember means to fight. If you remember, you know what to do” – this was written on a bannerwhich was hanged by activists in Moscow, near Putin’s Krelmlin. Earlier, hundreds of antifascists marched through the streets of Moscow, guarded by riot cops, in remembrance of Anastasia Baburova and Stanislav Markelov.
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On Sunday in Kyiv, 200 anarchists and antifascists remembered the double assassination, holding portraits of their fallen comrades, candles, and banners reading: “No political terror,” “We are all antifascists,” “Remembering means fighting.” These messages have a tragic echo in Ukraine these days, as the current ruling power of Ukraine, against the country’s Constitution, passed laws banning “extremism,” which is defined against its own meaning, as “inciting social discord.” This means that any dissent has became a crime. As the Autonomous Workers Union in Kyiv points out, “It is clear that any kind of drawing attention to social problems, to the blatant inequality that exists in Ukrainian society, can be qualified as “inciting social discord,” therefore the activities of left, trade union and social activists in Ukraine can be criminalized to a large extent.”
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They also spoke out against the strengthening of the police state, which western media is ironically referring to as a “dictatorship” and as “totalitarian.” While this is true, it is also true of western countries who have enforced similar measures criminalizing protests. The difference is that when protests are criminalized in the West, mainstream media don’t call that tyranny, but “democracy.”
Later in the evening supporters of the opposition coalition of Merkel-created UADR, nationalist Fatherland, and neo-nazi Svoboda clashed with the riot police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons.
The UADR leader called for early elections in a desperate attempt to fully exploit the fact that the West has made them credible, and directly helped them make use of the protests as a powerful electoral tool.
Fatherland leader Yulia Tymoshenko called for a new constitution, and Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok claimed that they are forced to give protesters a leader, since the crowds demand it. In other words – the opposition claim they are being invited to take power by the crowds they manipulate. While the opposition figures have taken the stage of their manufactured Euromaidan protests, they have done an awful job maintaining support and trust between each others respective parties.
Vitali Klitschko sprayed with a fire extinguisher by nazi protestors while trying to stop clashes with police
Vitali Klitschko sprayed with a fire extinguisher by nazi protestors while trying to stop clashes with police
Tyahnybok also made some awkward claims – he said the government would rob a gun shop and take guns on the streets so they can blame them of being armed. There is no proof to sustain this and it did not happen, but the fact that he mentioned guns should perhaps be kept in mind. Some 100 people were injured during the street clashes, a fifth of them cops.
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The Ukrainian Nationalism at the Heart of ‘Euromaidan’







Kiev protest
Members of the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army rallied in Kiev in December 2013. (Reuters/Gleb Garanich)
Kiev’s two-month-long “Euromaidan” protest turned violent on Sunday as people in masks, outraged over restrictive protest laws hurriedly passed last week, marched on parliament and ran into police cordons that they pelted with stones and Molotov cocktails. Police hurled gas canisters, stun grenades, and a water cannon and rubber bullets at them, setting off a wave of clashes previously unknown at the largely peaceful protest.
Spearheading the clashes with police was Right Sector, a group with ties to far-right parties including the Patriots of Ukraine and Trident, which BBC Ukraine reported is largely comprised of nationalist football fans. In a statement the next day, the group claimed credit for Sunday’s unrest and promised to continue fighting until President Viktor Yanukovich stepped down.
“Two months of unsuccessful tiptoeing about under the leadership of the opposition parties showed many demonstrators they need to follow not those who speak sweetly from the stage, but rather those who offer a real scenario for revolutionary changes in the country. For this reason, the protest masses followed the nationalists,” the statement read.
The surge in violence sparked by Right Sector has revealed how uncritical and undiscerning most of the media has been of the far-right parties and movements that have played a leading role in the “Euromaidan,” the huge protests for closer ties to Europe that flared up in November and have taken over Kiev’s Independence Square (“Maidan Nezalezhnosti”). Protest coverage focused on the call for European integration and the struggle against the Yanukovich regime has largely glossed over the rise in nationalist rhetoric, often chauvinist, that has led to violence not just against police, but also against left-wing activists.
According to Maksim Butkevich of the coordinator of the No Borders Project of the Center for Social Action NGO, which works against discrimination and xenophobia, far-right groups have grown in popularity over the course of Euromaidan.
“I wouldn’t say it’s big, that huge numbers of activists will join far-right groups after this, but they became more acceptable and in a way more mainstream than before for many active citizens,” Butkevich said.
Although the outcome of the protests is still up in the air, if they lead to snap elections, nationalists could win greater political power, Butkevich said, especially Svoboda, the far-right parliamentary party in the coalition of three opposition parties leading the protest. (Right Sector criticizes all three for “pacifism,” including Svoboda.)
It was Svoboda that was responsible for the most iconic image to come out of Euromaidan: On December 8, masked protestors waving blue Svoboda flags and yelling “Hang the Commie!” toppled a 67-year-old statue of Vladimir Lenin in the city center. Svoboda leader Ihor Miroshnychenko, who has faced charges for pulling down a Lenin statue in another city, told journalists his party was responsible.
Svoboda is the most visible party on the square, it has essentially taken over Kiev City Hall as its base of operations, and it has a large influence in the protestors’ security forces.
It also has revived three slogans originating in the Ukrainian nationalist movement of the 1930s that have become the most popular chants at Euromaidan. Almost all speakers on Independence Square—even boxer-turned-opposition-leader Vitaly Klitschko, who has lived mostly in Germany and has a US residence permit—start and end with the slogan, “Glory to Ukraine!,” to which the crowd responds “To heroes glory!” Two other nationalist call-and-response slogans often heard on the square are “Glory to the nation! Death to enemies!” and “Ukraine above all!”
Progressive activists have “to fight on two fronts, against a regime that supports harmful police violence … and also against extreme nationalism, which is recognized and legitimate on Maidan,” Nikita Kadan, an artist and activist in Kiev, said via Skype during a discussion of nationalism at a Moscow bookstore in December.
The Euromaidan protests began on November 21 after the government halted the process of signing an Association Agreement and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union. The EU offered Ukraine what many have framed as a “civilizational choice” between East and West, which have recently been at odds over a traditionalist social agenda—including a controversial law against gay propaganda—implemented under President Vladimir Putin in Russia.
The association agreement would have reduced tariffs but would not have led automatically to visa-free travel or the ability for Ukrainians to work in Europe. (EU politicians and even Senator John McCain have come to Kiev to stump for European integration, and McCain had dinner with Svoboda’s head and the two other leaders of the opposition coalition.) Instead, President Yanukovich, who is from the generally Russian-speaking eastern half of the country, later signed an agreement with Putin that will see Russia buy $15 billion in Ukrainian government bonds and discount the gas it delivers to Ukraine by a third.
The protests come amid a resurgence of nationalist sentiment in Ukraine that can be compared to a Europe-wide rise of nationalist parties. Svoboda, which was originally known by the Nazi-esque moniker “Social-National Party of Ukraine” and whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok is infamous for a 2004 speech in which he argued that a “Moscow-Jewish mafia” was ruling Ukraine, entered parliament for the first time in 2012 by winning 10.44 percent of the popular vote. Before this, the party had come to dominate regional parliaments in three provinces in the largely Ukrainian-speaking west of the country. In last year’s elections, Svoboda notably finished second in cosmopolitan, Russian-speaking Kiev.
“In the 2010 and 2012 elections, it became visible that a big part of the youth are moving toward nationalism,” said Georgy Kasyanov, a researcher at the Institute for the Development of Education. He noted that one factor is youth unemployment, which is rising in Ukraine as in the rest of Europe.
Despite its leading role at Euromaidan, Svoboda’s political program is at complete odds with the “European values” for which the protestors at Euromaidan are ostensibly agitating. (Admittedly, some of the party’s populist economic program is in fact relatively progressive.) During its time in parliament, the party was best known for introducing a bill to ban abortions, but in its program, it also promises to abolish gun control, “ban the communist ideology,” criminalize “Ukrainophobia,” ban the adoption of Ukrainian children by foreigners and reinstate a “nationality” graph on passports and birth certificates.
On New Year’s Day, Svoboda led about 15,000 people in a torchlight march in honor of Stepan Bandera, the controversial leader of the wartime Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought the Soviets for an independent Ukrainian state but also ethnically cleansed tens of thousands of Polish civilians. (Right Sector also announced its own march that day in honor of Bandera.) Some historians have accused the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of cooperating in the massacres of thousands of Ukrainian Jews during the Nazi occupation, and Tyahnybok even commended the rebels in 2004 for fighting “Russians, Germans, Jewry and other crap.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center put Svoboda at number five on its 2012 list of top anti-semitic slurs, citing Tyahnybok’s “Moscow-Jewish mafia” comment and Miroshnychenko calling Ukrainian-born actress Mila Kunis a “dirty Jewess.”
How can the slogan “Ukraine above all!” sound on Independence Square alongside the slogan “Ukraine in the EU!”, Ukrainian progressive activist Olga Papash asked in a recent piece on the politics and culture website Korydor. Any ideology has a certain point that integrates dissimilar ideas into a single system, Papash argued.
“I think the attachment point, that shared place of rightist ideology in Ukraine today, that ‘ideal’ that removes the contradiction between different calls to action and messages, is the fear of (dislike of, reluctance toward) entering into any sort of ‘civilized’ relationship with Russia,” Papash wrote.
Even Yury Noyevy, a member of Svoboda’s political council, admitted that the party is only pro-EU because it is anti-Russia.
“The participation of Ukrainian nationalism and Svoboda in the process of EU integration is a means to break our ties with Russia,” Noyevy said.
For now, Svoboda and other far-right movements like Right Sector are focusing on the protest-wide demands for civic freedoms government accountability rather than overtly nationalist agendas. Svoboda enjoys a reputation as a party of action, responsive to citizens’ problems. Noyevy cut an interview with The Nation short to help local residents who came with a complaint that a developer was tearing down a fence without permission.
“There are people who don’t support Svoboda because of some of their slogans, but they know it’s the most active political party and go to them for help,” said Svoboda volunteer Kateryna Kruk. “Only Svoboda is helping against land seizures in Kiev.”
Kruk freely admitted she doesn’t support Svoboda’s nationalist platform and “would be very concerned” if the party won a majority in parliament. Nonetheless, she volunteers for Svoboda because she likes “the idea of a party that is Ukrainian-focused” and thinks it is the most active of the opposition parties.
This kind of reserved support of Svoboda as the party most likely to enact change despite its intolerant rhetoric was echoed by several protestors on Independence Square. Katerina, a doctor who also declined to give her last name for fear of repercussions at work, said although she disagrees with Svoboda’s nationalist program, she supports them “for now” for their strong anti-oligarch stance.
“They’re not afraid to make demands,” she said.
Alexander, who came to Independence Square from a village outside Kiev, said that the nationalists have been essential to the growth of Euromaidan.
“Without nationalists, there wouldn’t be any protest,” Alexander said, declining to provide his last name.
Ivan Kozar, a Cossack from Khmelnitsky who came with his brethren to provide security on Independence Square, said Svoboda “is the one political party that has a well-formed concept.”
“Sure there are those who say, ‘Beat Moskali!’” he said, referencing the derogatory term for Muscovites sometimes heard on the square, “but they are few in number.”
Nonetheless, some left-wing parties, including the Marxist party Borotba, don’t support the protests because they worry about the growing power the demonstrations have given to Svoboda. Their concern alludes to a darker side to patriotic hymns and sayings.
The fact that nationalist slogans “became mainstream of course points to the danger of providing greater legitimacy to groups promoting positions that yesterday were really marginal, and this danger is still in place,” Butkevich of No Borders said.
But rhetoric can quickly escalate into action, and already protestors with apparent nationalist sentiments have taken part in a spate of attacks on left-wing activists on Independence Square. On November 27, activists with signs reading “Freedom, Equality, Sisterhood,” “Europe is sex education,” “Europe is equality” and “Organize trade union instead of praying for Europe” said they were assaulted by “far-right thugs” calling themselves “organizers of the protest,” who tore the banners. On November 28, several men with covered faces pepper-sprayed a group of feminists and tore a banner reading “Europe means paternity leaves.”
On December 4, labor organizer Denis Levin and his two brothers were beaten by a small crowd shouting “Glory to Ukraine” and “Death to Enemies” after a nationalist writer on the stage pointed them out as “provocateurs” with red flags, Levin told The Nation. Shortly before and after the attack, Miroshnychenko, a member of Svoboda’s political council, came by the tent where the brothers were agitating for the Confederation of Free Labor Unions, Levin added. The nose of one brother was broken, and Denis suffered from the irritative gas used against the trio.
Men wearing armbands with the wolfsangel nationalist symbol also started the violent clashes on nearby Bankova Street on December 1 that led to riot police counter-attacking and beating journalists, photos from the incident show, although it’s not clear in whose interests they were acting.
“People are not thinking about how an association with the EU will actually affect us, they’re still finding simple answers for complicated questions. They are blaming the Moskali for everything,” Levin said.
“The main mistake of Maidan is that the parties came, and social questions were replaced by nationalist ones,” he added. “Maidan didn’t grow into Occupy [Wall Street], it became reactive.”
However, Noyevy denied Svoboda activists had beaten the Levin brothers.
“I know this situation, unfortunately Svoboda wasn’t involved in this action,” he said. “Thank god everything turned out okay. Those provocateurs are mainly extremists, they have an extremist liberal ideology and are using the funding of western organizations.”
“Anyone who says he’s a communist is a provocateur,” he added. “We will be against any left-wing party.”
Former Svoboda member Ivan Ponomarenko, an architect from Kiev, said the party is ineffective politically and will not be able to enact its measures, as its leadership is only “pretending” to be extreme nationalists for their own political and economic gain.
“They are playing at Klu Klux Klan,” Ponomarenko said.
But political analyst Kost Bondarenko, commenting on Svoboda’s recent torch-lit march in Radio Free Europe/Radio Svoboda’s Russian service, said that as the dominant far-right political party, Svoboda could benefit politically from any continuation of radical actions at Euromaidan.
“Any radicalization on the right, and Maidan is right-wing in its essence and ideology, will lead to a growth in the ratings … of this political force,” Bondarenko said. “On the other hand, such a turn of events is desirable to the authorities, I think, since Viktor Yanukovich understands that he will win if Oleh Tyahnybok makes it to a second round” in the presidential election in 2015.
For his part, a bright-eyed Noyevy promised to implement a radical nationalist platform.
“Svoboda is going to be the biggest winner among the opposition parties in increasing its level of support after Euromaidan,” he added. “Right now the majority of people on Maidan demand more radical actions, and I don’t see how other parties will enact these wishes.”

"WE ARE ALL PRESUMED GUILTY": THE TREATMENT OF THE PRISON VISITOR

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I remember how important visits were for me when I was in prison (or in jail).  I remember sitting in my cell at El Reno's Federal Correctional facility (where I spent my time before moving on to Leavenworth) back in the 70s on a Saturday morning waiting anxiously to hear my named called and told that I had a visitor (anxious because one couldn't be sure that something wouldn't go right and your visit or visitor would be denied).  I wore my good jeans, the ones I traded something for on the inside.  I never wore them at any other time, content enough with my prison khakis for, shall we say, everyday wear.  I knew that on my way to my visit I would be strip searched by guards and harassed in various ways.  Didn't matter, visits were worth it.  I knew how lucky I was to get visits every week or two.  Most of my fellow inmates didn't get any at all...or if they did, they were few and far between.

I really appreciated the people who drove several hundred miles down to Oklahoma to see me.  It wasn't that easy for them to do this, friends and family.   I did feel bad for my visitors having to interact with the prison, with the guards.  I knew that wasn't a good experience.  I knew the prison wanted everyone connected with those of us held captive to feel that they were captives, as well.  I knew this because I understood the ideology of prisons and because I had visited prisoners myself before I became one (and later, after I was released).  

The prison ideology, the mindset of those who run these places is that we are all criminals, those of us inside, and those connected to us on the outside...and we all should be treated as somewhat less than human.  The guards, I think, for the most part also just get off on the power.  I mean, seriously, I know we all need jobs, but just who becomes a prison guard anyway (we can save that discussion for another time).

The piece I am sharing with you for Scission Prison Friday today is about all this, about the petty and not so petty nonsense those who visit prisoners must go through just to see those about whom they care.  It is the personal story  of what a young African American confronted when she went to visit her brother at the age of twelve.  Nothing horrendous occurred or anything, but what is important here is what she learned from her experience and what we can also learn.

I am including the comments with the piece.

The following is from the Feminist Wire which I commend for the series and forum they have done on the prison industrial complex. The forum grew out of work around Mumia.  

As the authors write:


 The prison industrial complex both reflects and exacerbates many of our social ills. There is much work to be done, and we all must play a role.


*Pretty Sparkly Things: A Black Girl’s Encounter with the Prison Industrial Complex

January 23, 2014
By 


Ford-Pretty Sparkly Things
I love clothes. I always have. As a black girl coming of age in the early 1990s, I was up on all the adornment trends: from asymmetrical haircuts and Cross Colours jeans to neckties and button down shirts (a la Boyz II Men). As any person who went to a predominantly black school knows, you had to come to school CLEAN! Even as twelve-year-old kids, style was our form of self-expression. It was our way of envisioning possibilities for our futures that could propel us beyond the de facto boundaries of our hyper-segregated neighborhoods. Dressing stylishly enabled us toimagine what it would be like to be doctors, ball players, lawyers, millionaire businesspersons, or entertainers. Because of our self-fashioned “fly code,” I was always looking for the next dope outfit to wear to school.

One day, my stylish Mother came home with a white denim short set that she’d bought for me. The shorts and matching top had these multicolored, beaded tassels—“pretty sparkly things”—dangling from them. I paired the outfit with a hot pink hat (like the ones Mayum Bialik used to wear on the T.V. show “Blossom”). I borrowed my mother’s hot glue gun (this was pre-Bedazzlers), and I glued rhinestones on a pair of my ballet flats. That next week, I strutted through my junior high school’s halls in my new fashion ensemble. I was the Hip Hop Coco Chanel, and this outfit was my masterpiece! It quickly became my signature look that I reserved for special occasions.

So naturally, when my Father told me we were going to visit my older brother who was serving time in prison, I knew exactly what I was going to wear: my outfit with the pretty sparkly things! I wanted my big brother, who was eight years my senior, to be proud of the young woman I was becoming while he was away. And, to me, this outfit symbolized not only my sartorial innovation but also my maturity and professional promise.

I had never been to a prison before. I was terrified. But, I put aside my fears so I could visit my hero. After riding in the car for what seemed like forever, we pulled into the prison’s visitor parking area. My heart began to pound; I could feel moisture forming on my palms. I wondered: “Would my brother recognize me? What was his life like in prison? Was it like the film South Central? Was my Brother like O.G. Bobby Johnson? If I go in, will they force me to stay…forever?!” All of these thoughts whizzed through my twelve-year-old brain as we approached the facility. The one thought that did not occur to me was that I might not be able to get into the prison because of what I chose to wear that day.

Another visitor informed my Father that the guards might not let me in because my pretty sparkly things violated the visitors’ dress code. I was crushed. The very outfit that I’d picked out to impress my big Brother with might be the very thing that kept me from even seeing him. My outfit was an affront to the prison industrial complex. And, the prison system responded by attempting to stifle and confine my creativity—reflected in the pretty sparkly things on my garment—the same way it had those of the millions of men and women held captive behind its bars. Tears welled in my eyes. I felt guilty that after driving nearly two hours to the prison, my Dad would not even get to see his son. I felt like I had wasted his gas and his time simply because I had to wear this outfit.

My father and the other adults began brainstorming as to what could be done about my clothes: perhaps they could give me someone else’s t-shirt to wear so that only the pretty sparkly things on my shorts would show. Maybe someone could wait in the car with me while my Father went inside…“So much fuss over a few pretty. sparkly. things.” I thought. Finally, the prison authorities decided I could go in. I could keep on my outfit, and I could go into the prison. We got to see my Brother, who put on a happy face for us despite the fact that he was likely ashamed that we had to visit him under such circumstances. I hugged him, and beamed with pride (though a little less brightly) as I showed off my outfit. I left the prison knowing that something in me had changed; I had lost a bit of my innocence that day. I had been exposed to a type of cruelty that I could not articulate at the time. I never visited my brother again. And, once he was released, we never discussed his stint in prison.

I recently shared my story with activist Lois Ahrens, who runs the Real Cost of Prisons Project, based in Northampton, Massachusetts, and she helped me put my personal experience into a broader context. I asked her, “Why did this happen? Why are guards so worried about what people wear?” Ahrens said:


Guards have power and prisoners and visitors have none. Everything a guard does reminds a prisoner or visitor of that dynamic… We are all presumed guilty because we are visiting someone who has been found guilty… Every visitor is suspect therefore whatever a visitor does or wears is suspect.


She then gave me a list of clothing and adornment items that have been banned from Massachusetts’ prisons:


Tassels                                           Cargo pants
 Open-toed shoes                          Bobby pins
Barrettes                                        Earrings
Sleeveless shirts                           Underwire bras
Zip-front shirts                              Shorts
Baggy or tight clothing                 Clothing w/ many pockets
Hoodies                                         Revealing or sheer clothing
Bodysuits of any type                    Wrap around shirts


This list represents the literal policing of people’s dressed bodies. The guards have the sole discretion to enforce these dress codes, and the list of banned garments varies from state to state. If you challenge a guard’s decision about your clothing, you could lose your visitation privileges for a year or more. These adornment regulations are part of a larger, problematic set of visitor body politics. Loved ones are subject to intrusive body searches, which can include: scanning; wanding; removing shoes, outer shirts, and belts; looking under your collar; examining your hair and mouth; and having search dogs sniff you. This process is only slightly less invasive than the full-body searches the prisoners are subjected to before they enter the visiting area.

The reality is that most people, like my family, do not know the rules regarding “proper” attire while visiting prisons. Nor are most people trying to sneak contraband to prisoners in their garments. Ironically, it is often the guards who operate smuggling rings (see here and here). Most people are simply trying to visit their loved ones, trying to make their family members feel their love through the prison’s Plexiglass windows. During our conversation, Ahrens noted the paradox between prisons’ treatment of loved ones and their stated views about the importance of family visits. She told me, “Every state claims it values ‘family reunification,’ yet every state makes visiting as degrading as can be imagined.” Ahrens is currently engaged in a battle with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC), pushing the DOC to change its policy regarding using search dogs during the visitor screening process.

Ford-Pretty Sparkly Things
Families often have to visit with their incarcerated loved ones through a Plexiglass window
But, what the fight for the humane treatment of prison visitors needs most is people willing to share their stories. Ahrens states, “Visiting a prison or a jail is traumatizing for everyone, which is why it is so important to do it and good to talk about it since there is so much stigma and shame with having a loved one in prison…which helps keep [the structure of power] in place.”

I’d pushed my traumatic visit to the prison into the recesses of my memory, until I started organizing this mass incarceration forum. At twelve years old, I did not have the language with which to articulate my trauma or to push back against the system. But, now I understand the power in speaking out about these issues. Incarcerated folks—regardless of whether they are innocent or guilty of the charges for which they have been convicted—belong to someone. They are loved. And, their loved ones deserve to be treated humanely when they visit. This essay was very difficult to write because this experience was so personal, and family dynamics can be hard to discuss in an open forum. But, it is important to illuminate how mass incarceration affects families. We are invisible victims of the prison system. I hope my story compels others to share their experiences and join in the fight against the prison industrial complex.

*This piece is written in loving memory of my big Brother who died tragically on December 16, 2012.
                                                                              ****
Get involved with the Free Mumia Movement
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  1. Regina N. Bradley on January 23, 2014 at 10:33 am
    Phenomenal per your usual, Tanisha.
    This piece invoked a pain in me I haven’t thought about for some years. I used to visit my father in prison. It was a traumatic experience. I think I’m most horrified by the light that would come on that let people know someone was coming to the visitation area. It was white and cold. It sanitized my excitement to see my father.
    One particular visit I remember fussing with my grandparents about why I couldn’t leave a picture I drew and painted for my daddy with him. My folks had to argue with the guards just to let me bring it in so he could see it. I worked hard on that piece. And it broke my heart – probably not as much as my daddy’s – that I couldn’t leave it with him.
    Thanks for this piece and bringing a sense of humanity to not only the prisoners but the family that has to jump through hoops to see them.
  2. susanofthenorth on January 23, 2014 at 10:36 am
    Thank you for sharing your experience-it opened my eyes.
  3. Juanita Crider on January 23, 2014 at 10:48 am
    This reminds me of when my cousin’s mother in law, who had loss her hair during chemotherapy, had to remove her head scarf when she went to visit her grandson in
    prison. She felt humiliated because they would not let her wear it during the visit even after she removed it for inspection.
  4. Kimberly George on January 23, 2014 at 12:50 pm
    Heartbreaking. Thank you, thank you, for your courage and energy to write this piece.
  5. A on January 23, 2014 at 8:34 pm
    Thank you for this.
  6. Rachel on January 24, 2014 at 12:23 pm
    What an honest story, and beutiful too. This series has been very helpful for me- and has inspired my desire to-reenage in advocacy…
    I was a volunteer chaplain at a prison (my goal was to just be with people not to convert or be with “offenders” or to have any religious agenda—but to be with them) for 2 years and I would routinely show up and the guards at the desk would pretend they couldn’t find the paperwork to sign in. Despite the fact that I could see it- in plain sight behind the guards.
    I was being policed, reminded who was in charge and controlled and recall being aware that this was the encounter with the system that inmates had all the time. I didn’t know how I would control my rage if I were to encounter that all the time….
    Thank you again for your wise words, profound work and inspiration.
    -R

A CONVERSATION WITH ANTONIO NEGRI

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It is that time again.  Theoretical Weekends at Scission has arrived.

Since 1993, Obrist has conducted hundreds of interviews with folks from here, there and everywhere.  He is a curator, I know that.  Beyond that I can't say much about the man who interviews Antonio Negri below.  

The interview itself covers lots of ground and I don't really have an introduction.  All I can say is that if you hate Negri, you probably won't want to waste your time here.  If you like him, you might.  If you don't know how you feel about the guy, this might help.

Whatever the case may be, the following is from e-flux.

By the way, I've been planning to read this myself for quite a while.  I guess now is as good a time as any.




In Conversation with Antonio Negri

Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist: The last time we met was with Rem Koolhaas in 2001, and we spoke about what could be called your “city projects.” What are you working on related to this subject at the moment?
Antonio Negri: I can start by saying that while discussing the concept of the multitude, Michael Hardt and I found ourselves facing the question of the city, which we brought up as part of the question of the territorialization of the multitude, the space in which the multitude deploys itself. To be honest, I think that while a number of problems started to clear up after we wrote Multitude, others remained in the shadow, like this fundamental question of space. For example, we are very interested in this problem of the multitude’s temporality, that is, of transformative moments and raising consciousness, or the problems that arise the moment we think about what it means to “make” multitude, to construct it as a singularity that tends towards shared, common projects. But the big problem we have yet to consider concerns space. Because we still require a place in which this multitude will exist—not only a network through which it communicates, but also the power to decide its living conditions. This power to decide plays a role in developing a relationship between the multitude and state structures or institutions, and from a negative perspective this means an uproar; from a constructive perspective it means revolution. Now we could say that today this space is the contemporary metropolis. Half of the world’s population, maybe more, now lives in cities. The population itself, we could say, is a refugee in these cities. In fact, we may now have one to two thirds of the world’s population living in cities of over one million inhabitants.
HUO: And these numbers rise every year!
AN: That’s right! And if the question of the metropolis is central, then in my opinion it is because there is a structure of the common that is specific to it. This structure could be described as the tension that exists between the demand for services on the one hand, and the withholding of these services, or the refusal to consent to this demand, on the other. The refusal endangers the demand, and the claims made to it. And this demand becomes more and more important. I actually believe that two processes are currently underway. The first is a definitive neutralization of the traditional working class, which has allowed for the distinct working-class space—the factory—to be destroyed. But it goes beyond this to something more general, because we could also say that this disqualification has marked the disappearance of the productive space as a clearly defined one. The second process concerns the illegal reconstruction of urban space, the spaces not controlled by anyone, that are constituted by successive waves of immigration and by extremely profound cultural mixes. And all this produces two vast, enormous spaces, where all the energy of work, of construction, of sociality and solidarity, is centered.
HUO: So we could say that these are two parallel movements.
AN: Yes, because they are both intertwined with forms of biopolitical control. It is clear that they are not simply processes of controlling the conditions or the organization of work, but rather of transforming living conditions in such a way that only work and its organization become important. So when we look at the metropolis, we find ourselves facing a dialectical movement unique to our time. But it is dialectic in a unique sense, because, in truth, these are processes that lead nowhere. These changes are made regardless of any communal frame. Each time we arrive in places shaped by these processes, we experience a sort of vertigo. I was recently in Caracas, where in a city of about seven or eight million people you have between seven and nine hundred thousand living in what we could call neighborhoods, or “defined” spaces, whereas about six or seven million people live in totally chaotic conditions.
HUO: And it isn’t even clear exactly how many people there are…
AN: Yes, we don’t even have a precise figure! When flying over the city, I was absolutely struck by seeing the city everywhere, absolutely everywhere! Meaning that from about 1200 meters above the ground, you can see only the city, and nothing but the city! Everything is occupied! And what’s more, the space is taken up by something that is totally wild, completely uncontrolled!
HUO: Could we describe this in terms of “self-organization”? Of a kind of development that evades all forms of planning?
AN: Yes, it’s completely self-organized. And in Brazil it’s the exact same thing.

Some coordinators of the landless worker’s movement meet to discuss plans for the encampment, Pará, Brazil, 1999.
HUO: You mentioned earlier that you have been traveling extensively in South America.
AN: Yes, I’ve traveled there especially often in the past couple of years. I must say that I completely agree with Niall Ferguson, who has said that the new political context the Bush administration was responding to was not one of large-scale terrorism engendered by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East—a situation that they themselves created—but the fact that, for the first time since the assertion of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 Latin America was completely independent. And now, if Mexico votes Left, it will no longer be only Latin America, but Latin America and Mexico! I wrote a little book about this that was published in Brazil and in Argentina, called Glob-AL, where the A and L stand for America Latina. In this book, I consider the crisis of the ideologies of subordination and dependence, which were classic themes in the traditional theories of the Latin American Left, and I note that the goal has now become to theorize the interdependence, already constituted, of this new continental front. And all this goes hand in hand with the other emerging position, which considers Bush’s or the United States’ coup d’état to have failed. The next horizon we will have to prepare for is that of this continental pluralism—one that is extremely varied and passionate, but still poses a small problem for me, which is that we have yet to understand this problem in Europe. And I find this fact regrettable!
HUO: How do you see Europe in opposition?
AN: I don’t know exactly—I’m still consumed by all that happens there, and I haven’t reflected on this question properly. But if we return to this question of the metropolis, we can see that we’ll have to start by defining it as the place where the transformation of capitalism has, in fact, ruined its own tradition, in the sense that there is no longer any difference between industrial profit, real estate surplus, and financial structures. At the same time, the city has become a full-fledged productive element—and the metropolis even more so. We see that even the most intelligent men have always considered the city to be a positive externality, meaning that we consider the city to have established conditions in which industrial operations and processes could be organized, developed, and extended. But today the city, and the metropolis in particular, have become directly productive. And what exactly does this production consist of? I would say that it consists of the movement of people—it is in the construction of urban cooperation, in the liberty and the imagination of people who define and provoke it. Look at Brazil. They say “But there is so much misery…” And of course, it’s true! But I would respond, “Then go look what is in that misery.” Because there is an incredible capacity for creation in that misery, in those favelas. Music, human connections, and, of course, at times, deadly connections as well. But there is an enormous creativity that produces new things, and that creativity does not come without negative aspects. But the problem of murder and crime, and more generally the problem posed by the fact that certain expressions of this wild creativity are dangerous, is evidently the problem of order and disorder. And I never thought that this multitude could exist without order. Make no mistake: I have never been an anarchist.
HUO: Yes, we spoke about this the other day, when I mentioned certain urbanists who have reclaimed anarchist thought, and you said that you do not support anarchism in the cities under any terms.
AN: I am not an anarchist from any standpoint, regardless of the situation we find ourselves in. Based on forms of self-organization that are becoming more and more collective, I think there is a “common” that grows stronger and stronger. We always have to create institutions! But creating institutions also means creating forms of cities, because an institution is not a metaphysical representation or an ideal archetype! It is among other, concrete forms that the city has to be constructed, that the metropolis can constitute the common. And it goes without saying that I am not only speaking here of buildings! There are, of course, buildings, but there is also communication—the lines, the spaces, and so forth. Creating an institution means creating a public space.
Anti-riot police, Caracas.
HUO: Speaking of the nature of this public space, in Multitude you describe the ongoing obliteration of the notion of “exteriority,” which also seems to hint at the disappearance of the idea of a single center. But how is this applied concretely in the city? It seems to me that it is no longer a question of center and periphery…
AN: Well, we need to pay attention to this problem. It’s true that there is no longer a center, but it is also true that there is what we can call a “deviant” center. This, for example, is the American center that raises its head in times that are more and more aberrant. I have a lot of respect and sympathy for the democratic tradition of the United States, which is something very profound and something I am very fond of. Still, we can no longer ignore the harmful effects that the conservative and religious culture in the United States has brought about. It’s a very dramatic change, and its disastrous effect has been to isolate the libertarian experience of American culture from any form of global consciousness and even from its own capacity to intervene in the world while respecting people’s liberty. The export of democracy has been transformed into a new form of imperialism that has surpassed anything we could imagine! What’s more, it has produced a kind of imperialism that has been revealed to work against the interests of capitalism, which it was supposed to serve. That is the absurdity of the situation. So the big question is not about what we can do in a world that no longer has a center, but about knowing how the struggles for liberation—the liberation of people, anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism—and how the movement of the multitude, as the fundamental thing to which all other forms of struggle subordinate themselves, can redirect the processes of communication and rebellion. From this point of view I remain a dedicated Zapatista! There are ways in which the claims—the forms of organization and the institutional forms—will build themselves. Today there are still campaigns around this, and we have to lead these campaigns! It’s very clear, particularly here in France with the problem of the banlieues, and the problem of the European suburbs in general. These are problems that we are going to have to face very soon. Next year, I am thinking of transforming the seminar I teach at the Collège International de Philosophie into a sort of “nomad seminar” that will circulate among Parisian banlieues.
Women Zapatistas.
HUO: So the seminar will be delocalized to the suburbs…
AN: Yes, yes! To Saint-Denis, Evry, Nanterre, all those places. And it will respond to connections with the groups of people who work there. But it’s not only there that the problem of the metropolis will become apparent, because as we speak of the metropolis and its problems, as we speak of the suburbs, the most surprising thing is the total lack of discourse. You saw what happened after the riots in France in 2006: once again, we talk a lot and say nothing. And I must say in particular that left-wing thought has not differed much from that on the Right. The right wing claims that it is not its role or aim to search for alternatives. It is there because it wants to maintain order, so we shouldn’t expect anything else from it. Whereas the Left…
HUO: Yes, I was in Paris then, and like everyone, I think, I was amazed by the deafening silence of the Left…
AN: That’s it, they are content to remain silent. But how will any connection between this multitude and the new democratic project be established without the idea that things need to be built from the bottom up? This movement has to come from the bottom. Because with the riots we really touched the soft underbelly of all the contradictions in our society—which is essentially Fordist, but as a model this is currently undergoing a serious crisis, because it did not succeed in allowing the new generations to play a role in democracy. They called people from around the world to work in their factories, but once the factories started to close down, they found themselves with ghettos on their hands. And they had neither the imagination nor the ability to place all these people into vibrant circulation; they did not know how to use all the potential creativity that was there. They constantly speak of a “decline,” but the only decline I see is that of their own inventiveness and ability. It’s the fact that they did not succeed or that they did not even want to take the elites from those countries and place them into real circulation. And now we need to think about how to use this metamorphosis that the political powers up to now have not known how to engage productively with. It’s a metamorphosis that finds its outlet in racism, that now has to face the problem of violence, apartheid, and reactionary Islamists. But I believe that all these are secondary to the fundamental problem of how to find ways of recreating an authentic democratic circulation and free movement.
HUO: Which implies the question of the transformation of work…
AN: As always. I am a Marxist, you know. I always think that social activity is the most important thing! And I believe that all the people who talk about these problems without saying this are hypocrites. Because they know very well that social activity is the real problem, and yet they do not speak of it. After this the problem of poverty and wealth, meaning, the difference between those who work and those who exploit, will remain as Machiavelli, my patron and my master, described.
HUO: Yes, we see Machiavelli here on the table…
AN: There’s a great piece here that I reread the other day, a text, Machiavelli says, “that is good to remember for all its arguments, which speak to the proclaimed equality of men.” In it we read how one of the leaders of the 1300 revolt, a man of the plebs, “one of the most daring and experienced, in order to animate the rest,” declared:
Strip us naked, and we shall all be found alike. Dress us in their clothing, and they in ours, we shall appear noble, they ignoble—for poverty and riches make all the difference.
And it concludes with mistrust of the political game:
Small crimes are chastised, but great and serious ones rewarded … We have no business to think about conscience; for when, like us, men have to fear hunger, and imprisonment, or death, the fear of hell neither can nor ought to have any influence upon them. If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains. Those who either from imprudence or want of sagacity avoid doing so, are always overwhelmed with servitude and poverty; for faithful servants are always servants, and honest men are always poor; nor do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent.1
You see, this is Marxism! And we find almost exactly the same thing in Spinoza, and with Nietzsche, and indeed in Marx! We actually find this in the writing of all intelligent writers, this understanding of the fact that it is poverty and wealth that make the world go round. Poverty more so, it is the key, it is the salt of the earth; poverty and love are the two most important things. We will have to construct a city on poverty and love. And, in the background is this question of how we can move from poverty to wealth by passing through love. In fact, this is a question we should pose to architects.
Bust of Machiavelli, Pallazo Vecchio, Florence.
HUO: That would be an idea for a future city. But to return a little to urbanism and art—
AN: You want to talk about utopia!
HUO: Yes, but before we go back to utopia, I’d first like to speak a little about this book titled Art et Multitude. One of the things that most interested me in this book is what you say about the transformation of work. You wrote that the transformation of work was your key to reading transformations that took place in art. I would love to hear more about this.
AN: I don’t know—for me it’s clear. All of Surrealism is linked to Fordization, as is all that “rationalist art.” But I should explain what I mean by “rationalist art” such as that of the Bauhaus. Suppose that I recognize two fundamental processes: on the one hand, rationalization, and on the other, materialization. The latter gives us Picasso, and the former—Gropius! And I think the history of modern art is made like this, though I am aware that this sounds absolutely simplistic, but these are the two great foundations for my interpretation. Picasso marks the peak of a tradition of “excavation,” of the heart, the soul, of modern reality—this reality characterized by the refusal of the image as it stands, by the desire to construct the image of reality or realize new representations. And on the other hand, we have this rationalization, and I think that these two things go together. Our political milieu is constructed in a similar way, born out of the intensification of the rational, out of humankind’s capacity. The outcome of this, I think, is Beuys. He suggests the magnificent climax of a destroyed figurative vision on the one hand, and on the other, a material construction of a new world, along with all the dimensions of finitude and disillusion that this new world brings with it. It is an epic and heroic cooperation that exists in the dissolution of objects. But then what happens in their reconstruction? I know very well that this is better handled by a specialist, which I am not, so I cannot explain my joy to you here. I rely on nothing but the emotion that I feel when I find myself in an exhibition. I am not like you priests of art—priests who know all the sins of artists! That is my confession…!
HUO: Well, one fascinating aspect of Art et Multitude is the number of very concrete reviews of visits to exhibitions in the book. I remember that we ran into each other at the 2003 Venice Biennial when you went to see “Utopia Station,” and in the book you also mention the preceding Biennial in 2001, and how you were amazed by the lack of formal innovation. You bring up notions of transcendence, of the “death of God”…
AN: Living in Venice, we are able to follow the Biennial quite regularly. From time to time there are ones that are truly extraordinary, even if at other times they’re not as solid, and we cannot see why they are so necessary. To be honest, I believe that they should be held every ten years rather than every two, as they are now! But for me, following the developments of art has always been a matter of trying to anticipate a little of what happens, and I have to say that there is a rationality in this disappearance of, well, “rationality.” Though this term came to me on its own, I shouldn’t use it, as it’s too similar to categories used in historicism: “There is a certain rationality,” “There is a certain tendency…” I prefer not to use these terms, but how should I say it? I’m trying to direct us towards this idea that society expresses itself in art up to a point where a decision determines a form. I am particularly interested in the notion ofkunstwollen—this capacity to transform the social and cultural content of a time into an image. But into one particular image, meaning, an image that produces, or, in other words, into a style. This is a typically Viennese idea, associated with authors like Riegl and Dvorak. But what interests me in this is that there is something analogous to the idea of a political decision. This kunstwollen could be understood as something that illustrates in an exemplary fashion that which is the real political decision. I had old teachers who taught me this, old Byzantinists who identified with Riegl and Bettini! These are old traditions of schooling that were very vibrant in Padua when I was young. So I am convinced that all of this is very important, from the perspective of a need to reconstruct the phenomenon of the decision, which is what interests me most today. How do we reach a decision? The decision to begin is never something personal, it is never private and secret, which is to say that it’s never something fascist. In this sense, it is never a man like Hitler who decides. Every decision is literally determined by the capacity to absorb a mass of decisions, a mass of impressions and reactions. It’s a response to the great contradiction with which we are always faced, the question of how we can make the multitude into a singularity. We all agree on this point. And today we work in the singular, and there too we agree that there is a hiatus. But this does not mean that mediation is not possible or that the contradiction is by definition insurmountable. Because this mediation exists, it lies in the notion of the decision, in that which allows us to pose the pertinent question of how this ensemble of singularities constitutes the common, an ontological basis. But how do we move from that to the decision? Well, there is always this old idea of the party, the state, the “thing that unites,” it’s a real fetish and it’s a horrible idea! In lieu of this, what we need is that which art has already done with the kunstwollen!
Phillippe Halsman, Jump Book, 1959. Portrait of Walter Gropius.
HUO: So art is a model for what we should try to do elsewhere…
AN: Yes! It’s the model of a totality that builds, that arrives at having this capacity to concentrate all the forces that are already there on one point… You see that it’s not this stupid idea of wanting to use aesthetics. It’s like the mouse that the cat chases—we are the cat and we run after the decision. And this connects to the question you posed earlier about the relationship between art and modes of production. This also involves a rapport between these two things. Now that we are within these singularities that rationalism produced, we have to find a way out—the construction of these places like Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, and so forth, is no longer possible.
HUO: Yes, this old model of the “master plan” where the space for self-organization does not exist. But this question of the revolution becomes interesting. It’s a question that art students ask themselves a lot, and it bothers young artists too: one asks oneself whether there is still a space for resistance.
AN: Today the elements around which we can create points of reference—even points of resistance to the market—are the ones built on the land of the common. Because the common basically signifies that which costs nothing, that which is necessary, that which is participatory, that which is productive, and that which is free! And I believe that there are new use values already present in our common, and that these values can be easily spotted. Just think of the metropolis, where ninety percent of what we do are common things that cost us nothing—or at least could cost nothing if we made the effort to make them so…
HUO: Starting with the air…
AN: Air, of course, but water too. Generally, there are museums, libraries, cinemas, these are all things that cost money, but in ninety percent of the cases they do not generate direct profit, they are “free of charge.” This is becoming an increasingly fundamental element in what we call the “salary” or the “revenue” of citizenship. I don’t know whether the Left will win in Italy, but I know that half of the Italian regions have already established welfare programs with the intention of lowering the “universal revenues of citizenship.” It’s a process that has begun and needs to grow in scale. Our battleground has increasingly become concerned with the biopolitical reproduction of populations. All these “free” things are on offer in the metropolis because, fundamentally, it is the place where the multitude recognizes itself and starts to struggle. It starts to gain consciousness.
HUO: Which brings me to the notion of utopia. In Art et Multitude, I found a very interesting passage in a letter dated December 24, 1988, addressed to a certain “Silvano,” in which you discuss two equally illusory possibilities that constitute, according to you, the two dead ends in which an artist could find him- or herself. The first is that of utopia, and the second that of terrorism. You say that neither one of these two possibilities is sufficient, and that the only possibility for one who has traversed the “desert of abstraction” is that of “constituent power.” I would love to hear you speak more about this. You wrote this almost twenty years ago, and I wonder whether your point of view on the notion of utopia has stayed the same. Or has it has changed?
AN: You know, my book on constituent power became a “classic” in South America, whereas books likeEmpire receive far less attention, and are even opposed by the Left, which in South America is mainly composed of patriots who favor the idea of the nation state. What reaches them the most—and I’m speaking of people like Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales—is the constituent dimension of power, which I try to deal with in that book.2
HUO: And these are, in any case, the people you are in dialogue with, no?
AN: Yes. These are very important people in many respects. They are foreign to our own experience, to our own culture, and that makes it all the more important and more interesting to speak to them. This idea of spotting constitutive processes that span multitudes—which are not “masses” or “crowds,” but a complex articulation of a poor social fabric—is something that touches them enormously. Now that I’ve said this, I’ll go back to the question of utopia. Utopia is first and foremost an extremely realist thing. There is utopia when there is construction, or a revelation of the common. To follow up on what we’ve already discussed, an example would be to give the favelas’ inhabitants property rights over the land they already inhabit.
HUO: And these are very concrete actions.
AN: I became quite close with Gilberto Gil In Brazil after we met in the context of very concrete government projects trying to create open access to computers and the internet. It’s the same process, though it may not be immediately apparent. These communication networks are also a sort of favela.
HUO: A virtual favela!
AN: Yes, virtual! And an extremely important one. The other utopian domain is that which concerns how we can transform the redistribution of wealth into something active, a form of production. For example, both in Brazil and here, when you assume power, you immediately find yourself with wealth that you can redistribute. In Brazil or Venezuela, it’s the revenues from oil, but doing that does not create a new society—it’s simply handing out money! The problem with doing that is that it neglects other forms of cooperation that these funds could go towards. What are these forms? For rural communities, for example, such funds could allow for the establishment of literacy initiatives or stable and systematic medical assistance—things that already exist, but most often in backwards or marginalized ways. In Venezuela, for example, there are thirty thousand Cuban doctors who have been educated in Cuba’s medical schools, and they are some of the best doctors in the world. All the NGOs in the world go to Cuba to prepare themselves for anything involving tropical illnesses and other illnesses associated with these climates. All this is very important, of course, but what we still need here are places—if we implemented universities, hospitals, and cultural centers in these areas, if the value of people’s lives was placed directly into economic circulation, it would totally alter the equation. But this has been an irresolvable problem: how can the enormous investments that have taken the form of direct aid be translated into dynamics that are productive and transformative? I think it can be useful to compare the situation in Venezuela to the one in Iran.
HUO: In Iran?
AN: Yes. In Iran they continue to practice this form of redistribution that seems close to charity, while the same people remain in power. Because the priests stay priests, no matter what the religion! And as they are actually the patrons, there is no way for this to change. In Venezuela, it is not priests who are in power, though there is obviously an oligarchy that may perhaps get what it wants, namely for the United States to intervene and restore the previous order. But today, the enormous difference between Iran and Venezuela is that in Iran the mullahs have “the weapons and the money,” as Machiavelli said, whereas in Venezuela the people hold the weapons. This is not to say that the situation in Venezuela could not give rise to a new form of fascism or a particularly virulent populism, just that for the moment this is not the case and the institution remains open. The other thing is that in Iran, though the arms are held by those in power in order to uphold the revolution, the money is distributed without utopia. On the other hand, in Venezuela this is the decisive element—the money is full of utopia.
HUO: And if the money is “full of utopia,” and is, as we said, part of a concrete utopia, could we talk about a utopia that produces reality?
AN: Oh, yes! And also in relation to the production of subjectivity.

Nakagin Capsule Tower, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, 1972.
HUO: I would like to consider the question of groups and movements in which these utopias can be proposed. This year, we did an interesting project with Rem Koolhaas in which we tried to create a “portrait of a movement.” In the 1960s, there was a very important architectural movement in Japan called Metabolism, unique for having tried to establish a link between urbanism and biology—they wanted to create “metabolic cities” on the water…
AN: Metabolist organisms?
HUO: Yes, exactly. And so Rem Koolhaas and I found and interviewed each of the members of this movement and assembled accounts by critics, architects, industrial designers, and others, which together make up a sort of portrait of this movement, which we will publish as a book. The interesting thing is that even if they say that they were not exactly a coherent movement—there were never any concrete organized activities like those of Surrealism or Dada, for example, with manifestos, conditions for membership, or anything of the sort—the fact remains that there was a kind of pragmatic convergence of points of view that met spontaneously in a given moment. And meanwhile, we realize that in art or architecture today, movements have become very rare.
AN: But as you know, I’m neither an art historian nor an architectural historian! I don’t know what I could tell you about this…
HUO: Yes, but I think there is a certain link to your work. We talk often about Operaismo, and I would be curious to know how you see the movement that your work brings about, whether you imagine something organized and structured enough to express itself in a certain moment through a manifesto. Or is it something a bit more like Metabolism, based on a convergence of views that is more spontaneous and less concrete? And, just briefly, how do you see Operaismo today? I know that in his preface to Grammar of the Multitude, Sylvère Lotringer says that none of it would have been possible without Russia’s invasion of Hungary in 1956, and he mentions you and Mario Tronti as the originators of the movement, but I would love to have your personal viewpoint.
AN: Actually, we have to be careful about what we say with regard to “Operaismo,” because it was first and foremost a sort of political activism—but an activism conducted by intellectuals. It was intellectuals who, at the moment they became activists, began to produce.
HUO: Yes, they did both things at once.
AN: Yes, and it is exactly what we were in Italy, the generation of—how can I say this? Take the current editor of Corriere della Sera. Like many other individuals who work in the media, he comes from this generation of the rupture at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the ‘60s. And Hungary was important for this generation, because it marked the moment of crisis for the Communist Party in Italy.
HUO: Lotringer later talks about 1961 as a very important year as well, but what happened between 1956 and 1961?
AN: There was Renato Panzieri, who was the secretary general of the Italian Socialist Party a little bit before that. When he left his post there he became editor in chief of Quaderni Rossi. He went to Turin, where we could say that he was essential to organizing the intervention groups at Fiat.
HUO: And that was in the late 1950s?
AN: Yes. Tronti was then the secretary of the Communist Party in Rome, and I was the secretary of the Socialist Federation in Padua. We found ourselves working with Panzieri at Quaderni Rossi, a journal aiming to revive political discourse with the question of the factories and the workers, shifting the struggle from the network between parties and syndicates to those who worked on the assembly line, also with an attempt to reveal the contradictions embedded in forms of struggle. At the time there was no sociology in Italy, and no sociology of the worker’s world in general. Sociology was one of the things that the Fascist Party had categorically rejected, and as a result there was no teaching of it, no Italian school of sociology. And we wanted to introduce both sociology and struggle at the same time; we needed the sociology in order to struggle. And the most amazing thing is that we succeeded! It was very impressive. I always return to the experience of the artist, because that’s what it was—to succeed in understanding the language of the workers, to make a leaflet and find that is has a direct effect on them, there was something miraculous about it—you cannot imagine! It wasn’t the creation of merchandise with a price, but the creation of a war machine that destroyed every notion of price! It was really impressive. I also remember that in 1963, my wife at the time and I spent the summer in a village where there were petrochemical factories employing thirty thousand workers, and there too we made leaflets and distributed them, and the workers announced: “tomorrow we will not work.” That was the very first time that the factory went on strike, they had never done it before.
HUO: That was the magic of beginnings, in a way.
AN: And I was convinced that it was impossible—I didn’t even wake up to go to the factory that morning! But my wife did, and she came back fifteen minutes later—we lived there with the workers about fifty meters away from the factory—to tell me that they were all outside. Impossible! I went to see it, and saw that everyone was afraid. It was their first time, and no one knew how the factory would react once it was left to its own devices. There were about thirty chimneys, and at one point, a real “atomic bomb” erupted…
HUO: An explosion!
AN: Yes, a dreadful explosion from the accumulation of all this gas that they did not evacuate. I remember it as if it were yesterday… it was dawn, six in the morning—that’s utopia!
×
Translated from the French by Orit Gat.
© 2010 e-flux and the author

ORSON SCOTT CARD AND THE GREAT WHITE MALE SAVIOR

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ORSON SCOTT CARD WANTS YOU TO KNOW


Two weeks ago, I did a post on Orson Scott Card and genocide.  I promised a second post in the next Cultural Monday.  Well, it is the next one, and here is the post.  

If I am nothing else, I am a man of my word.

Meanwhile, just to rehash, Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender's game, is now noted for being a homophobic, genocidal, sexist, right wing reactionary with an insane (or merely racist) hatred of Barack Obama.  

Now a lot of people don't much like the President, but few have gone so far as to write an essay which predicts  a future where President Obama has turned into a Hitler-like dictator who uses street gangs to pacify the citizenry before placing his wife Michelle on the throne of the United States.  Card went on to write: "Obama is, by character and preference, a dictator," Card wrote before comparing the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler.



Here's more from Card who serves up the theory Obama will claim we need a new national police force (don't we already have several) to fight terrorism and crime,

Where will he get his "national police"? The NaPo will be recruited from "young out-of-work urban men" and it will be hailed as a cure for the economic malaise of the inner cities.


In other words, Obama will put a thin veneer of training and military structure on urban gangs, and send them out to channel their violence against Obama's enemies.


Instead of doing drive-by shootings in their own neighborhoods, these young thugs will do beatings and murders of people "trying to escape" -- people who all seem to be leaders and members of groups that oppose Obama.

Aside from strong-arming the country through his "urban gang" army, Card claims, Obama will also reassert his power through puppet dictators. Possible proxy leaders? Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama."

As author Maureen Johnson puts it, "I don't know where Orson Scott Card goes from here, except maybe to declare war on the moon."
Card says his words were taken out of context.  What context do they fit in exactly, in what sane world that is.

Okay, I am not an Obamaite, but please...

His hatred of gays has only recently become a big deal with absurd comments he made about gay marriage, but his views go much further and are not new. Card has argued that homosexuality itself should be a crime.

 He wrote back in 1990,

"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books," and that while not every gay person should be incarcerated, the law must "be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."

 His goal, he wrote, was to use the law to discourage people from being gay and drive openly gay people underground and out of view.

"The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly..."

Susana Polo writes:



Card’s status as a board member of the National Organization for Marriage, one of the largest and most well funded anti-gay activist groups in America, which works to prevent not only marriage equality but also civil union legislation and to legally prevent LGBTQ couples from adopting, is for many, including this writer, a different beast than mere personally held conservative views that might enter the subtext of a story or be voiced, when asked, by a writer or artist. Card has publicly expressed his views on gay marriage as worth overthrowing the government for, linked homosexuality with pedophilia, argued that marriage equality will lead to a world where parents who encourage their kids to date members of the opposite sex will be accused of hate speech, and has stated that he would prefer laws that criminalize consensual homosexual sex to stand and be enforced as a “message.” His presence on the board of NOM gives him more power to actually effect his opinions on others than your average celebrity with socially conservative political leanings.

I could go on and on, but Card really isn't worth the trouble. 



The following is from Salon.



Orson Scott Card’s sexist, victim-blaming “Ender’s Game” sequel

"Speaker for the Dead" sets Ender up as a white male savior, and implies a female character deserves abuse




Orson Scott Card's sexist, victim-blaming (Credit: Wikimedia)


Last month I argued that Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” provides a subtle, thoughtful, and passionate defense of genocide. Several commenters countered that the later novels in the series were adamantly anti-genocide, and undermined my reading of the original.
To some degree, this is true. “Speaker for the Dead,” the sequel to “Ender’s Game,” is a very different book from its predecessor, not least in its treatment of aliens and violence. “Ender’s Game” involves an intergalactic war to the death between humans and the super-advanced alien buggers. “Speaker for the Dead,” on the other hand, is set 3000 years later, mostly on the single planet of Lusitania, where anthropologists are studying a race of relatively low-technology aliens known as “piggies.” In “Ender’s Game,” violence almost always escalates; whenever Ender is attacked, either by humans or buggers, he responds with overwhelming, deadly force. In “Speaker for the Dead,” the piggies torture and murder two of the anthropologists, but in neither incident (separated by decades) do the humans return violence for violence. Instead they wait and try to understand — and the result is not genocide, but peace, alliance, and equality.
“Speaker for the Dead,” then, seems to repudiate the morality of “Ender’s Game.” And yet, the book is oddly chary about explicitly condemning the genocide of the first volume. It’s true that Ender’s genocidal actions are reviled throughout the galaxy. Yet Ender, still alive after 3 millennia due to relativistic space travel, suggests that, in context, the genocide was understandable and even justified:

Everybody condemns the Xenocide because it destroyed an alien species that turned out to be harmless in its intentions. But as long as it seemed that the buggers were determined to destroy humankind, the leaders of humanity had no choice but to fight back with all their strength.

“Speaker for the Dead” suggests that there were in fact other options, like patience and wisdom. After the bugger invasion, for instance, the humans could have waited to see if they were attacked again rather than preemptively sending fleets off to destroy the bugger homeworld. But the text somehow manages to acknowledge other option and and yet still see the earlier genocide as inevitable, and therefore, by default, justified.  How can it do that? And, more importantly perhaps, why does it do that?The answer to both questions is Ender. Ender is not only the destroyer of the buggers; he’s also their salvation. At the end of “Ender’s Game,” he discovers the lone surviving bugger hive queen pupa, and determines to find her a new planet where  the buggers can be reborn. He also writes a history of her and her people titled “The Hive Queen,” which he signs “The Speaker for the Dead.” The book becomes the center of a widespread religion; it’s the reason that humans see the death of the buggers as a tragedy. In the 3000 years between “Ender’s Game” and “Speaker for the Dead,” Ender goes from planet to planet seeking a bugger homeworld and as a Speaker for the Dead delivering eulogies for those who request it, in the same way he eulogized the buggers.
So to sum up, Ender is, (a) the greatest military leader in human history, (b) the greatest religious leader and prophet of his time, and, (c) the hope for the rebirth of the buggers. But!  That’s not all! He also has been chosen as sole human interlocutor by a spontaneously generated super-sentient AI named Jane, who communicates with him through an interface in his ear. Thus, Ender carries about with him a literal deus ex machina.
Ender is, then, a massive, honking, preposterously exaggerated, Mary Sue. Indeed, the wish fulfillment on Card’s part couldn’t be much more obvious. For Ender is not just the destroyer and the savior; he is the destroyer and savior as writer. Ender’s greatest ability is his amazing capacity for empathy, for understanding others. In “Ender’s Game” he used this power (and it does function almost like a superpower) to destroy the buggers. In “Speaker for the Dead” he uses it to tell stories — the stories of the bugger queen, the dead people for whom he speaks as an itinerant eulogist, and eventually the piggies. He is the sensitive conduit through which the alien is met, interpreted and comprehended. And to emphasize this point, through most of the book he’s the sole human contact for not one, but two alien intelligences — the Hive Queen and Jane. It’s hardly a surprise that it’s Ender who breaks through and really understands the piggies after generations of  local anthropologists fail to do so.
Ender succeeds with the piggies because he treats them with respect:
“It’s all part of their system of totems. We’ve always tried to play along with it, and act as if we believed it.”
“How condescending of you,” said Ender.
“It’s standard anthropological practice,” said Miro.
“You’re so busy pretending to believe them, there isn’t a chance in the world you could learn anything from them.”
[…]“We’ve devoted our lives to learning about them!” Miro said.
Ender stopped. “Not from them….You’re cultural supremacists to the core. You’ll perform your Questionable Activities to help out the poor little piggies, but there isn’t a chance in the world you’ll notice when they have something to teach you.”
Ender wants to learn from the piggies, rather than wanting to learn about them — an elegant and pointed critique of anthropology and of social sciences in general.
But while Card’s insights here are well taken, they can’t quite balance out the fact that they are presented as Ender’s insights. Or, to put it another way, Ender eloquently explains why the piggies need to be seen as equals, but his own position as explainer, martyr, and general avatar of awesomeness means that, narratively, they can’t be equal. Ender is the hero/author/interpreter — Ender is the savior with whom we identify, and the different others are the supplicants whom, with him, we save. Thus at the end of the novel, it is Ender who writes the story of a piggie named Human, adding it to his work on the Hive Queen and to his book about his brother, Peter, who became the ruler of earth. All stories are told through Ender; he speaks for everyone. Is that universal, egalitarian empathy? Or is it a way to ensure that there is only one voice?
That question is, perhaps, most pointed when it is applied not to the piggies or the Hive Queen, but rather to the woman our hero eventually marries. Ender is initially called to Lusitania by a young girl named Novinha, a xenobiologist who worked closely with Pipo, the first anthropologist the piggies killed. Ender essentially falls in love with Novinha’s picture at first sight. But by the time he arrives on Lusitania by relativistic space flight, decades have gone by for that young girl; Novinha is now a middle-aged woman, with children of her own. She doesn’t want Ender to speak Pipo’s death anymore. But two of her children want him to speak the recent death of their father, Marcão, an angry, bitter man, who beat Novinha for years.
So Ender speaks the story of Marcão’s life, which is also the story of Novinha’s life. Novinha believed that she had made a discovery which led to Pipo’s death. She wanted to keep that discovery from Pipo’s son, Libo, whom she loved. But if she married him, he would, by the law of the colony, have access to her files. So she married Marcão instead. Marcão, she alone knew, had a genetic disease which rendered him sterile (and eventually killed him). So she had six children by Libo, with nobody suspecting except Marcão, who had agreed to the arrangement. Thus, Marcão’s violence was a direct response to Novinha’s adultery.
After Ender reveals these truths in his speaking, the family is able to put all the lies behind them, and begin to heal. At the conclusion of the book, Novinha marries Ender.
What we’re supposed to get from this is that everyone, even the most despised, most violent person, is understandable. Even a wife beater deserves empathy. In order to get there, Card presents a narrative which reproduces and validates the most invidious myths and excuses for domestic violence. Specifically, the violence is presented as an understandable reaction to Novinha’s failings; not just her adultery, but her lack of compassion. Marcão “hoped that she might someday feel some affection. That she might feel some — loyalty.” But she doesn’t, so he hits her, out of love. And even she agrees she deserves it. “It was her penance. It was never penance enough. No matter how much Marcão might hate her, she hated herself much more.”
That’s not Novinha’s internal monologue there. Rather it’s Ender, speaking her inmost thoughts aloud to the community. But we’re supposed to believe those are her inmost thoughts — Ender understands her to her core. And what he understands is that she fits perfectly into a common male fantasy of domestic violence which highlights the woman as the instigator and the man as sufferer. His empathy doesn’t so much give him insight into her (female) perspective as it allows him to ventriloquize her in the interest of validating male violence. Which is, not coincidentally, exactly what happens in “Ender’s Game,” where Ender’s connection to the Hive Queen reveals that she accepts and forgives the genocide against her people.
In “Ender’s Game,” genocide becomes a sacrament because Ender is a saint of empathy, and genocide is what he does. In “Speaker for the Dead,” on the contrary, Ender works for understanding with the aliens. In some sense, then, the second book repudiates the first, rejecting genocide for peace. But in genocide or peace, Ender remains the standard, the white male savior whose perspective is truth. Whether with guns or words, the alien is erased so that Ender may be glorified.

INDIA, CAPITAL, COAL, DEATH, DESTRUCTION, AND ENVIRONMENTAL DOOM

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India has a problem.  Almost four hundred million of its populations are without access to electricity and the existing supply falls ten percent short during peak hours.

India sits on one of the world's largest deposits of coal, yet it can't get it out of the ground quickly enough or transport it fast enough to meet its own demand.

India's answer to this is simple - expand coal production by whatever means are necessary.

Now, I am not here to announce that I have the answer to India's energy problems, but I know one thing and that is simple - coal it is not.  This direction leads to the deaths of untold numbers of Indian citizens directly, not to mention the rest of the planet.

This sort of problem the multitude take seriously.

Enter the contradiction.  Compass points out, 


The problem is expanding mining operations is easier said than done. You see if you layered maps of mineral resources, tribal populations, and endangered wildlife on top of each other you’d see a scary picture. That's because what's left of India's cheapest coal reserves lies in the exact same places as the country's remaining forests which also happen to be home to the country's remaining tiger populations and large numbers of tribal populations. It's this combustible mix that has fueled 'naxal' insurgencies in many parts of the country's coal belt. 

What that means is that India's drive to expand coal supplies (as well as build new power plants) runs face first into fierce local resistance. These local communities have held back the goliath of coal expansion with little more than a slingshot and a rock.  That heroism, aided by the beauracratic inefficiency of Coal India and a decrepit transportation infrastructure, has caused stagnating production, and heightened project delay.

The first study of the health impact of India's dash for coal, conducted by the World Bank says India's coal plants already cost hospitals up to 4.6 billion dollars per year.  Greenpeace says upwards of 120,000 premature deaths are occurring and maybe 20 million new cases of asthma each year.  Coal based plants have also led to an alarming increase in heart attacks.  Vinuta Gopal of Greenpeace told the Guardian last year: 

"The ongoing coal expansion is irrational and dangerous. Coal mining is destroying India's forests, tribal communities and endangered species, and now we know the pollution it emits when burned is killing thousands. Coal has failed to deliver energy security. We need a moratorium on new coal plants and ambitious policy incentives to unlock the huge potential India has in efficiency measures, wind and solar."

Fortunately not everone agrees that coal is the answer to India's problems.

  Dr EAS Sarma (Former Union Power Secretary) and  Shankar Sharma (Power Policy Analyst) wrote last year, 


An oft repeated statement in recent years is that the continued reliance on coal power is essential to lift the poor people in India from the clutches of poverty. The government and many people in the position of influence have been repeating this statement so often that it seems to be attaining the status of “Goebbels’s Truth”...

When the harsh realities of coal power in the true context of global warming and the overall welfare of our communities are objectively reviewed, the hypocrisy behind such statements/reports will become obvious.... 

Whereas the successive governments continue to say that coal capacity addition is necessary to provide electricity to all, and through it to eliminate poverty in our country the reality as seen since independence is vastly different. Whereas the total installed power capacity in the country has increased from about 1,000 MW in 1947 to about 212,000 MW in 2013, and the national per capita electricity has increased from less than 100 kWh in 1947to about 800 kWh in 2013, about 300 Million people in the country have no access to electricity. Despite such massive growth in coal dominated electricity grid about 75 Million families have no electricity at all in 2013 as against the Planning Commission’s target of 30 kWh of electricity per family per month as life line energy by 2012.

The reasons given by the official agencies for not being able supply electricity supply to all is that it is not economical to extend the grid power to all villages. Since coal power is economical only in large size grid connected mode, the hollowness of the claim that coal power is needed to electrify all houses becomes clear. A large number of people are living without electricity even in the close vicinity of coal power plants.

A conveniently hidden fact about coal power is the inherent gross inefficiency associated with the coal power. The losses involved in coal burning, steam making, generating, transmitting and distributing electricity is so high that only about 20% of the coal energy reaches the end consumer in the form of electricity even with the best technologies....

India is endowed with a vast potential in renewable energy sources.... 

We, in India, need to take a much more holistic view of the energy needs of the people vis-à-vis all-round welfare of communities. We should build new clean energy sources regardless of what the West does because it’s the cheapest, cleanest, and best solution for our people. It’s time our ‘leaders’ focused on India’s clean energy future and dropped support for a corrupt dirty coal sector.




The same goes for the rest of the world.

I am not here to point fingers.  The developed countries have already contributed enormously to global climate change and they aren't stopping.

For example just last week we could read at Triple Pundit:

The Australian government, under Prime Minister Tony Abbott, seems committed to exacerbating its nation’s climate woes. Even as his Environmental Minister approved a vast coal mine that will produce 40 million tons of CO2-emitting coal per year, Abbott is calling Australia’s strong renewable energy sector into question.


He’s cutting funding for renewables, threatening to remove the 20 percent renewable energy standard and even falling back on the old and largely debunked criticism that wind power has negative impacts on human health.  Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council looked into the issue in 2010 and again in 2012. And now Abbott is calling for another review. Because, why not?


And just for good measure, he’s also dismantling Australia’s well-regarded plans for curbing carbon emissions and jettisoning the nation’s goals for carbon reductions.

Australia isn't alone with this crap either.    At the United Nations' Warsaw meeting, Japan announced that it would jettison its carbon reduction goals, blaming the post-Fukushima loss of nuclear power.  Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, continued his purge of Canadian government science and his pursuit of Alberta's oilsands, casting an image of Canada as OPEC's future perennial hockey champions.  In the United States Texas Republican Lamar Smith took the reins of the House Science Committee, where 17 of its 22 Republican members do not believe in man-made climate change.

And then there is the Polish government which managed to host a pro-coal conference and a climate change summit at the same time.

I haven't even mentioned China...or the USA.  Why bother.  One is adding more  now to the problem then anyone, and the other, well, it has done way more than its share to doom the planet already.

 Let me just leave you with this from the Union of Concerned Scientists, A typical-sized 500 megawatt coal-fired electricity plant in the United States puts out each year:


1. 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse gas, and is the leading cause of global warming. There are no regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.
2. 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide (SOx) is the main cause of acid rain, which damages forests, lakes and buildings.
3. 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide. Nitrogen oxide (NOx) is a major cause of smog, and also a cause of acid rain.
4. 500 tons of small particles. Small particulates are a health hazard, causing lung damage. Particulates smaller than 10 microns are not regulated, but may be soon.
5. 220 tons of hydrocarbons. Fossil fuels are made of hydrocarbons; when they don't burn completely, they are released into the air. They are a cause of smog.
6. 720 tons of carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a poisonous gas and contributor to global warming.
7. 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber. A scrubber uses powdered limestone and water to remove pollution from the plant's exhaust. Instead of going into the air, the pollution goes into a landfill or into products like concrete and drywall. This ash and sludge consists of coal ash, limestone, and many pollutants, such as toxic metals like lead and mercury.
8. 225 pounds of arsenic, 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, and many other toxic heavy metals. Mercury emissions from coal plants are suspected of contaminating lakes and rivers in northern and northeast states and Canada. In Wisconsin alone, more than 200 lakes and rivers are contaminated with mercury. Health officials warn against eating fish caught in these waters, since mercury can cause birth defects, brain damage and other ailments.
9. Trace elements of uranium. All but 16 of the 92 naturally occurring elements have been detected in coal, mostly as trace elements below 0.1 percent (1,000 parts per million, or ppm). A study by DOE's Oak Ridge National Lab found that radioactive emissions from coal combustion are greater than those from nuclear power production.
10. A 500 megawatt coal-fired electrical plant burns 1,430,000 tons of coal, uses 2.2 billion gallons of water and 146,000 tons of limestone a year.  

It is way past time to stop relying on mainstream environmental groups, governments, the UN, the World Bank and other international organizations, NGOs, and happy greens.  It is up to the multitudes in the North and the South, the East and the West to act with strength and to act NOW...or we can just chuck it in.  

The world is dying so that a few can profit.  Until we rid the Earth of the cancer of Capital, we will never, ever get a handle on all this.  You can talk renewables, wind, solar, and scrubbers until you are blue in the face.  It is Capital that is the ultimate problem. There is no easy fix which leaves a capitalist system in place which will save the people of India or the world.  Global capital is a mass murderer and should be treated as such.

But today's post returns us to India and now.  It comes from  The Ecologist.



India's coal inferno


Sarah Stirk



India's planned power expansion depends overwhelmingly on coal, with over a hundred huge new generation units planned by 2030. Sarah Stirk reports on the nightmare the dash for coal is bringing to once peaceful rural communities.


The smell, a mix of human and animal excrement, combined with acrid industrial pollution makes the air gritty, stinging eyes and making breathing a struggle.

Champa's eyes are surrounded by dark circles and her face is thin and drawn. It began with a fever, pain in her limbs, and she was then diagnosed with tuberculosis.
"I was diagnosed with TB two years ago now. I have been on medication but I am not getting any better. I have difficulty breathing and even talking is hard. It has been like this for five or six years - ever since the plant started, our problems have started too."
Champa is not alone. She is one of millions of people in India whose health and lives are being blighted by the country's surge in coal-based power generation.
170 gigawatts of new coal generation planned by 2022
India ranks third in the world in the production of carbon dioxide and is burning more coal than ever before, with 66% of power generated by coal-fired thermal power plants.
Future plans are for massive expansion, with India's 12th five-year plan ending 2017 adding 76GW of coal-fired power capacity. The 13th five-year plan, ending in 2022, aims to add another 93GW.
This is a colossal programme - equivalent to more than three times the UK's entire peak power demand. It represents a response to an increasing population, a growing middle class hungry for modernity - and an energy policy that holds coal power as integral to the development of the country's economy.
100,000 premature deaths a year
But as India pursues its aggressive path of coal-powered industrialisation, its leaders are showing themselves willing to sacrifice millions of people and huge swathes of the country to a dark and uncertain future.
According to the The Lancet's Global Burden of Diseases Study outdoor air pollution - arising from power stations, other industry, transport, and domestic fuel burning for heat and cooking - is already among the top ten causes of death in India.
And while air quality and other environmental regulations do exist in India, they are rarely enforced. Sarath Guttikunda, chemical engineer and director at Urban Emissions New Delhi, believes them to be far weaker than in other countries:
"In India we do have ambient air quality standards ... But what we have found is that these regulations lag behind the numbers that we have seen in Europe, United States and even in China, and there is a lot of room for improvement."
In the first ever report focussing on the health impacts of the coal industry in India, scientists estimate that in 2011-2012, air pollution from coal-fired power plants alone was responsible for 80,000-115,000 premature deaths.
Diseases caused by the pollution include 20.9 million asthma attacks, bronchitis and other severe respiratory conditions, and cardiovascular disease. These health impacts are estimated to cost India $3.3 billion to $4.6 billion per year in medical expenses and lost work days.
India's 'energy capital' - Singrauli
Singrauli, known as the "energy capital" of the country, is the industrial hub of north-central India. Straddling Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, it produces 10% of the country's coal-fired power.
Singrauli was once covered in forest and rich agricultural land, but the region's coal lies underneath these forests, and they are being cleared at an alarming rate. Endangered species are pushed further towards extinction - and tribal communities are swept aside to make way for the energy juggernaut.
Priya Pillai, Senior Campaigner for Greenpeace India has worked in the area for over three years. "There are nine thermal power plants and eleven operational mines, and this is concentrated in one district. That's the Singrauli region, and it's because of this that you'll find the large number of cases of asthma, of tuberculosis, of skin diseases, of cancer."
Toxic dustbowls
The landscape is one of industrial devastation and critical levels of pollution, recently rated the third most polluted industrial cluster in the country by the comprehensive environmental pollution index. Air, water and soil have all been affected.
The open cast mines that scar the landscape resemble vast craters, streaked black with coal and trimmed green at the edges with what is left of the rapidly dwindling forest. Huge dump trucks and cranes appear miniature in the distance, barely visible through the poisonous haze.
Milky white stagnant ash ponds hold the by-product of the industry, fly ash. Black spiky stalks of dead foliage poke out of the sludge, testament to its toxicity.
Experts warn of acute health problems related to coal and the ash that it produces, conaining toxic heavy metals including mercury, arsenic, lead, nickel, barium and even radioactive substances such as uranium or thorium. 
Man-made mountains of mining wastes, excavated and dumped, gradually bury entire villages. Coal-filled train bunkers and conveyor belts, some as long as 25km, snake from the mines to thermal power plants.
The towering stacks dominate the skyline, looming over settlements and pumping out smoke which can spread its pollution as far as 400 km away, choking communities below. The air is permanently clouded, limiting visibility. The smell and taste of coal dominate the senses.
Towering infernos
Chilika Dand, in the Sonebhadra district of Singrauli, Uttar Pradesh, is one of the most critically affected communities. The village of around 12,000 people is surrounded by multiple power plant stacks emitting putrid smoke, and overlooked by a fully operational open-cast mine just 50 meters away.
There is a constant industrial hum of engines revving and the scrape of metal on stone. Twice daily explosive blasts, and the subsequent patter and thud of debris, are more reminiscent of the sounds of war than of development. Few of the concrete rehabilitation blocks escape cracked walls due to tremors from the blasts.
A railway line and road are both dedicated to carrying coal. Villagers claim that at night, filters are removed from the stacks, and ash falls and settles on rooftops like toxic snow. Many of them have been moved, often forcibly, numerous times to make way for the industry that has destroyed their lives.
Manonit G Ravi, an activist and resident of Chilika Dand shouts over the noise of engines to make himself heard: "The entire village vibrates with the blasts. Sometimes they are so big and loud, people run out of their houses thinking there might be an earthquake."
Sanitation is desperate, as the allocated plots leave little room for toilets. In summer, asphyxiating dust fills the air, and in winter and rainy seasons, there is a constant septic sludge underfoot. The smell, a mix of human and animal excrement, combined with acrid industrial pollution makes the air gritty, stinging eyes and making breathing a struggle.
Disease is rife
Residents of Chilika Dand say that illness and disease is rife in the community, with cancer, kidney failure, diabetes, vitiligo (the blanching of skin through pigment loss), hair loss and psychosis widespread.
These disease are all linked to contaminated water, coal ash, particles in the air, and the abnormally high levels of mercury present in the environment. Coal fired power stations are one of the main ways that mercury is released into the environment.
The World Health Organization states that even minimal exposure to mercury may cause health problems, including neurological damage to unborn fetuses and children. The heavy metal is considered "one of the top ten chemicals or groups of chemicals of major public health concern." 
Siraj Un Nissa, a resident of Chilika Dand and mother of eight has Vitiligo. Her hands, arms and mouth are blanched, and her whole body is patchy where pigment has been lost.
"I have been sick for the past eight years ... The dust is making it hard for us to live here. No electricity. We get it for one hour and it's gone. We don't have a proper house to live in, just a makeshift shelter. We don't have anything. No one cares about the poor."
Buried under mine waste
Jharia, in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, has almost disappeared. The remote village is being buried under waste from a nearby mine opened by Reliance in 2006.
A thin sliver of green and around 30% of the population is all that remains of this forest-dwelling community of Harijan people, squashed against a sheer, slowly encroaching, man-made cliff of debris.
Children sit quietly on top of huge boulders, the result of an avalanche, and push bikes loaded up with coal, which they have collected and bagged up for sale, one of the few ways they manage to survive.
Visibility is very limited through the dust-filled air, and the sound of a man chopping wood is intermittently drowned out as dump trucks rumble past, kicking up dust and adding to the mountainous pile of rock, where the village used to be.
It never used to be like this
Bandhu Saket, resident of Jharia explains how their health has been affected by the mine:"My youngest grandson gets so unwell, his teeth start chattering and his eyes enlarge, it feels like he will not get better ...
"It never used to be like this. Ever since the companies have come, since the vehicles have been driving back and forth, since the blasting has started, illness and disease have been spreading.
"They dump things in all directions and when it is summertime, with all the dust, one cannot see anything so how can you expect anything else but to get sick!"
Bandhu explains that they used to have a well that provided drinking water to the village, but the company filled it in, and they are now forced to drink what they can. "Whatever we find in the drains or rainwater collected, that is what we drink."
Manbasia, also from Jharia, is a mother of three. Supporting herself against a huge rock from the mine, she struggles to control the emotion in her voice, and speaks shakily of illness and disease in what is left of her community.
"I can't see very well, my chest hurts, my feet don't allow me to sit down or stand up ... We have no one here to help or support us. If someone is dying, there is no one to look after them or save them. Who are we meant to turn to?"
Huge increases in mortality
Dr R. B. Singh has worked in the area for over 20 years, treating the local population in their homes, both in the small private practice that adjoins his home, and the Singrauli District Hospital next door.
A constant stream of patients waits outside his practice, all needing attention and treatment.
There has been a huge increase in death, sickness and disease "since the time the new industries have come here and the coal mine belt has progressed", he insists.
"The patients we see in our new Out Patients Department present themselves with skin diseases and lung diseases, bronchitis, asthma and silicosis", he explains. "And because of the contaminated drinking water, amebiasis and other abdominal ailments have increased."
"I have come across bone cancer, mouth cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer", he adds."All these are common here." The bone cancers mostly occur in children, mouth cancers in adults."
It's a hospital - but where's the medical equipment?
The District Hospital next door is in desperate need of facilities. A dilapidated shell with dark corridors, the maternity ward is splattered with blood and rainwater drips through cracks in the ceiling. A solitary brand new unit for premature babies looks oddly out of place.
There is no other medical equipment to be seen and a general sense of confusion and bewilderment prevails. Lights flicker on and off as the electricity supply fades in and out.
Wards are crowded but quiet, with beds full, people lying on the floor and an unmistakable shortage of staff. "We have a problem with a lack of doctors as most of them qualify and go abroad. They do not want to work in these small places", says Dr Singh.
Hearts and lungs
Sarath Guttikunda, Director at Urban Emissions, New Delhi is a chemical engineer and air pollution expert. "When you are focusing on outdoor air pollution two things are really important - one is your lungs, and other is your heart."
"Among the respiratory problems, the main one is asthma. People who are already suffering from asthma are obviously going to get affected even more, and children and older generation people - they are the ones that we see are getting affected the most."
Ranjeet Singh, a primary school teacher in the area, says that sickness is rife in his pupils, with coughing and sneezing a constant sound in the classroom. Absenteeism is common due to ill health, and parents are deeply worried about their children.
"When I go to teach, there are 216 children. Out of those, if only 100 or 150 of them turn up, it makes us wonder why the children haven't turned up.
"When we enquire, the child's guardian tells us that their child has been unwell or that because we had to go to the hospital, they didn't make it to school, or that for the past 15 days she's been sick and lying in bed ... These kind of problems come up a lot."
A People betrayed
 All over Singrauli, locals speak of sickness, their land and livelihoods being taken away, and promises of re-housing, education, employment and healthcare from the industry that haven't materialized.
Rangeet Gupta is a local activist and youth worker living and working in the area. He says that after "persistent reminding", the industry has not delivered the services that it promised.
The resultis that proper healthcare, among other things, is only available to people who can afford it, or those who work for the industry.
"In this area of ours, there isn't even a decent hospital ... for the displaced community. They have nothing at all, no schools, no doctors, no hospital, no roads, not even an arrangement for hygiene and sanitation. They have just been abandoned."
Champa, like so many others, has experienced this first-hand, buying her own medicine when she has the money to do so, and going without treatment when she can't afford it.
"We receive no help from the people at the plant at all. Since the health problems started because of the plant, we have not been given so much as a single tablet by them or the government."
The future looks even worse
As the health epidemic gets more critical, scientists, medical professionals and campaigners all predict that if India pushes forward with the planned expansion, and regulations remain unenforced, the consequences to human life will be even more devastating.
According to Sarath Guttikunda, pollution from the power plants operating in the area has caused close to 100,000 premature deaths. "And if we are going to triple the number of power plants and don't do anything about the regulations, we will at least triple this number."
Doctor Singh warns that the atmosphere in Singrauli will be polluted "to such a degree that it will not be viable to live here anymore." Champa, Manbasia and their families, along with hundreds of thousands of other people, face a future of poverty, sickness and death with no means of escape.
"Now, with the dust and smoke bellowing, there are people getting sick", says Manbasia."And if you don't have the money, like us, what do we do? Kill ourselves?"

AMERICA LOVES IT BLACK ATHLETES...TO SHUT UP AND LOOK PRETTY

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God damn, you'd think Richard Sherman was the coming of the anti-Christ.  At least, that how many white folks reacted when the extremely talented and bright Seattle defensive back spoke his piece after a spectacular play which brought to a close the conference championship game with San Francisco.  I'm not going into his comments here.  It's been almost a week and half since them, you've seen them.  You have probably even heard about a lot of the racist, white supremacist backtalk thrown his way since.

Nothing unusual really.  Whenever a black athlete has the gall to speak out, to speak his mind, to not play the game the way the white folks and the media want him to play, they get hell.  Then the media figured out that Sherman was an interesting story and the racist reaction wasn't really all that cool, and that calling him a thug was just another way of calling him the N word.  So they started to back off.  Instead they started honing in on his academic qualifications it seems to point out that while he looked and acted like a "thug," he really wasn't that "kind of a black person." They don't even get their own racism.  Of course not.  

At the Gawker this observation is made,


Serena Williams is a "ghetto thug" for arguing with an umpire—John McEnroe was presumably less ghetto and thuggish when he regularly berated refs throughout his career; LeBron James is a thug just because this sports fan says so, because "I just don't like LeBron James or the way the NBA forces himself upon us, the fans and the media."


(One would be remiss to not also note that murdered black teenager Trayvon Martin's body had barely been in the ground before people were slandering him as a thug who got what was coming to him.)


There are other ways people try and deride black athletes—and teachers and lawyers and presidents and students buying skittles—and their various behaviors, of course, including adjectives like "tacky" and appeals to class. Many said Richard Sherman is "classless," for instance, because he raised his voice and showed too much pride and too little sportsmanship.

America loves its black athletes. It loves to watch them jump high and run fast. It loves to watch them punch each other in rings and tackle each other on fields, occasionally so violently that they tear each other's ligaments and break each other's bones and concuss each other. America loves to do all of this so much that it's willing to devote innumerable hours and billions of dollars to the practice. But all that love can be abusive and fleeting, and woe be unto the black athletes who step out of line in America.

Yes, white America loves its black athletes, but only if they behave properly and no where to sit on the bus.

M. Shadee Malaklou writes at Racialicious:


White supremacist culture dictates who and who does not get to be human. In order for people of color to receive a Human Card, they must assimilate: they must not use slang. They must be quiet. They must not wear hoodies. They must not curse. They must be gracious at all times. They must enunciate. They must not talk about racism. They must not listen to rap music. They must not sag. They must not brag. They must not laugh in public. They must not take up more than one seat on the bus. They must not ever ask for more. In short, you must be perfect. Robotic. Even if you are a professional athlete who performs for millions of Americans, playing a game in which aggression, testosterone, and energy are rewarded (demanded)… you must be quiet, gracious, calm, unassuming. Unscary. To be black and also be regarded as human, you must never make a mistake in your entire life, ever—ever—or you are a thug. Ghetto. Other. Your Human Card is denied.

To be sure stepping out of line is a different thing for a black athlete then a white one. 

Want to know a thug football player.  How about Ben Roethlisberger?  Name ring a bell?  If not google him and sexual assault.  How about most of the players in the NHL, who spend as much time beating on each other as playing the game. Lance Armstrong is a thug. Dodger pitcher Brian Wilson, following a ballgame gets to accost and yell at Giants CEO Larry Baer, without anyone daring to label him a thug.  Brandi Chastain ripped off her shirt to celebrate a soccer victory and everyone loved it.  When the black men of the 2000 Olympics gold medal 4X100 removed their shirts in celebration it was termed a disgrace.  It gets old.

Anyway,below is a post from our old friend Dave Zirn at Edge of Sports.  You may want to go back and read his earlier article as well.



Richard Sherman’s Latest and his Refusal to Be a Brand




I was done writing about Super Bowl bound Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman. I was done writing about the polarizing, perspicacious, Pro Bowler who with one iconic post-game interview morphed into our latest national Rorschach test about racism and sports. I was done partly because I had already written about him and partly because others have said it better. (Find great articles about Sherman and race herehere and here.) I also didn’t want to write again about the man who made the journey from Compton to Stanford to NFL glory because we seem to be entering a place where his five-star post-game rant has crossed a line from rebellion to commodification. His marketing agent, Jamie Fritz, has been making the media rounds, telling the advertising trades that since Sherman said “CRABTREE” at volume ten, his phone has been ringing off the hook. “We haven’t seen a guy like this in a while,” Fritz gushed to Ad Age.“Richard’s a guy who’s going to speak his mind. And that makes people very curious. We have data that Richard is single-handedly growing the Seattle Seahawks fan base in Middle America—where [Seahawks] fans would not exist.”
It just did not seem interesting to write about another athlete Madison Avenue was attempting to turn into a rebel with no cause. But then, Richard Sherman took the microphone again this week and said something that needed to be said, something that won’t help him sell Big Macs to pre-schoolers. Facing the press on Wednesday, Sherman spoke about the avalanche of racist garbage he has faced since Sunday, trash that includes not only the social media barrage of racial epithets, but also being called a “thug” repeatedly in the mainstream media.
Sherman said, “The only reason it bothers me is because it seems like it’s the accepted way of calling somebody the N-word nowadays. It’s like everyone else said the N-word and they said ‘Thug’ and they’re like, ‘Ah, that’s fine.’ That’s where it kind of takes me aback and it’s kind of disappointing.” He then brought up the decades long double standard of how fighting in the almost entirely white NHL is viewed with a yawn but so much as raised voices from black athletes are greeted as a national calamity. Referencing a recent brawl between the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames, Sherman said, “What’s the definition of a thug really? Maybe I’m talking loudly and doing something I’m not supposed to. But I’m not.… there was a hockey game where they didn’t even play hockey. They just threw the puck aside and started fighting. I saw that and said, ‘Oh, man. I’m the thug? What’s going on here?’ ”
Richard Sherman said something that has needed to be said since Jack Johnson commented that he would be Jim Jeffries’s “master” a mere forty years after the end of slavery. It has needed to be said since the first time Dick Allen scowled from a batter’s box or Sonny Liston glowered from across a ring or Allen Iverson took the court with cornrows. It has needed to be said since David Stern hysterically started to enforce what NBA players could and could not wear on the road. It has needed to be said since Muhammad Ali said, “I don’t have to be what you want me to be.” Using the platform to tell harsh truths is not a recipe for being a Madison Avenue “brand.” It is a recipe for actually doing something that moves society forward.
James Baldwin once said that America was a country devoted to the death of the paradox. We want our jocks to be jocks, our poets to be poets, our ditch diggers to be ditch diggers and our black athletes from Compton to not have the ability to call out the dominant culture on its own hypocritical bullshit. Richard Sherman is that paradox. But unlike the athletic paradoxes of the past, he is also acutely aware of the ways in which twenty-first-century media are attempting to put him in that box and kill his paradox. Richard Sherman has the ability to use words as weapons and spit arguments as easily as he spits insults. That makes him interesting. That makes him provocative. That makes him dangerous. And Beats by Dre aside, that makes him difficult as hell to brand.
For many people watching the Super Bowl, the game will come down to whether you root for Peyton Manning, the Broncos quarterback, or Richard Sherman. For many people that will mean “Peyton good” and “Sherman bad.” For many people, like John McCain, that means rooting for Peyton to shut up the “loudmouth.” If you’re going to root against the Seahawks and Richard Sherman, by all means do so. But please root against them for the right reasons, not so Richard Sherman gets some kind of lip-buttoning comeuppance. Whether you like the Broncos or Seahawks, you should hope for the greater good that Richard Sherman never shuts up.

THE CANCER OF GLOBAL CAPITAL IS KILLING AFRICA

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The environmental crisis, global capital, colonization, war, and destruction all meet head on in Africa in general, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in particular...and those of us, like you and me, just aren't doing a hell of a lot about any of it.  Not really.

It is obvious that the Developed countries and global capital are doing all they can to re-enter and control as much of Africa as possible, as quickly as possible right now.  They want the resources mostly.  They desperately want the resources and they don't much care how much damage they do or who is in the way.  Africa has a large quantity of natural resources including oil, diamonds, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum and cocoa beans, but also woods and tropical fruits. Much of its natural resources are undiscovered or barely harnessed.  Global Capital in the form of the developed countries (and the so called developing countries) are making sure the value from these resources are heading their way and doing nothing for the people of Africa themselves.


For more than two decades the United States and western based capital has been increasingly escalating military and economic penetration of Africa.

As Abayomi Azikiwe writes at Pambazuka News:

The presence of U.S. military and intelligence forces in Africa is designed to bolster the strategic mineral and territorial interests of Wall Street. Africa is now supplying greater amounts of oil, natural gas and other essential minerals to economic interests of the ruling class.

With the growing role of the People’s Republic of China on the continent, Washington and Wall Street are concerned that they will lose their post-World War II advantage in Africa. Hence due to the declining economic influence of the U.S., the capitalist are relying more on aggressive military and intelligence operations to undermine Africa’s long term interests which are more in line with other continental states as well as other geo-political regions of the world including Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

Garikai Chengu writes at Systemic Capital.com,

....Africa is a paradox that underscores the ongoing power of financial imperialism. She is spectacularly rich, yet the natural capital that is extracted from above and below her children’s feet continues to enrich, not Africans, but the people who facilitate Africa’s impoverishment: Western capitalists.

...Neo-liberalism is unquestionably the greatest cancer spreading across the African continent. Neo-liberalism is the promotion of a combination of counter-developmental economic policies, such as privatisation, austerity and structural adjustment that put the interests of foreign capital over local labour.

Meanwhile, highlighting the fact that we are talking about GLOBAL capital here is the fact that Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are surely not hapless innocents in all this.  The question always being is it the State, is it Capital, who the hell is it.

Patrick Bond puts it this way at Links:

The BRICS agenda of relegitimising neoliberalism not only reinforces North American power, of course. In each case, the BRICS countries’ control of their hinterlands for the sake of regional capitalist hegemony was another impressive feature of sub-imperialism, especially in South Africa’s case....

...South African, US, European, Australian and Canadian firms have been joined by major firms from China, India and Brazil in the region. Their work has mainly built upon colonial infrastructural foundations – road, rail, pipeline and port expansion – for the sake of minerals, petroleum and gas extraction. BRICS appears entirely consistent with facilitating this activity, especially through the proposed BRICS Bank...

...The eco-destructive, consumerist-centric, over-financialised, climate-frying maldevelopment model throughout the BRICS works very well for corporate and parastatal profits, especially for Western capital, but is generating repeated crises for the majority of its people and for the planet.

The media likes to portray Africa as a continent surviving on the handouts of the West.  The exact opposite is more the case.  As Garikai Chengu explains,

...it is the West that is reliant on African handouts. These handouts come in many and varied forms. They include illicit flows of resources, the profits of which invariably find their way into the West’s banking sector via strings of tax havens (as thoroughly documented in Nicholas Shaxson’s Poisoned Wells). Another is the mechanism of debt-extortion whereby banks lend money to military rulers (often helped to power by Western governments, such as the Congo’s former President Mobutu), who then keep the money for themselves (often in a private account with the lending bank), leaving the country paying exorbitant interest on an exponentially growing debt.


...Recent research by Leonce Ndikumana and James K Boyce found that up to 80 cents in every borrowed dollar fled the borrower nation in ‘capital flight’ within a year, never having been invested in the country at all; whilst meanwhile $20billion per year is drained from Africa in ‘debt servicing’ on these, essentially fraudulent, ‘loans’.

Think none of this has a direct effect on internal wars, on environmental collapse, on the very lives today of the people of Africa.  Hopefully, you are smart enough to think no such thing.  

Meanwhile I direct you to this interesting article from Ceasefire.



Africlimate | The DRC: Beyond the atrocities, an emerging environmental crisis


With much of the analysis of the events in the Congo concentrating on ethnic conflicts, Ceasefire's Luqman Onikosi looks at the environmental destruction and its effects on the lives of the people in the region.


congo rainforest
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a region of Africa plagued by tragedy. This wasn’t always so: the thriving Kingdom of Kongo (which also includes modern Angola) enjoyed good trading relations with Portugal in 1482, before colonisation and the transatlantic slave trade. However, when civil war – instigated by the Portuguese – provided an opportunity for Europeans to purchase prisoners of war as slaves, this thriving civilisation and surrounding regions began a drawn-out and tempestuous descent. The civil war forced Afonso I, King of Kongo (DR Congo) to write to kings Manuel I and João III of Portugal in 1526 to protest:
‘Each day the traders are kidnapping our people – children of this country, sons of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family. This corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. We need in this kingdom only priests and school teachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. It is our wish that this Kingdom not be a place for the trade or transport of slaves’.
From 1885, what was then called the Belgian Congo was carved out and bestowed upon King Leopold for mining rubber, eventually facilitating the automobile industry in Belgium and its incorporation into the industrial revolution. Despite widespread anticolonial resistance, imperial exploitation continues to this day – diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, zinc, cassiterite (used in food packaging) and coltan (tantalum for making technological equipment) are extracted through European and US funding and support of civil conflict.
The DRC is a country of 60 million people, and equals in size the combined territorial expanse of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar and Italy. No less than two-thirds of its population rely on the rainforest in one way or another for food, medicine and shelter, and the cultures of many communities are founded on their relationship with the natural environment. The Congo basin rainforest in the DRC covers around two-thirds of the African equatorial forest. The African equatorial rainforest stretches from East to West Africa and is the second largest on earth after the Amazon. It extends to a large areas of Gabon, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo itself.
In spite of all its natural wealth, the African equatorial rainforest is under sustained threat, especially the areas across Central Africa which cover some 50 million hectares, an area the size of Spain. Food shortages and climate change are just some of the problems the world faces. The rainforest has the potential to help solve these crises through the judicious use of the resources possessed by the immense wealth of biodiversity. Forest elephants roam the area as do three species of great ape: gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. Animals and birds such as okapi and the Congo peacock are found nowhere else. And, as with all large forest areas, the Congo plays a vital role in regulating climate, both locally and globally. Efforts to preserve what remains of these areas are being hampered by a generational scramble for the country’s resources.
United Nations Peacekeepers Assist with Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration in DRC
It is difficult to estimate precisely how many Congolese in Europe are refugees or asylum seekers. More than 400,000 Congolese refugees currently remain outside the DRC according to UNHCR statistics. The UNHCR report claims that, since the beginning of 2012, ethnic tensions and inequitable access to land have led to renewed violence in the east and north-east of DRC, resulting in the displacement of more than 2.2 million people inside the country. In addition, almost 70,000 people have crossed the border to neighbouring countries such as Uganda and Rwanda.
The 2009 report by UN-commissioned experts said UN involvement had done nothing to quell the violence – with rebels continuing to kill and plunder natural resources with impunity, and claims that the rebels are supported by an international network stretching through Africa to Western Europe and North America. Nevertheless, an earlier UN report in 2001 implicated about 100 multinational companies who rapaciously scrambled and looted the unaccountable wealth from the DRC rainforest. This firms include: Barclays Bank of the UK, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc, of the US, Banro Mining Company of Canada, Anglo Gold Ashanti Limited of South Africa and the infamous De Beers Groups. These companies were accused by the UN of financing rebels and exchanging ammunition for access to mineral resources and secure landing fields for their small planes to loot the wealth of the DRC rainforest. Sadly, the United States and the UK government forced the UN Security Council to back down in their attempt to prosecute these corporations. By 2008, over 8 million were dead, and at the time of writing, no source in the world can give an exact estimate of the fatalities.
DR Congo Equatorial rainforest and the danger of uncontrollable natural resources mining
According to an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2011, it is estimated that sub-Saharan Africa’s forests contain 44-66 billion tons of carbon. Unlike other tropical forest regions, nearly three-quarters of Africa’s forests are distributed in woodland savannas and dry forests that contain less than 100 tons of carbon per hectare. Extremely carbon-dense forests, which store more than 350 tons of carbon in aboveground biomass per hectare, account for 8.7 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s total stored carbon.
Overall, African forests store the least amount of carbon per hectare of any region, averaging 69-117 tons per hectare. Asia is the highest, averaging 125-174 tons per hectare per hectare, followed by the tropical Americas, which averages 87-132 tons per hectare. Unsurprisingly, the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo which are the most extensive and store the most carbon of any African country, accounting for 26-37 percent of forest cover and 38-56 percent of carbon. Three other Congo Basin countries — Cameroon, Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic — follow.
Peacekeeping - MONUCDRC rainforest deforestation rates since 1990 have been in the lowest of any major forest region in the world. However there are still a number of threats to the health of the Congo rainforest and its residents. The biggest drivers of deforestation in the Congo rainforest over the past 20 years have been small-scale subsistence agriculture, clearing for charcoal and fuel wood to domestically generate energy for cooking and lighting, urban expansion and mining.
International industrial logging has been the biggest driver of forest degradation. However it’s important not to understate the impact of logging in the region. Logging roads have opened up vast areas of the Congo to commercial hunting, leading to a poaching epidemic in some areas and a more than 60 percent drop in the region’s forest elephant population in less than a decade. Furthermore, logging roads have provided access to speculators and small-holders who clear land for agriculture.
Looking forward, the biggest threats to the Congo rainforest come from international industrial logging and conversion for large-scale agriculture. Some environmentalists fear that the Congo could be on the verge of a massive increase in deforestation for palm oil, rubber, and sugar production.
In 2002 the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced a moratorium on commercial logging in a bid to save rapidly falling forests, however a new report by Global Witness alleges that industrial loggers are finding a way around the logging freeze. Through unscrupulous officials, foreign companies are abusing artisanal permits—meant for local community logging—to clear-cut wide swathes of tropical forest in the country. These logging companies are often targeting an endangered tree—wenge (Millettia laurentii)—largely for buyers in China and Europe.
Another fast growing issue of deforestation of the Congo rainforest are industrial oil palm plantations which are spreading from Malaysia and Indonesia to the Congo raising fears about further social conflict over land tenure, compeling the local residence who depend on the rainforest land for subsistence farming to emigrate.
A new report by The Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) 2013, dramatically entitled The Seeds of Destruction, announces that new palm oil plantations in the Congo rainforest will soon increase fivefold to half a million hectares, an area nearly the size of Delaware. But conservationists warn that by ignoring the lessons of palm oil in Southeast Asia, this trend could be disastrous for the region’s forests, wildlife, and people:
“Governments of Congo Basin countries have handed out vast tracts of rainforest for the development of palm oil with apparently little or no attention to the likely impacts on the environment or on people dependent on the forest” (Simon Counsell, Executive Director of the Rainforest Foundation UK)
The palm tree used to produce palm oil originated in Africa, so production in the Congo Basin isn’t new. But industrial palm oil production involving massive plantations is a recent development for the region. The approach, modeled after operations in Southeast Asia, raises concerns among environmentalists who argue that palm oil has been a disaster for the forests of Malaysia and Indonesia. Indeed, scientific research has found that between 1990 and 2000, 86 percent of all deforestation in Malaysia was for palm oil.
The largest palm oil developer in the Congo Basin is currently Malaysian-owned Atama Plantations SARL, which is working to establish a 180,000-hectare (450,000-acre) plantation in the Republic of Congo. But the entire enterprise is masked by a complete lack of transparency is just one of the endless list of agent of deforestation of DR Congo forest and forece displacement of its people.
New Entrant in to the scramble for DRC
Although the war is waning the scramble still rages on. The latest international entrant amidst the scramble is China. In 2008, Chinese businesses signed $9bn deal with DRC. A massive state-owned firm based in Beijing, the China Railway Engineering Corporation, or CREC deployed its Chinese engineers and advance team of surveyors using global positioning tools taking satellite readings to plot the exact course of a road that’s about to be built in the region. The deal planned to give DRC $6bn of desperately needed infrastructure – about 2,400 miles of road, 2,000 miles of railway, 32 hospitals, 145 health centres and two universities. In return, China gets a slice of DR Congo’s precious natural resources to feed its booming industries – 10m tonnes of copper and 400,000 tonnes of cobalt.
China has surpassed the US as Africa’s largest trading partner with trade of US$90 billion in 2009, compared with $86 billion for the US and foreign direct investments of over $50 billion. Bilateral trade topped $160 billion in 2011 and is expected to reach $200 billion this year. In addition, China has proposed or committed about $101 billion to commercial projects in Africa since 2010, of which construction and natural resource deals total approximately $90 billion. However, the whole arithmetic of the deal unfairly favours the Chinese. At current world prices for copper and cobalt, the Chinese side of the joint venture will make a colossal overall profit of about $42bn after all the investment’s been paid.
Peacekeepers Assist with Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration in DRC
Being unable to compete economically with Beijing, Washington is once again turning to militarism to secure its advantage. As Mali demonstrates, and the ruinous war against Libya in 2011, this approach should be seen as a pointer for the future. The silent war in the DRC has claimed the lives of millions rooted in conflicts over strategic resources in which the rival imperialist powers invariably play their part more or less openly.
In 2011, according to a study by Dr Stephen Burgess, a Zimbabwean-born associate professor at the US Air War College, in his report titled ‘Sustainability of Strategic Minerals in Southern Africa and Potential Conflicts and Partnerships’, the US should move quickly to secure Southern Africa’s uranium, manganese, platinum, chrome, coltan (columbite and tantalum) and rare earth minerals for America’s industrial needs and for its military as well as maintenance of weapons systems. The study focuses on resource accessibility in the DRC, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe and draws parallels with the 1880s scramble for Africa.
To triumph in this new scramble, Burgess notes, ‘all instruments of (US) power’ must be deployed. Washington will enlist the services of the Department of Defence, the National Security Agency and the Africa Command (AFRICOM) to secure Southern Africa’s resources. DRC in particular for the US, is viewed as the source to quench America’s thirst for cobalt, uranium, coltan (columbite and tantalum), tungsten, tin, and rare earth minerals. In particular, the US government is concerned about access to ‘defence critical resources’. This requires increased levels of engagement with the African countries concerned, using all the instruments of American power and working with American and Western mining companies, as well as engagement with China and Chinese companies.
Conclusion
‘When two elephants fight, it is the grass that bears the brunt of the upheaval’ a Yoruba adage. On the ground in DRC, while power politics is played out across the African continent over natural resources, the mainstream media under-report or mis-report the atrocities facilitated by capital, led by the US and its allies, with the help of their puppets and cronies on the ground. As always, it is the ordinary Congolese who suffers most. The human cost of war and the destruction of environments essential for life both in the region and across the planet, are often presented as little more than collateral damage. We can easily neglect how our survival is dependent on the environment regardless of whether you live in the ‘concrete jungle’ or in the country side.
The interconnected nature of the planet’s complex ecosystems makes linking the issues of environmental degradation with modern imperialism an imperative for the progressive left based in the West, as it is and always has been for progress movements in the Global South. To build a movement which can not only defeat imperialist capitalism, but to maintain a healthy planet fit for habitation, climate justice and anti-imperialism must be understood as part of the same collective struggle.
Africlimate is an environmental project of the Hear Alkebu-lan* community group.

AN ANARCHO-COMMUNIST AND A LIBERTARIAN SOCIALIST PRISONER IN RUSSIA SPEAK OUT

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Pickets on Krasnopresnenskaya in support of the Bolotnaya case defendants


Prison friday takes us halfway around the world for an interview with two Russian political prisoners.  Alexei Polikhovich describes himself as a libertarian socialist.  Stepan Zimin calls himself an anarcho-communist.  Both men are imprisoned accused of clashing with police during an anti-Putin rally. The fighting began when police blocked the protesters' path and initiated a confrontation.

Over 400 people were arrested and scores were injured in the protest on Bolotnaya Square.  Twenty-seven people are facing “mass rioting” charges in connection with the protest on May 6, 2012.  I am a little confused as to the status of all those twenty-seven at the moment.  The most recent accounting I could find (and this is of thirty, not twenty-seven arrestees) is from Radio Svoboda which says:


Thirty people in total have been charged in the Bolotnaya case. Maksim Luzyanjn and Konstantin Lebedev pleaded guilty and were sentenced to jail. Another defendant in the case, Mikhail Kosenko, was found to be not mentally competent and sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment. In separate proceedings, Leonid Razvozzhaev and Sergei Udaltsov have been investigated for allegedly organizing the mass riots. 


After Khodorkovsky’s release, 8 of the Bolotnaya prisoners were amnestied at the end of last year - Nikolai Kavkazsky, Maria Baranova, Leonid Kovyazin, Vladimir Akimenkov, Anastasia Rybachenko, Dmitry Altaichinov and Fedor Bakhov. Eight other people were not included in the amnesty. 



The Bolotnaya case as it is known for the name of the square which was the destination of the march that led to the clash with police, has drawn widespread criticism.

“The Bolotnaya case is quite possibly Russia’s trial of the year,” said Tanya LokshinaRussia program director at Human Rights Watch. “It is largely about the government’s attempts to intimidate people into silence in Russia.”

Many believe the case is not merely an attempt to stifle protest, but rather is more specifically to crush dissent from the left.  One of those arrested Vladimir Akimenkov in an interview earlier this month originally appearing in Open Left platform  said, 

"...I think that the authorities were fearful of the protest moving leftwards. On the March of Millions there were large columns of the Left Front, the Russian Socialist Movement, anarchists and a strong column from the universities and educational spheres [protesting against the growing privatization of education – trans. note]. On the whole social slogans were dominant. I believe that the Bolotnaya Case was to a significant extent directed towards defeating the left opposition. But the crackdown was unsuccessful. We have overcome this stage and come out of it stronger, the struggle continues. At the same time I would like to remark that amongst the people involved in the Bolotnaya case there were people who were at a demonstration for the first time. Ending up in jail has politicised them."

According to the Russian Legal Information Agency lawyers on Tuesday called on the District court of Moscow to aquit eight defendants in the case.   

The Moscow City Court on Friday refused to release Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov and activist Leonid Razvozzhayev.  A trial date for the two was set for February 4.  It will be held behind closed doors.

The following is from Lib.com.


Russia: interview with anarchist prisoners from the "Bolotnaya Case"

Alexei Polikhovich, 22
Interview with two anarchist prisoners charged with participating in the May 6, 2012 clashes with police during an opposition rally in Moscow's Bolotnaya Square.
Former sailor Alexei Polikhovich, 22 (pictured), and historian Stepan Zimin, 21 are among the many people charged with clashing with police during an opposition rally. Both face a sentence of five-and-a-half year in penal colony, having spent over a year in pre-trial detention.
Q: You have unwillingly became a defendant in a political trial. Did you have pronounced political views before? Have they changed after you were imprisoned?
Polikhovich: I am a libertarian socialist. This is rather a social philosophy, a worldview rather than political view. A libertarian wants to build a new society on the principles of free union, equality, self-administration, federalism, respect for an individual, co-operation rather than rivalry. A libertarian would not be making electoral pledges, or fight for a position in the parliament or in a government. A libertarian's fight is for the people of the whole world - in the streets of Athens and Barcelona, Mexico City and Lima, and not in the corridors and lobbies of power. A libertarian is the most consistent opponent of a Nazi and an authoritarian communist, of a religious fundamentalist and of an exporter of ultra-liberal democracy, an enemy of hierarchies, verticals, dogmas, institutions of oppression, prisons. A libertarian is, without a doubt, an opponent of our main prison, which was described by Max Stirner: "Every state is a tyranny, be that a tyranny of one person or a tyranny of the many... The state seeks to hinder every free activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds this hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self-preservation." The latter is particularly true in today's Russia.
Zimin: I am an adherent of anarcho-communist, anti-fascist views. Although for me they are life's principles rather than rigid frames of ideology. The best expression of the main point and essence of anarchism was made by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his tiny essay ["Discourse on Inequality"]: "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
It is a huge mistake to think that anarchism is general chaos, lawlessness, the final result of which is Hobbes' war "of every man, against every man". In fact, it pursues the aim of building a society based on mutual aid and solidarity of all of its members, regardless of gender, race and religious creed.
Q: Why do you think the trial's most important part was hidden away to the Zamoskvoretsky Court, away from the large hall of the Moscow City Court and then from the large hall of the Nikulinsky Court?
Polikhovich: After the charges against four out of twelve defendants were dropped [in the December 2013 amnesty] ourselves and our lawyers can physically fit into the small hall of the Zamoskvoretsky Court. In her own domain [judge] Natalya Viktorovna [Nikishina] can find it easier to control the events, the final game will be played in her field.
Zimin: I do not think it is directly connected to the sentencing. It's just that the number of defendant has noticeably dropped, a small courthouse in central Moscow is much more convenient than Nikulinsky, the journey to which takes up a long time. Seeing that the trial lasts for eight months already, and we leave at six in the morning and return in a prison van after midnight, it is now easier to reach the trial courthouse, simply on everyday level.
Q: Do you have a sense of moral victory?
Polikhovich: I don't feel anything of the sort.
Zimin: I feel moral victory not so much due to transfer of the trial from one courthouse to another (after all, it only changed the surroundings), but rather because the court investigation has finished, and after hearing all the arguments of the prosecution, I am once again convinced of our innocence. In all the time that I was listening to the compositions by the so-called "victims" and their colleagues who served as witnesses, watching video recordings, I had the same thought: so who really has to sit in this aquarium?
Q: Some of the "Bolotnaya Case" folks were amnestied; when they were released in the courthouse, you celebrated that as though they were your relatives. Now some time has passed. What do you feel for the amnestied people?
Polikhovich: We had a laugh over this question. Does it assume that now, after some time has passed, we are supposed to have changed our attitude? I am sincerely happy for Masha [Baronova], Kolya [Kavkazsky], Lyonya [Kovyazin] and Vova [Akimenkov], especially for the latter. This trial has made us close, and I think we would never lose touch.
Zimin: On the day that they were released in the courthouse, there was a feeling as though you are getting released yourself. The sense of pride in them cannot be honestly put into words! And how could I not be happy for the people who were in handcuffs next to me in the morning, and were free by the evening. You know, back in the day, Leon Trotsky wrote: "Prison united all of us." I think that these words can be well applied to our situation. You can't say it in a better way.
Q: Do you think of what the sentence might be, what do you expect, do you believe that it can at least partly depend on the lawyers' work and on your position?
Polikhovich: I try not to hope and not to expect anything. I am prepared for any outcome. I think that the main conceptual decision on us will be made by the top officials but within that conception of the sentence there can be some variations, some individual approach. The lawyers have done a lot to dispel illusions concerning fairness of our prosecution, and for seven months they have been proving the invalidity, absurdity and biased nature of the charges, I am very grateful to them. We will find out very shortly whether their work has made any difference to the final outcome.
Zimin: The main thing that depends on my position in court is my attitude towards myself. We made the entire journey from arrest to the sentencing, and I think that each one of us has come to the conclusion that Russia's law-enforcement system (like all other similar systems) is far from perfection, to say the least. Half of all norms in the Criminal Code and in the Criminal Procedure Code are violated or not fulfilled.
Under such conditions, our lawyers have to be greatly thanked for expertly and consistently defending us under the conditions of abuse we are subjected to. As for the sentence, whatever happens, in the end it will all be good, we will keep on fighting. No pasaran!
Addresses of Stepan and Alexei. Note that these 2 prisons do not admit letters in English, so translate your text (f.e. with google translate or other similar program) before sending, or pass postcards and photos). 
Alexey Polikhovich Alexey Alexeevich Polikhovich, 1990 g.r. FKU SIZO-2 UFSIN Rossii po g. Moskve ul. Novoslobodskaya d. 45 127055 Moskva Russia 
Stepan Zimin Stepan Yurevich Zimin 1992 g.r., FKU SIZO-5 (Vodnik) UFSIN Rossii po g. Moskve, Vyborskaya 20, 125130 Moskva Russia 
Excert from an article by Yulia Polukhina, Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Januray 24, 2014. The questions, same for all interviewees, were passed to the detainees via their lawyers.

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF RESISTANCE

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Theoretical weekends returns with an interview from Upping the Anti with Michael Hardt.  The interview was conducted in 2007.  Hardt, of course, is most popularly known for his partnership with Antonio Negri in the writing of "Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth".  That is probably unfair as Hardt is, of course, an actual person, an 
individual in his own right.  Michael Hardt is not a revolutionary.  He 
is rather a political philosopher and literary theorist.  He is a 
professor and a writer.  But what are you gonna do? Those are the 
folks who tend to write a lot of theory (workers and revolutionaries don't tend to have the time to sit around writing long tracts)...and this is theoretical weekends. 


From the Perspective of Resistance: An Interview with Michael Hardt

Gary Kinsman
Michael Hardt is the author of Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophyand an editor of a new edition of Thomas Jefferson’sThe Declaration of Independence. With Antonio Negri, he is co-author of EmpireMultitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, and Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-Form. He teaches in the Literature Program at Duke University. Hardt was a keynote speaker at the conference on Empire held in Barrie, Ontario in May of 2007. In his plenary “Empire After Iraq” he critiqued political positions common on the left from the standpoint of their consequences for resistance. In this interview, conducted in July of 2007, Gary Kinsman asked Hardt to elaborate on some of the thoughts he presented at the conference. Tracy Gregory transcribed the interview.
In your talk on Empire, you focused on the importance of evaluating political positions from the vantage of their impact on organizing and resistance. Can you elaborate on this statement?
The first thing to recognize is how much theorizing is done by movements. A previous generation of activists operated with a very strong division between theory and practice and even an anti-intellectual approach to activism. One thing that’s been really exciting about the present generation – what the Zapatistas call “the generation of ‘94” – is its high level of theorizing and its recognition of the forms of power we’re facing today and how they’ve changed. This is not just an academic question because the ways that power is shifting in the world have important implications for resistance.
When the character of power changes, old forms of resistance might not only become ineffective, they might even become counterproductive. We have to recognize that the forms of power we confront have a role in determining the forms of resistance we should adopt.
Certain claims about power lead to a kind of resignation that can disempower activism. That’s partly what I see in the current trend in the US to think of the US state as fascist. There are two separate questions here. One is an analysis of the facts. I mean, is it a fascist state or not? And, if one does think the US state is fascist, what does that mean for forms of resistance? My current impression is that the position that maintains that the US state is fascist leads to a certain moral satisfaction combined with resignation. It’s worth noting that this is quite different from the way this same claim was advanced in the 1970s.
During the 1970s, there were significant portions of the left in different countries that claimed that the US state – or the Italian state or the German state – was fascist. Back then, the form of resistance associated with that claim was usually armed struggle. And the logic they used seems quite coherent: if by fascism we mean that the state operates with a predominance of force rather than consent, then forms of politics that try to position themselves within the arena of consent are not going to be effective. Therefore, since the state only – or predominantly – functions through violence, armed struggle is a necessary response. Of course, that decision can be tragically wrong. But it seems to me to be a logical step once one says that the state is fascist. I think the premise was false in the 1970s and led to many tragedies on the left.
I should also say that many times what people mean when they say the state is “fascist” is that things are really bad, that people in general aren’t recognizing it, and that we need to wake them up to how bad things really are. Since fascism is the worst name one can choose, this is what gets attributed without great precision. I understand the gesture. I think it’s true that things are really bad today, especially in the US. And it’s true that awakening people to how bad things are is important. My objection is that this gesture has implications. The two choices on offer for opposing fascism are armed struggle and a combination of moral outrage and resignation. Neither choice corresponds to the forms of resistance we’ve been developing over the past 10 to 15 years, and neither seems useful or appropriate today.
You’ve mentioned that, when Empire first came out, a number of activists felt it strongly resonated with their thinking. You said this was because you and Negri “were reading them.” How do you respond to activists who did not find Empire and Multitude helpful in their organizing?
I’ve been trying to emphasize moving in a direction where people like myself, who are primarily doing theoretical reflection, are learning from the theoretical work that goes on in the movements. I’ve been trying to de-emphasize the other direction, which is people in movements learning from more abstract forms of theorizing. I would say to those activists who didn’t findEmpire or Multitude very helpful: “well, you know, maybe it’s not that direction that is most important right now.” Maybe they are the ones making the great innovations and people in my position are profiting from that movement.
There are, of course, divisions among activists today. It’s a good thing that many of us think differently and have different analyses. One of the most wonderful things about the last dozen or so years has been the plurality of thinking without division into camps. We’ve worked collaboratively without insisting that we must always agree. So it might be, for those activists who don’t profit from the things Toni Negri and I write, that we’re on different sides of this really plural movement – and that seems perfectly wonderful.
For instance, what Toni and I do is very compatible with the work of John Holloway (author of Change the World Without T aking Power), but we’re also looking at things from different perspectives. The focus for Toni and me is on what I think of as the constitutive moment: the moment where we – a multitude of us – construct social order, social institutions, and social organizations; the moment we transform human nature and change ourselves to be able to autonomously construct communities and societies. We’re also interested in the moment of refusal that comes before or accompanies that moment: a refusal of structures and commands, a refusal of the order of capital. But what we’re more interested in is the constitutive and self-transformative moment. My impression – and this is what I’ve written in discussions with John – is that he is less interested in the constitutive moment. And so, when I present it that way, one can see a kind of complementarity. People always criticize me – Toni first among them – for being too conciliatory about everything. I don’t agree. I would like us to have fights where there are real antagonisms.
I think that a younger generation, those in their twenties and thirties now, are very wary of the kind of sectarian fighting that characterized the generation that came before me. Now there’s less pressure on activists in these kinds of theoretical debates. For instance, in theoretical terms the division between anarchists and communists in the movements today is perhaps as substantial as ever, but there isn’t the same pressure because these differences no longer need to divide us. I find myself resisting the creation of these kinds of divisions.
Along with your critique of those who characterize the US state as fascist you’ve mentioned two other problems you see on the left today: the defense of sovereignty and the tendency to define the main enemy as USimperialism.
A certain defense of sovereignty goes closely together with the notion of US imperialism because, thinking from the perspective of resistance, the strategy traditionally used for combating US imperialism and other imperialisms has been to insist on national sovereignty as a kind of protective barrier. Certainly that’s clear in Latin America. Protection against Yankee imperialism in Latin America has taken the form of a kind of national alliance. I don’t mean to say that there are no longer problems of domination by the United States and US capital. What I do think is that the forces of global power and the forces of capital are much more diverse than this, and that the pressures of US imperialism are waning.
A signal event seems to me to be the refusal of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas at Mar Del Plata, Argentina, where we saw Latin American leftist governments – with Hugo Chavez as the most vocal representative – blocking a vehicle for US imperialism. Now, if US imperialism is not an adequate formulation; if we were to think instead of a much broader formulation that includes other dominant nation states and supranational organizations like the World Bank and the IMF, or even transnational corporations and NGOs; if we were to think of our enemies in that form, then national sovereignty wouldn’t be the adequate resistance strategy. It would have to be a different, perhaps a continental, strategy. In any case, it would have to be something new, something innovative.
Even if one disagrees with me, I would like to see some recognition of the practical consequences. This also means that you can’t just say, since I don’t want to resist in terms of national strategy, I’m going to somehow believe that power is different and no longer operates through US imperialism. You have to actually recognize the way things are. What I want to emphasize is the consequences for resistance.
There’s a tendency for the resistance to US imperialism position to act according to the logic that the enemy of our enemy is our friend. But there are many anti-US and anti-imperialist forces – and even forces against global capital – that are not in the least forces for which the movement in general has affinity or with which it would want any sort of alliance. I think that’s the disjuncture between the logic of the movement and a certain notion of resistance to US imperialism.
I’m also interested in posing the question of sovereignty in a more philosophical framework and recognizing that it has become a major topic of leftist theorizing in recent years. The work of Giorgio Agamben, the notion of the state of exception, and references to Carl Schmitt are all academic touchstones of this.1 And I think it’s related to the current analyses of fascism, US imperialism, and the state of exception in the current era.
The inadequacy of this analysis is that it fails to grasp that the most effective forms of power under which we suffer are not forms of supra-legal sovereignty but are rather normal capitalist relations – the rule of law, not the exception to law. I think these are the main forms of domination under which we suffer. And I think it’s inaccurate to say that the state of exception, the sovereign instance, is what makes the normal functioning of power possible – or, in the most extreme formulation, to say that the state of exception is really the centre of modern power, what Agamben called “the nomos of the modern.”
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pay attention – in the US in particular – to the erosion of civil rights, to Guantanamo, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib, and to the spectacular abuses of the state. But I don’t want that focus to eclipse the real structures of poverty that work precisely through the normal relations and functioning of capital. I think there’s a risk of forgetting the normalized and even naturalized domination that works through the rule of, not the exception to, law. The consequence of focusing on forms of sovereignty that rule outside the law is that we risk losing sight of battles over inequalities of wealth, exploitation, and other regular functions of capital.
The other important aspect of this question is what kinds of resistance are involved. The focus on sovereignty can easily make it seem – and this seems to me to be common among the readers of Agamben – that if we eliminate extreme cases like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib then everything will be okay. In fact, the real problem, which is capital, remains. And that’s what the legal system, in its normal functioning, perpetuates.
Let’s return to the characterization of US imperialism as the main enemy. You’ve put forward a different analysis arguing that the major problem right now is not imperialism, but Empire.
Let me explain the way I’ve seen it develop in activist communities in the season of struggle that went from the mid-1990s to 2001. If we start from Chiapas in ’94 and also include Seattle in 1999 and Quebec City and Genoa in 2001, a lot of the activism about capitalist globalization was not focused on a single nation state. Each of the protests experimented with and recognized new forms of power. Each protest was not out in front of the White House or on Wall Street, which is where they should have been if the emphasis was on the US state or US capital. Instead, the brilliant advance in activism during that period was to recognize a more complex global structure of power related to the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the World Bank, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the G8.
All of these are different experiments in the network among nodes of power that are controlling the global system. The development within the movements during that period is very much what Toni and I are trying to understand with this notion of Empire. We’re trying to think of the ways that global capital is enabled by a network of dominant nation states, supranational economic institutions, transnational corporations, and various NGOs. These players are not all following White House dictates. There’s necessarily a kind of collaboration or interaction among them – and this includes hierarchies and conflicts. This is what Toni and I propose as the challenge for understanding global capital and the power structure that supports it.
In recognizing that the US is not all-powerful, two things come together. On the one hand, this is an enormous intellectual challenge because we have to understand something new. I mean, there’s something almost intellectually comforting about the notion of US imperialism because it’s something with which we are familiar. It’s something we’ve struggled against for a long time. On the other hand, this broader conception indicates an opening of spaces and the need for the globalization of resistance – not just in national terms but in newer, more open networks of resistance.
In Canada, left opposition to US imperialism often plays itself out in a nationalist form, as in the argument that the problem with what’s going on in Afghanistan is that the Canadian government has subordinated itself to the Bush regime, or that the problem with the new Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) is that it’s a threat to Canadian sovereignty. What do you think of this?
The period of the so-called “global war on terror” has significantly advanced that particular anti-imperialist position because the US has attempted to dictate politics unilaterally around the globe. I think the great dream of the Bush White House was that it could dominate the world in an imperialist fashion. And if the US were capable of that, then one response would be a traditional anti-imperialist struggle along the lines of national sovereignty and a kind of national united front.
My claim – and this is difficult since there’s no definitive proof on one side or the other – is that the US government has not been capable of dictating global order unilaterally and that’s been part of its failure over the last five years. The failure of the war in Iraq is the first among those. And these failures are due to the Bush regime’s inability to dictate global affairs, its inability to act as an imperialist power, and its inability to do what imperialist powers need to do – guarantee profits and maintain order within a range of violence. It seems to me that the failures of the current US administration should at least invite questions about those abilities.
On the one hand, we have to analyze the nature of current and emerging forms of global power, which is difficult to do. On the other hand, we should look at the kinds of politics and resistance being generated and evaluate whether they’re what we want. In many parts of the world, there are now forms of resistance that are much more closed and limited than what we had before 2001 in their insistence on national sovereignty, on national alliances, and in some ways on an externalization of the sources of domination.
In the Canadian context, an example of this is that some people attribute all forms of domination to the US and don’t recognize the sources of domination within Canada. In many ways, I think that’s also been true in Britain over the last five or six years. But that analysis over-estimates the capacity of the US and also tends to centralize the source of domination. It therefore eclipses or minimizes the workings of domination in local contexts, seeing these as merely expressions of the evil imperialist power.
This misdirects our focus. It creates a politics that doesn’t correspond to our desires in the short term and misreads the situation in the longer term. We must not only attack the enemies that face us today but also prepare for emerging forms of domination. Recognizing the emerging tendencies of global power is one of the most difficult parts of this theoretical task.
You and Negri have advanced the notion of “Empire” to refer to the emerging networks of power. You have counterposed it with “multitude” to recognize a new composition of labour and struggle. Could you tell us a bit about what you perceive to be the value of this concept?
The notion of multitude corresponds to what I see as interesting theoretical developments within the movements: trying to construct forms of social organization that are not under centralized leadership or under a single agenda. They are not fragmented or separate, but function through a kind of network of autonomous communities. That’s the basis of the notion of multitude, and this distinguishes it from traditional notions of either “the party” or “the working class.” Although these notions can take many different forms, their dominant forms have been centralized and hierarchical. The multitude is meant to try to construct an effective and powerful, but horizontal, organizational structure. What we’ve seen in microcosm in the movements – with their insistence on horizontality, democracy, participation, and autonomy – is similar to the kind of thing we’re after with the notion of multitude.
This is combined, for us, with an analysis of the transformation of labour today. I don’t mean to sound Leninist here, but here’s a Leninist idea: Lenin proposed that the possibilities of political organization in any society will correspond to the dominant form of labour. In Lenin’s view, the power and the necessity of the Bolshevik Party corresponded to the dominant labour organization in Russia at the time – the hierarchical industrial labour force. He did not mean “dominant” in quantitative terms but dominant qualitatively. If one were to accept that (and I’m not inclined to), it’s interesting to look at the structural forms of labour and the forms of cooperation determined by them in the present.
Looking at the forms of cooperation emerging in labour processes today and in capitalist production as a whole, they seem to be arising within a much more horizontal and even autonomous framework. This is true not just of the kinds of production that involve computer technologies and networks but also those that are often understood as “service” work. This includes what we call affective labour: various kinds of production of ideas, code, images, or information that are organized in distributed network structures. The kinds of cooperation suggested by those forms of labour are no longer dictated by the centrality of the factory, but rather by workers who need to have the capacities to connect with others and to create cooperative relationships. These networked and horizontal relations of labour indicate to us the possibility of forming a powerful social subject in this same network form.
So, you might ask, why must we take this detour through changes in labour and through an analysis of the class composition of the contemporary proletariat? In response, I’d say it’s because we have to ask about people’s capacities for organizing autonomously. What is it that allows people to do that? It’s not given, in my view. There’s nothing in human nature that allows people to be able to spontaneously construct society in a democratic way. They need to develop those capacities. Our emphasis on work is a way of evaluating people’s capacities based on everyday life. If we can verify that people have certain capacities through labour, that’s one way of recognizing their capacity for democracy, autonomy, and self-organization. Without some way of verifying that, then all this talk about democratic organization – which is largely what we mean by multitude – would be just dreaming. We need some way of recognizing where people’s capacities lie and how they can be developed.
We’re living at a time marked by horrific sectarian violence in numerous places, including Iraq. Elsewhere, we can see the reassertion of national and ethnic identities in perhaps their worst and most regressive forms. How do you make sense of these phenomena in terms of the multitude?
These divisions are fomented as new weapons of domination. They are being used as instruments to make autonomous self-organization impossible. They also point to one of the areas in which theories of the multitude have to be pushed further. I don’t mean that it’s necessarily a weakness, but it’s something that hasn’t been developed as much. This isn’t something we’ve totally ignored. It’s not like we pretend that autonomous self-organization happens spontaneously or necessarily, or that it’s an element of human nature. We focus more on the possibilities of making it happen. In a world where so many people are convinced that it’s impossible to interact democratically or to form society without authority, we’ve felt the need to insist more strongly on possibilities. But the things you’re pointing toward make clear the necessity of thinking about the conflicts that arise among us and how we can manage them. It’s an extremely important theme to develop.
Within movements, there has been a lot of work done on conflict resolution. I’m not assuming that we’re all the same, that we all think the same, want the same things, or want to do the same things at demonstrations. Many of the practical and immediate organizing techniques to have arisen in these contexts have been about maintaining differences and allowing for internal conflicts to happen without weakening us. That’s the kind of thing that needs to be further developed theoretically.
You’ve argued that there have been three waves of global struggle since the mid-1990s. The first, which you’ve already hinted at, was initiated by the Zapatista revolt and continued through to Québec City and Genoa. Why was this cycle of struggle important?
During this period, there was experimentation with new understandings of global power and, therefore, confrontation with increasingly complex enemies. This involved thinking about global trade and entering into the specifics of trade agreements while still contesting dominant nation states, confronting the IMF, and so forth. This was an enormously complex, and I think very successful, element of that cycle of struggle. Second, there was the development of new modes of organizing. One of the dominant characteristics, especially in North America, was that a kind of joyfulness returned to the movement. This stood in contrast to what I experienced during the dour and moralistic 1980s.
The period after the Zapatista uprising signaled a return to a movement that was not only colourful and fun, but also properly joyful. This was linked to the experiments with horizontal structures. It allowed for and even encouraged a great diversity of movements with people working on different agendas, organizing differently, and being able to cooperate in ways that made us powerful. I think those were both extremely rich elements of this period. For all the justified self-criticism – for focusing on summit hopping, for maintaining a negative relationship to power and not being able to propose alternatives, and for being unable to make the movement properly global – despite these limitations, I think that cycle was enormously important.
What for me characterizes the subsequent cycle of struggle, which we might place between 2001 and 2006 is the return to a unification agenda around which the plurality of previous movements dealing with numerous global issues was reined in and centralized as an anti-war movement, an anti-Bush movement. I think that this was necessary. I don’t mean to say we should have done something different, and it did have some important positive effects, some of which were delayed, at least in the US. The anti-war movement’s efforts during the US government’s moment of self-congratulation opened the way for what has now become a wide majority of public opinion against the war. But it also had negative effects in closing down the plurality of the movement and by focusing on just the one objective, which created a certain kind of disillusionment, melancholy, and cynicism. This is certainly true in the US, and I think at least partly true in Canada. One cause of disillusionment was that the movements, despite how enormous they were throughout the world in 2003, couldn’t stop the war.
What made the movements build in the years before 2001 was their diversity. One of the wonderful new developments of the 1990s was the recognition that autonomy and difference didn’t mean separatism and isolation; it didn’t mean a weakening of the movement. In fact, people recognized that autonomy and difference are precisely what build movements. So the reduction to unity in the anti-war period coincided with a dramatic decline in activism and even a decline in the inspiration and creativity we felt in the previous period. While this anti-war/anti-Bush period was necessary, then, we made no real gains from it. We had nothing to learn from it. It wasn’t a moment of creativity the way the previous period was.
With the recent mobilizations in Germany against the G8, do you think there are signs of a new cycle of struggle taking shape?
I think Rostock was certainly different than previous anti-G8 struggles. It was the first one since Genoa to be marked by that plurality and creativity. I think that’s a good measure, actually, for the differentiation of these three different cycles. In Rostock, we had creative tactics on the ground once again. Even at the most micro-level of organizing, Rostock was enormously creative, open, and plural. There was no single agenda. There were enormously varied agendas that were once again feeding off each other and working together – with all their differences and disagreements. One of the exciting things about Rostock was the much greater participation of Eastern European activists (Polish, Ukrainian and Russian) who hadn’t been involved previously. Since at least the mid 1990s, Southern Europe had been taking the lead in Europe, including the French, Spanish and Italian movements. Rostock signalled that the Northern European movement (Scandinavian, German) and Eastern European activists are taking a much more dominant role.
Movements no longer feel the pressure to drop everything or subordinate all our of other ideas and agendas to oppose the war. This announces something quite hopeful. I also think the discussions in the United States at the US Social Forum and in preparation for the Republican National Convention next summer show signs of the kind of excitement that has been muted in recent years.
How does this new cycle of struggle stand in relation to the two you described earlier? Do you see it as a return to prior themes, or do you see it coming back to those acquisitions in a different way?
It has to be coming back to those characteristics in a different way. It’s difficult to say how the intervening period has changed things. What’s clear to me is the return to focusing on capital itself – a return to considering properly global issues and not simply focusing on either a specific war or on the US.
The mobilizations in Rostock have had an impact on people in different parts of Europe and elsewhere. How might this cycle of struggle impact Canada and the United States?
Unfortunately, I don’t think that the activities at Rostock are going to have much direct impact. There were some North Americans there, but not a lot. Among North American activists, there isn’t that much consciousness of what’s been developing in Europe. In the US, I always have trouble recognizing what’s happening until it has already happened. But the one thing I do recognize is that there is a new excitement among activists about the potential to think differently. And I think that no longer being the lone voice against the war has, in the US, liberated activists. It’s like taking off the lid that had contained our excitement and creativity for several years.
I definitely think Rostock signals that the anti-capitalist globalization movement is back. In the United States, the condition that allows for that is the failure of the Bush war effort. This failure again opens a space for thinking globally and addressing the domination of capital. What forms this will actually take can’t be predicted. The most interesting innovations always come out of local organizing and from theorizing within movements. We are entering a period when, once again, activist innovations are going to teach us something new. ★
Notes
1 Commonly attributed to early 20th Century German jurist and Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt, “the state of exception” refers to the legal suspension of thelaw(e.g.thewarmeasuresact).InPoliticalTheology,(1922)Schmittargued that the ability to declare the state of exception was the definitive mark of sovereign power. Owing much to the uses to which Giorgio Agamben has put it in recent years, Schmitt’s concept has once again become a matter of left theoretical debate. Focusing on biopolitics but contrasting his position to the one adopted by Foucault, Agamben argues that sovereign assertion is the normal form of power in modern society. Following this postulate to its logical conclusion, Agamben proposes that the state of exception – especially as expressed through the concentration camp – is “the nomos [law] of the modern.” See: S tate of Exception (2005) and H omo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998).

BLAH BLAH BLAH AND BLAH

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It's cultural Monday,something I am thinking about axing, but still hanging on to for the moment.  I have spent way too long wandering around the web looking for something to put here that might interest someone.   Not sure I ever found that "something."

Then, out of the blue, pops up this essay written by someone who seemed to be running into the same problem as me...there is just too much mumbo jumbo out, too much stuff that seems pretty interesting, that upon second glance just fades off into obscurity.

I think to myself, I kinda like his opening, but then as I go along I start to lose my train of thought.

Voila...sounds like culture to me...sounds like someone talking mumbo jumbo about mumbo jumbo just like some of the stuff I read to me...Lot's of times I just feel like screaming like Whoopi Goldberg in the movie JUMPING JACK FLASH, where she is trying her damnest to decipher the lyrics to Jumping Jack Flash,  " Mick, Mick, Mick! Speak English!"

Good luck.

NOTE TO ME:  Dude, have you seen Theoretical Weekends at Scission...just sayin

The following comes from The Charnel-House.



Far too easily impressed


Image: Pieter Brueghel
“The Flatterers” (1592)

Earlier today, I tried to make my way through this rather long, theory-heavy Facebook thread. It popped up on my feed and some of the first few comments seemed pretty interesting. You know: it concerned concepts and authors like totality, status quo ante, the proletariat, Jameson. Figured I could maybe dig some of the Deleuze and communization stuff, even if I agreed with it less. Then all of a sudden all these theoretical accretions and academic encrustations began to glom onto the original topics under discussion at this crazy, exponential rate — sometimes as backstory or context, but more often as just syncretistic add-ons and meaningless whirligigs, an intellectually promiscuous process of addition, lunatical topsy-turvydom, etc.
Maybe I just didn’t know enough of these theories or theorists, but I don’t think that’s it. Really, I’m not anti-theory at all; I’m good at it. I have a lot more patience for dense theoretical discourse than many people I know. (That much should be obvious to anyone who reads or even glances passingly through this blog). But there’s some massive leveling our generation needs to do. Most of what’s been written recently or being written right now needs to be mercilessly torn down, without remorse or concern about hurt feelings. The elbow-rubbing and chummy collegiality needs to go. We must separate the wheat from the chaff, the Hearts—Stars—Clovers—Blue-Moons from the ordinary cereal. Honestly, we’re far too easily impressed with ourselves and each other. Most of what we produce is total garbage, and we should have no problem owning up to that. No more compliments or gentle “critiques” that just mildly “complicate” or “problematize” whatever bullshit we’re on about lately. Could be way off but who knows.
Anyway, I communicated these sentiments more or less exactly as I just presented them here to the posters in this thread. It was probably ill-advised decision to do so, bound to piss off everyone involved. People tend to get really touchy and insecure whenever their intellectual credentials are challenged. Of course, I wasn’t looking to call anyone out or target anybody in particular, though I could have, but leave things at this fairly generalized level. Still, most in the thread had enough of a sense of humor about themselves to move on quickly and not take it really personally. Except for one person: Louis-Georges Schwartz. He had already complained about the supposed “theater of cruelty” operative in the “spectacle” that is my blog, and took exception to the brief piece I wrote up lampooning the feminist journal LIES. Both because I felt his contributions to the thread were particularly egregious in terms of their jargonistic excess, leaning liberally on Deleuzean mumbo-jumbo and other “continental” gibberish, and because he continued his crybaby routine by blocking me over a Facebook comment, I’m going to repost a couple of Schwartz’s logorrheic gems. As one irreverent left communist remarked upon scrolling through the thread, some of this shit almost reads as deliberate self-parody:
1) Deleuze does not have a “Return to Bergson book” though he did write a 1966 mongraph on the philosopher and uses Bergson’s concepts through out his career. 2) The question of how to articulate the dialectic with duration / a certain deleuzeanism is the secret subject of “The Present Moment” and part of the reason I was ownering about was of articulating the dialectic, deleuzian genetics, and badouvian generation this spring. 3) ‘the collective” (not exactly a TC term doesn’t have to “collective borrow reproductive issues from the culture of private ownership” but it does have to start the future with reproduction as it is or it will be repressing a struggle (because what you are calling “the collective,” Tim, is nothing but a rift, a gendered *ecart.* 4) Any decent person is eschatological. The “Stationary State’ is an eschatology too.
This too, though it abruptly ends with an announcement that he’s blocking me (he cutely even took the trouble to tag me, an uncommon courtesy):
To a certain extent it seems that preserving the systemic dialectic is an alibi ti call for a party or a subject. Articulating the historical and structural dialectics then becomes what we call the task of the party or subject (“clarifying the desires of the working class” / Strategy) and the legislative fantasies of Badiou or Kant’s “duty” can then be produced in all their Oedipal micro-fascism. The above passage is Deleuzean in so far as it takes the Bergsonian notion of duration to be a description of time which takes into account the changes wrote by the passage of time in the syntheses of time themselves. In that model the “subject of history” becomes history itself (just as in Bergson the subject becomes the universe and philosophy converts itself to theology.) Considering the Simon piece is largely about struggle within struggle, the Bergson cite doesn’t seem exactly corrective. The question thisk, I think: is thew temporality described in the citation from Simon above conceptually distinct from the temporality entailed in Autonomia (The time of labor trying exit the plane of capital.) TC needs such a time. The movement image gives the time of the Taylorist “scientific management”/ moment of subsumption and the classical worker’s movements, the time image the time of autonomous labor and relations of refusal. The time of rifts (the post 200 period when the wage demand has lost salience in the capitalist core needs a third time, a time that holds when the social as such has been replaced by economy.) Also, I’m blocking Ross.
There are some writers who can range freely over theorists and philosophers from different epochs and traditions, invoking obscure concepts left and right irrespective of their original context  writers like Adorno, Jameson, or even perhaps Benjamin Noys. Needless to say, as should be obvious from just these passing remarks, Louis-Georges Schwartz is not one of these writers, or even remotely of their caliber. He has none of that casual command of the topic at hand, none of the mastery over the concepts to wield them in a way that isn’t absurd and confounding. Also, and I want to reiterate this, it never ceases to amuse me that people actually block each other over stupid Facebook arguments. Pretty sad.
Furthermore, did what I wrote really come off as that anti-theory to begin with? That really was not my intention. If anything it was meant as a call to arms, to demand more from ourselves and each other, to strive for better and more discerning theoretical argumentation. Maybe I’m a bit off, as I said, and my concerns are misplaced. This could after all just be another empty call for ruthless criticism. I don’t know, though. Marx and Engels were hardly ever impressed by their colleagues or contemporaries. Engels said something to the effect that the only English text from 1820-1845 that deserved to be translated was Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present. And Marx repeatedly referred to essays Lassalle sent to him, ostensibly supportive of Marx and Engels’ position, as “urine” (I think we can agree he was justified in issuing this judgment).
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11:08am, 10—30—2013: Terence Blake, an Australian-born philosopher living in France influenced by Paul Feyerabend and Gilles Deleuze, has written up a response to this post in which he reasserts his admiration for a figure like Deleuze while at the same time lamenting the use to which his ideas have since been put. As he puts it, the great French metaphysician inadvertently ended up “diffusing a swarm of ‘words of power’ to be wielded by narcissistic poseurs.” You can read “Where have all the arguments gone?” on his blog.

JEW HATRED IS NOT TO BE TOLERATED ON THE LEFT

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THIS IS NOT OKAY


I debated posting the piece below with myself.  I wondered if it came to close to equating anti-zionism with anti-semitism, was it going overboard?  Then, I thought to myself, what the hell am I debating.  Jew hatred is a growing phenomena again pretty much world wide, and I am going to debate doing a piece on it, just because it pertains more to the left then to the right?

Don't get me wrong.  I am not one of those who think the main danger Jews face is from the left.  Look to the Ukraine, look to nazi marches last week in France and Britain, look to the nazis I, and many, many others challenged last fall here in my town. Look at the fundamentalist Christians who support Israel but have no real use for Jews (except to fulfill their weird prophesies).  Look at the reactionary fundamentalist Muslims who target Jews at random. No, the main danger to Jews will always come from the right.  The vast majority of the left will figure it out...

But not always.

For example, virtually any time I post an article about Jew hatred someone, somewhere calls me a zionist.  If I post anything about Israel not being a nazi State, someone will accuse me of being an agent of the Mossad.  No, they don't call me a dirty Jew, but I know where they are coming from.  I obviously make a distinction between anti-zionism and Jew hatred, just as I make a distinction between zionism and Jews.  My history, which I won't repeat here for the hundredth time, my history of action on behalf of the Palestinian People, my history of work with Palestinians (alongside, I might add, sometimes Israeli Jews as well), my history of condemnation of zionism and the State of Israel's racist and oppressive policies, my history of struggle against all forms of racism and white supremacy go back nearly five decades now.  I don't have to prove anything... yet, yet, it seems that I often do.

Why is that?

Why don't people get that using nazi like cartoons of Jews (er zionists) with big noses and evil eyes are not okay?  Why don't they get that using Jewish symbols and equating them with nazi symbols is not okay?  Why don't people get that rich capitalist Jews are rich capitalist who happen to be Jews, just like rich capitalist Methodists are rich capitalist who happen to be Methodists?  Why do so many not get that Netanyahu, Sharon, and all the rest are leaders of a zionist state who are Jews...they are not all Jews and they don't represent the thinking of all Jews (or even all Israelis) anymore than Osama Ben Laden or the Royal family in Saudi Arabia represent all Muslims, etc., etc., etc?  Why do I always have to explain that I, for one, did not come from a wealthy Jewish family, as if because I am a Jew that must not be so?  No one demands that of Episcopalians.

Now, I am not wa waing.  I do not believe Jews, for example, in the USA are an oppressed minority.  Jews in the USA, in my book, have pretty much unfortunately joined the White Republic, just like the Irish, the Italians, and all the rest.  Is there Jew hatred in the USA?  Sure, but it is far from the same thing, not even close, to the white supremacist bull that people of color, especially African Americans face every single day in every single way.  Consequently, while I do spend some time fighting Jew hatred, I spend far, far more time fighting white supremacy.

I also do not feel that being a Jew means you can't be criticized, anymore than being a women, a gay, an African American, a Buddhist, or anything else means you can't be criticized.  However, I also feel you should not ever be criticized simply because you are a Jew or an African American, or any of the others mentioned above.  That seems fairly simple, but for some people it seems impossible.

Anyway, it is a shame I feel compelled to even introduce this piece below from the New Statesman with this sort of introduction, but such is life.  Like I said, I can deal with it.

However, me dealing with it is not the same as a Jew in the Ukraine dealing with it (in fact, I just advised a Jewish friend who is heading to the Ukraine to be careful there, told him the Ukraine has never been a good place for Jews, told him of the rising tide of fascism and nazi like Jew hatred going on right there right now) .  So, yes,  me dealing with it, does not mean that I don't find the rise of Jew hatred, fascism, and nazism just a wee bit scary. Me dealing with it does not mean I am blind to the fact that some of what passes for anti-zionism IS Jew hatred, or that some of the conspiracy crap I wrote about during the Occupy movement was Jew hatred barely disguised, if at all.  Me dealing with it, also, does not mean that I didn't appreciate the reaction of the majority in the Occupy movement who spoke out against such Jew baiting.  Me dealing with it does not mean, I do not recognize that most left anti-zionism is just that - anti-zionism and not Jew hatred.

 Me dealing with it also does not mean that I will spend any less time dealing with the reactionary Jewish nationalism known as Zionism and the ideology and policies and actions of the State it has created...just like a myriad of other Jews, I might add.

Felt compelled again to say that...



The radicalism of fools: the rise of the new anti-Semitism







No self-respecting person on the left should endorse anti-establishment positions that are in reality just cloaked anti-Semitism.




Mixed signals: fans do the quenelle outside a Nantes venue where Dieudonné was due to give a show on 9 January that was banned by the supreme court Arnaud Journois/photoshot.

At the end of December, a couple of days before the five remaining members of the cast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus were reunited on Graham Norton’s BBC sofa, I was reminded of one of the comedy team’s funniest sketches. Entitled “World Forum”, it featured a TV quiz in which various revolutionaries were questioned about important issues – such as who won the FA Cup final in 1949 and which football club was nicknamed the Hammers.
I was reminded of it because I was at the home of the Hammers, Upton Park in east London – reporting on a six-goal thriller between West Ham United and West Brom­wich Albion – when a colleague from another national paper suddenly asked me to define the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Having written a book about Jewish involvement in football, I’m used to inquiries about Tottenham Hotspur’s much-vaunted connections to the community, rabbinical attitudes to playing on the Sabbath and the relatively low number of Jewish players in the professional game. But this was the first time I’d been called on to comment on such a weighty ideological matter. It seemed about as surreal a question as the Python quizmaster’s to one of the icons of the radical left: “Now then, Che, Coventry City last won the FA Cup in what year?”
Then I saw on a TV replay – the match had been broadcast live around the world – the reason for this bizarre inquiry. The French striker Nicolas Anelka had celebrated the first of his two goals for West Brom with his right arm extended towards the ground, palm open, and the other arm bent across his chest, palm touching his right upper arm. It was, apparently, a reverse Nazi salute, invented by the Parisian comic Dieudonné M’bala M’bala. Although missed by most of us journalists at the game, it had been picked up by the cameras and was condemned by shocked tweeters watching it in France. Many of them referred to this “quenelle”, as Dieudonné had named it, as an anti-Semitic gesture; a few preferred the label “anti-Zionist”. Before I could explain the obvious distinction to my colleague, Albion’s caretaker manager, Keith Downing, breezed in to the press room. Besides the obligatory questions about tactics, injuries and controversial refereeing decisions, he was asked about the political significance of Anelka’s salute. “Absolute rubbish,” he snapped. It was an innocuous gesture, “dedicated to a friend [of Anelka’s] who happens to be a comedian”.
When Dieudonné, the friend in question, had initially joked in 2002 about Judaism being “a scam . . . it’s one of the worst, because it’s the first”, he was portrayed as some kind of Pythonesque absurdist. But after it became clear that he meant exactly what he’d said and when, in subsequent one-man shows, he felt compelled to insult the memory of Shoah victims, give a platform to Holocaust deniers and promote all kinds of Jew-hatred, his repulsive brand of humour provoked outrage. Not, it has to be said, universal outrage. On the far right, as would be expected, he was feted as a truth-teller. Less expected, perhaps, has been his growing attraction to the kinds of people who stick, or once stuck, Che posters on their bedroom walls. Despite several convictions for racism – and even though most recently, in a riposte to a critic, he declared: “When I hear Patrick Cohen speak, I think to myself, ‘Gas chambers . . . too bad’” – his attacks on Jewish capitalism and riffs about ripping out Holocaust chapters from history books have been hailed as taboo-breaking by those professing themselves to be radical, anti-establishment leftists.
Which raises a troubling question: is anti-Semitism now the radicalism of fools?
In the late 19th century, the German Marxist August Bebel observed that anti-Jewish prejudice was “the socialism of fools”. From Marx’s plea for the withering away of Jewishness to the popular euphemistic references to “rootless cosmopolitans” in the Stalin era, the left has had, to put it mildly, a problematic relationship with the world’s oldest monotheistic religion. The French left’s relationship has been more difficult than most. During the revolution of 1789, Jews were attacked for clinging selfishly to their religious identity. Even an ardent Dreyfusard such as the socialist leader Jean Jaurès could still insist that “the Jewish race was consumed by a sort of fever for profit”. What is new today is the appeal of this race-hate discourse to a fashionable, anti-globalisation, up-yours, them-and-us (“them” frequently being Jewish financiers and Holocaust memorialisers) coalition of radical Islamists, hip middle-class white Parisians, alienated black youth and Jewish-world-domination conspiracy theorists.
“Look at the composition of Dieudonné’s audiences,” says Philippe Auclair, an author who is the England correspondent of France Football. “There are people from the far right, but also from the far left. People on the margins. There are Green extremists and radical Muslims. To them, the English FA’s action against Anelka [the organisation has finally got round to charging him] is probably proof that American Zionists control the FA. Some of the people tweeting me, for example, have pointed out that the FA’s previous chairman was called Bernstein.”
David Bernstein’s predecessor as chairman at the FA, David Triesman, also happens to be Jewish. “There are some people on the so-called progressive left,” says Triesman, now Labour’s main foreign affairs spokesman in the House of Lords, “who have taken on board anti-Semitic slurs based on the notion of Jewish power and money.”
Triesman and Bernstein, who both pioneered anti-racist initiatives at the FA, pointed out to me that anti-Semitism had virtually disappeared from football stadiums. In fact, last year, despite protracted debate about Tottenham’s use of the term “Yid Army”, the community’s connection to the game became an official cause for celebration. In October, as part of the governing body’s 150th-birthday festivities, the Jewish Museum in London launched its “Four Four Jew” exhibition. The guest speaker was the Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger, who spoke about the depth and variety of the Anglo-Jewish contribution to soccer. As a fan, reporter and author of a book on the subject, I can confirm that anti-Semitism has almost vanished from the game’s discourse. But can the same be said of left-liberal discourse? Do British radicals, like their counterparts across the Channel, have a Jewish problem?
While acting as an adviser on “Four Four Jew”, Triesman was disturbed to discover that several leading Jewish figures in football had declined to take part. “They didn’t want to be seen in that context because they thought they’d be pilloried, in certain parts of the media, in an anti-Semitic way,” he told me. “They were worried that people would say Jews had too much power in football. Elements of the far left genuinely look at the world and believe a huge amount of power is concentrated into the hands of the Jewish people. It’s not a different view from that taken by the far-right movements of the 1930s.”
It is striking that, weeks after the “reverse Nazi” sign was performed in the East End of London – an area once inhabited by Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution from eastern Europe – the “zero tolerance towards anti-Semitism” line adopted by most football writers has not been replicated by the liberal commentariat. “Perhaps there’s a reluctance because he’s a Muslim,” Auclair says of Anelka’s gesture. “If he had been a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant there would have been a stink. There would have been outrage by liberals and progressives.”
Unbelievably, some liberals and progressives have defended Anelka. Nabila Ramdani, a French journalist of Algerian descent who writes for the Guardian, sees the Rolls-Royce-driving, hamburger-chain-advertising, multimillionaireenfant terrible as a victim of France’s political class – “because he is the kind of Frenchman many disapprove of – one who is Muslim, black and from a deprived housing estate”. In a column for the National, she wrote: “There is no doubt that Dieudonné has some repulsive views, but until its Premiership debut, the quenelle meant next to nothing at all.” She also noted that “anybody – from schoolchildren to celebrities and politicians – could and did perform [it] during those goofing around moments which are nowadays invariably caught on smartphone cameras”.
She omitted to mention that some of this goofing around took place outside synagogues, Holocaust memorials, Auschwitz and even the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse where Mohamed Merah, a Franco-Algerian gunman, murdered three children and a teacher in 2012.
This worrying phenomenon has not, as yet, entered the British cultural mainstream. True, the humorist David Mitchell, who describes himself as a leftish liberal, offended some Jewish sensibilities in 2009 when he quipped on a radio programme: “There’s actually no truth in the rumour that the last entry in Anne Frank’s diary reads: ‘Today is my birthday, Dad bought me a drum kit.’” But Mitchell, quite reasonably, claimed this was “a joke about people who are hiding, not wanting to make a noise . . . that’s not the same as finding the Holocaust funny”.
In fact, his fellow comedian Russell Brand, our very own idiosyncratic, taboo-breaking anti-hero, last year poked fun at Hugo Boss’s sordid past making uniforms for Nazi Germany – in stark contrast to Dieudonné, who prefers to poke fun at Jews who exaggerate their suffering in the Holocaust. I can remember feeling uncomfortable, as a youngster who played at being a punk, about the prevalence of the swastika in punk fashion, but accepted it to be more the product of a misguided, anarchistic desire to shock than an expression of racism.
Yet it is not so long ago that the Labour MP Tam Dalyell was accusing Tony Blair of being in the pocket of Lord Levy, Peter Mandelson, Jack Straw and a “cabal of Jewish advisers” (Mandelson and Straw have Jewish ancestry but neither is Jewish). In the 2012 London mayoral election, Ken Livingstone suggested that “rich Jews” wouldn’t vote for him. Only last year, the Labour peer Nazir Ahmed claimed his jail sentence for dangerous driving was the result of a Jewish plot and the Liberal Democrat MP David Ward tweeted, “What a shame there isn’t a powerful, well funded Board of Deputies for #Roma” (a reference to the Board of Deputies of British Jews).
“There are left-of-centre people in parlia­ment,” Triesman says, “who are incapable of understanding that you can be in the progressive movement and be Jewish. They can’t accept anything you say on Israel. They think that if you criticise Israel it’s a fiction, that almost anybody who’s Jewish can’t criticise Israel in good faith. Some of the rhetoric around the Israeli boycott movement from the Trotskyite left is anti-Semitic.” Which brings us back to the question asked by my football reporting colleague at Upton Park: what is the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism?
Criticising Israel, as many Jews do, and Zionism as an ideology, which a much smaller number but still a significant minority of the community does, are perfectly valid positions. Publishing an anti-Zionist cover story featuring a golden Star of David stabbing a pliant Union flag with the headline “A kosher conspiracy?”, as the New Statesman (then under different ownership and editorship) did in 2002, is not. It should not have to be spelled out, though this magazine’s then editor did so in a subsequent apology, that all principled critics of Israeli policies should avoid using anti-Semitic images and narratives. They should not, as the BBC’s Tim Llewellyn once did, accuse American politicians such as Dennis Ross of hiding behind “a lovely Anglo-Saxon name”. (Llewellyn went on to say that Ross is “not just a Jew, he is a Zionist . . . a Zionist propagandist”.) They should have no truck with vile anti-Jewish calumnies, including the blood libel slur, routinely rehearsed in anti-Zionist Arab textbooks.
“The Zionist lobby,” Dieudonné told the Iranian-funded Press TV, “have taken France as hostage and we are in the hands of ignorant people, who know how to structure themselves into a Mafia-like organisation and . . . have now taken over a country.”
As Dave Rich at the Community Security Trust, a charity that monitors anti-Jewish attacks in Britain, explains: “This is not the anti-Zionism of people who think that the Palestinians get a raw deal from Israel: it is the anti-Zionism of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, of a conspiracy theory that believes the Jews pull all the strings.”
“We need to keep things in perspective,” warns David Feldman, of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism. “We have experienced the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, with Jews prominent in many places [in finance]. Yet in contrast to the situation 80 years ago, few radicals have proposed anti-Semitic explanations.”
As Jonathan Freedland, who writes a weekly column for the Guardian and a monthly commentary for the Jewish Chronicle, points out, so far only “a few marginal political voices” on the British left have flirted with anti-Semitic tropes. However, after a property website owned by a Jewish businessman withdrew its sponsorship of West Brom on 20 January, and then the FA announced it was charging Anelka, the liberal-left commentariat was presented with a perfect opportunity to take a stand against such tropes. Yet more silence. In fact, it was left to the right-wing controversialist Rod Liddle to condemn the striker’s “repulsive” support for his Jew-baiting friend.
“On this issue,” Freedland told me, “all anti-racists of good conscience should have leapt in. Dieudonné is aligned with the far right. He’s had criminal convictions for anti-Semitism. My worry is that, as time passed before the FA’s announcement and the lack of outrage continued, it didn’t send out a strong message about anti-Semitism.
“The quenelle was a previously obscure gesture in this country and now it’s known. So this is the moment to make the point that no self-respecting person on the left should accept a supposedly ‘anti-establishment’ position which in fact says it’s the Jews who are ‘the establishment’.”






NORTHERN IRELAND: THE (UNFORTUNATELY) NOT SO STRANGE CASE OF MARTIN COREY

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I am wee late with the news, but news like this is actually always timely.

After nearly four years internment, Martin Corey was released from Maghaberry jail, Co Antrim on January 15th, 2014.  Corey was released with a number of conditions, including that he not be allowed to speak to the media.  He is also not allowed to return to his home town.  Other conditions believed to have been imposed on Corey include restrictions on his attendance at certain public and social events.


Corey was hidden from members of the press who had gathered outside the Maghaberry jail, in the six counties in Ireland's north still claimed by Britain, on the night of January 15. The 63-year-old was taken out in a blacked-out prison van directly to a train station, where he was released to his lawyer.



Human Rights in Ireland writes:

... On word that a single camera crew had arrived at Maghaberry to cover the release, Corey was whisked off in a prison van for a secret assignation with his solicitor at nearby Moira railway station. The thwarted BBC news team must have been particularly aggrieved, for these machinations received higher billing on the evening news than almost any other aspect of the four-year saga.


... a general injunction in talking to any media outlet appears plainly disproportionate to any justification for this restriction on his rights. Access to the media by those subject to criminal sanctions, and seeking to expose potential miscarriages of justice, has long been carefully guarded by the UK’s courts.



Martin was interned on secret evidence gathered by secret police and held without a charge or trial since April 2010.  Justice Watch Ireland points out that Corey, a lifelong republican political activist was never charged with any offence and had been denied due process under the law. He had never been given any lawful or legitimate reason for his dentition nor had there ever been any sufficient disclosure documentation made available, despite countless requests by his legal team.
In 1973, at the age of 19 he was sentenced to life in prison for his part in the killing of two Royal Ulster Constabulary (R.U.C.) officers near Lurgan. Mr Corey spent 19 years of his life in prison; he was released in June 1992, six years prior to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). Therefore he has served his full sentence and was not released under the provisions of the early release scheme as provided in the GFA.


Without warning on April 16th 2010 he was taken back into custody.  No reason was given to Martin at the time or since.  The British government removed him from his home and his family and never told him why.

The BBC says:
Former Northern Ireland Secretary of State Shaun Woodward had ordered his prison recall on the basis of "closed material" and unspecified allegations of involvement with dissident republicans.

Justice Watch Ireland states:


 Justice Watch Ireland (JWI) welcomes Mr Corey’s eventual release, however, we do so with continuing concern as to the process and manner in which he was detained including that of his release conditions.

The fact that Mr Corey has been incarcerated since April 1, 2010 without trial or charge in Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Maghaberry – the fact that he has never been given any lawful or legitimate reason for his dentition nor has there ever been any sufficient disclosure documentation been made available, regardless of the countless requests by his legal team and Human Rights groups, all would infer that he has no case to answer.

JWI call for the immediate removal of all conditions imposed upon the released ‘internee’ Martin Corey and reiterate our position; arraign Martin Corey in an open court and allow due process to take its place; if the authorities are unable or unwilling to do this, let him go unconditionally.

In the absence of afore mentioned process it shall result in making a mockery of the judicial system with evidence dictating that the state has imprisoned 63 year old Mr Corey unlawfully now for almost four years.

If any state can detain an Individual on so called ‘secret evidence’, hold them indefinitely without producing a shred of real evidence, release them years later without the accused ever being able to face their accuser – then have the state judicial apparatus gag them, give no recourse through it’s judiciary system so they may clear their name and be compensated for wrongful detention and abuse, we are facing a future not dissimilar to a Stalinist dictatorship.

The fact that Mr Corey is a political opponent to the current political process would cause one to extrapolate that the entire episode may be of a sinister and politically motivated action.


JWI have great concern as to how this degree of civil rights abuse has been allowed to go unchecked by those statuary bodies deemed to be in place in order to prevent such abuses occurring, particularly when conducted in such an open and notorious way.

All these issues require prompt and full investigation.

Mr Corey has been denied many rights, most importantly this 63 year old man; has been denied and continues to be denied his right to family and personal life as set out in the provisions of Article 8 of the ECHR.

That all said, it should be further noted that a breach of fundamental human rights of one is in fact, a breach of fundamental human rights for all.



Release Martin Corey Campaign spokesperson Cait Trainor said: “It is clear the continued imprisonment of Martin Corey was a political embarrassment to the Northern Ireland Office and he was released in a way that would ensure minimum publicity.
“The British government, secretary of state and all those involved in the internment of Martin Corey showed contempt for human rights and were involved in a despotic policy of ruling by decree.”

The following is from News Junkie Post. 

REPRESSION IN NORTHERN IRELAND: MARTIN COREY'S 
DETENTION WAS ON SECRET EVIDENCE
By Eugene Egan
After almost four years of detention without trial, Irish Republican Martin Corey, 62, was finally released on January 15, 2014. Corey is a member of Republican Sinn Fein, who broke away from Sinn Fein under the leadership of Gerry Adams in 1986. Republic Sinn Fein are linked to the republican dissident group the Continuity Irish Republican Army, who have continued to carry out attacks against British forces based in Northern Ireland.
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Corey, from Lurgan in County Armagh, was previously jailed for life in 1973 for the killing of two police officers but released in June 1992 after serving 19 years. On April 16, 2010, however, he was arrested, on the orders of Shaun Woodward, the then British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and detained in Maghaberry Prison without charge or trial.
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The Good Friday Agreement
Republican Sinn Fein oppose the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement because they see it as a sell-out that copper-fastens British rule in Northern Ireland. This agreement was reached by republican and unionist politicians on Friday April 10, 1998 following peace talks between Irish republicans and the British Government that led to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA) and loyalist paramilitaries decommissioning their weapons. The agreement allowed for a Power-Sharing Assembly in Stormont, Northern Ireland and “parity of esteem” for Irish nationalists and British unionists. It followed years of a protracted armed campaign by the IRA to force a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland.
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Ireland had been under British rule since the 12th century when it was invaded on the orders of the English king Henry 11 in 1169. Over the centuries, there were many uprisings and rebellions against British rule. The British responded with brute force, including a campaign of genocide in the 17th century by Oliver Cromwell’s army which wiped out a third of the Irish population. In addition, the British planted settlers from Scotland and England mostly in the North-East of Ireland: the forerunners of the unionist/loyalist communities in Northern Ireland today. The settlers were Protestants who enjoyed privileges over the native Catholic Irish, which served the interests of Britain’s policy of “divide and rule.”
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In 1916, an uprising by Irish nationalists in Dublin known as the Easter Rising was defeated. Although it was unsuccessful and their leaders executed, the brutal manner of the executions led to the reawakening of the Irish national consciousness and the formation of the IRA. In the 1918 election, over 73 percent of the Irish people voted for Sinn Fein’s mandate calling for Irish independence, but this was ignored by the British Government. Nevertheless the IRA’s campaign of guerrilla warfare was very effective and led to peace talks between the IRA and the British Government. The talks culminated in the partition of Ireland and the establishment of the Irish Free State, but Northern Ireland would remain under British rule under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.
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Many Irish republicans were unhappy about this, who insisted on a complete British withdrawal and the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. A civil war ensued between pro-treaty and anti-treaty republicans. The newly-formed Irish government pro-treaty forces were as ruthless, if not more, than the British and were eventually successful in suppressing those republicans who wanted to continue the struggle against partition and for a united Ireland completely free from British rule.
With partition and the suppression of the IRA, Ireland was divided into two reactionary states. The newly-formed state of Northern Ireland was created in such a way as to ensure a Protestant/unionist majority over the Catholic/nationalist community. Laws were introduced that discriminated against Catholics who were denied civil rights and found it hard to get employment and housing.
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In 1968, a campaign for civil rights was formed but this was met with baton-charging and other such violence by the protestant-dominated sectarian police force, known as the B-specials, who encouraged loyalist pogroms against the Catholic community. The situation was running out of control with riots and killings and the British army had to be brought in ostensibly to keep the peace, but in reality it was to maintain British rule and prop up the sectarian state. At the same time the Provisional IRA was born to help defend the nationalist community from state violence and force a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Water cannons, rubber bullets, curfews and other such like was the order of the day. Internment was introduced in 1971 to deal with the IRA, but this only increased their support and alienated nationalists from the British state.
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Following almost 30 years of a long protracted military conflict between the Provisional IRA and the British state, a compromise solution was established. This compromise was the Good Friday Agreement. Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, under the leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness brokered a peace deal that led to the Provisional IRA decommissioning its weapons in return for power sharing in the Northern Ireland Assembly of Stormont.
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The Case of Martin Corey
The British authorities detained Martin Corey for nearly four years on the basis of “closed information”: in other words, “secret evidence.” Neither Corey nor his legal representatives were shown the evidence against him or told why the authorities believed he was a threat.
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In a Judicial Review in July 2012, Corey challenged his detention, leading  Judge Colman Treacy to order his release on bail on the grounds that “closed material” was insufficient evidence to detain him. On the same day, however, the judge’s order was blocked by the Secretary of State, citing grounds of national security, as the evidence against him was secret and could not be disclosed even to the judge.
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The fact that a man can be taken away from his home and detained on the basis of “secret evidence,” without charge or trial, is a form of selective internment and a blatant disregard for human rights and the due process of law. Supporters of Martin Corey say his detention is part of a vindictive campaign of repression against political activists who speak out against the Good Friday Agreement.
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Part of the conditions of his release is that he cannot talk to the media. The Martin Corey Release Campaign welcomed his release but issued a statement saying: “Martin was interned on secret evidence gathered by secret police and held without a charge or trial since April 2010…. The British Government, secretary of state and all those involved in the internment of Martin Corey showed contempt for human rights and were involved in a despotic policy of ruling by decree.”
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The British-controlled state has a long history of using repressive laws and tactics against Irish republicans and nationalists who oppose British rule. Such tactics have included internment, curfews, non-jury courts, paid informers, undercover assassinations, and agent provocateurs. On January 30, 1972, British soldiers shot dead 13 civil-rights marchers in Derry in what became known as Bloody Sunday. In 1978, the European Court of Human Rights found the British government guilty of inhuman and degrading treatment when 14 former internees took legal action after being hooded, beaten, deprived of sleep and food, forced to stand for long periods and subjected to continuous loud noise. More recently, there has been evidence of many British soldiers and policemen colluding with pro-British loyalist death squads.
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More and more Irish Republicans, socialists and political activists are pointing out that, like the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, the Good Friday Agreement is a ruse by the British Government to maintain British rule in Ireland. They argue that it fails to address the root cause of the conflict: the British presence and the Unionist veto on a united Ireland. Republican Sinn Fein broke away from Sinn Fein over its decision to take seats in the British parliament, arguing that having two separate referendums on a united Ireland (as happened with the agreement’s ratification) was undemocratic, as Northern Ireland is an artificially created state established to ensure a British unionist majority and that the whole of the people, north and south, should be given the right to vote in one all-Ireland referendum. An increase in bombing, shootings and riots in recent years illustrates the growing popular tensions and disillusionment with the peace accord.
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Editor’s notes: Eugene Egan is a political  activist and writer based in the United Kingdom who campaigns on Palestine and Ireland. His work has been published in various British and Irish publications including Palestine News and Ceasefire Magazine. Photographs one, five, six and thirteen by Iker Merodio. Photographs four, nine, eleven, twelve  and  fifteen by PPC Antifa. Photograph ten by The Urban Guerrilla . Photograph three, seven, eight and fourteen  from the Burns Library.
- See more at: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2014/01/17/repression-in-northern-ireland-martin-coreys-detention-was-on-secret-evidence/#sthash.wW2uUgSi.dpuf

WHITE WOMEN, SLAVERY, PRIVILEGE, WHITE SUPREMACY AND AN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH

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Refusing to conform, she “hid out” until her delegation had passed, then surged into the group of white women – some hostile, some not – and took her rightful place in the Illinois group. She also had to be protected from the other women in the delegation who were, ah, slightly peeved that a Negro woman dared  march among their ranks, after she had been explicitly told not to.


The point of what I am about to write is not that all white women, or all white feminists or whatever are racists.  Obviously that is not the case.  Many white women (and even white men) have struggled against white supremacy, some very heroically.  Almost no white men or white women can say they do not yet benefit from their white skin privilege (John Brown and Marilyn Buck come to mind as two who just might have been able to make that claim).  The point of my intro is that white women (like white men) as a whole have not only benefitted from white supremacy but have supported, upheld, and contributed to it.  

Sometimes we just have to face uncomfortable facts.  For the women's movement (for the left in general) an uncomfortable fact is the very clear relationship white women have with white supremacy.  The reality of patriarchy (and the struggle against it) and the lack of power of women relative to men, does not and cannot mean we should pretend that white women are somehow not accountable for their own role in the development of white supremacy and in the privileges their white skin gives them.

Poet, activist, and author Olivia a. Cole writes about slavery in an essay she penned on the blog 12 YEARS A SLAVE, 


It’s true, white women lacked the agency of their husbands, fathers and brothers, so their hand in slavery did not extend to the buying and selling of human chattel, the laws being made that called black people only a fraction of a human being. But white women whipped black bodies. They burned them. They posed next to the murdered bodies of black people who were lynched. They called people niggers. They scratched faces. They separated families. While wearing their pretty dresses, they ruined lives.

Actually, I should point out in 1815 European women owned 24% of those enslaved in St Lucia. In Barbados 40% of properties with 10 or less enslaved people were owned by women. In Bridgetown, Barbados women were the principal slave owners, using slaves in domestic occupations.  There will be more about slavery and women in the piece attached.  So lets move on beyond that for now.

Belle Kearney was a Woman suffrage leader from Mississippi.  In an address she gave to the National American Woman Suffrage Association during the fight for the vote for (some) women said, 


The enfranchisement of women would insure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained, for upon unquestioned authority it is stated that in every southern State but one there are more educated women than all the illiterate voters, white and black, native and foreign, combined. As you probably know, of all the women in the South who can read and write, ten out of every eleven are white. When it comes to the proportion of property between the races, that of the white outweighs that of the black immeasurably. The South is slow to grasp the great fact that the enfranchisement of women would settle the race question in politics. The civilization of the North is threatened by the influx of foreigners with their imported customs; by the greed of monopolistic wealth and the unrest among the working classes; by the strength of the liquor traffic and encroachments upon religious belief. Some day the North will be compelled to look to the South for redemption from those evils on account of the purity of its Anglo-Saxon blood, the simplicity of its social and economic structure, the great advance in prohibitory law and the maintenance of the sanctity of its faith, which has been kept inviolate. Just as surely as the North will be forced to turn to the South for the nation's salvation, just so surely will the South be compelled to look to its Anglo-Saxon women as the medium through which to retain the supremacy of the white race over the African.



Want a nasty piece of history that you don't read much about try this from Scholastic:


On March 3, 1913, as 5,000 women prepared to parade through President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, demanding the right to vote, Ida B. Wells was standing to the side. A black journalist and civil-rights activist, she had taken time out from her anti-lynching campaign to lobby for woman suffrage in Chicago. But a few days earlier, leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) had insisted she not march with the Illinois delegation. Certain Southern women, they said, had threatened to pull out if a black woman marched alongside whites.


 By 1900, most suffragists had lost their enthusiasm for civil rights, and actually used racism to push for the vote. Anna Howard Shaw, head of NAWSA, said it was "humiliating" that black men could vote while well-bred white women could not. Other suffragists scrambled to reassure white Southerners that white women outnumbered male blacks in the South. If women got the vote, they argued, they would help preserve "white supremacy."
...Wells was never really embraced by the white suffrage movement. And though both white and black women won the vote in 1920, they did not do it by marching together.

Not so pretty a picture. 

Ida B. Wells was no late comer to this business by the way.  An 1894 showdown between her and temperance leader Frances E. Willard is an example of the racial resentment that had over taken the American suffrage movement.

" Better whiskey and more of it' is the rallying cry of great, dark-faced mobs," Willard said in an 1890 interview with the New York Voice.   "The safety of [white] women, of childhood, of the home, is menaced in a thousand localities."

Wells was incensed by that and other statements coming out of the mouths of temperance leaders and some suffrage leaders.  She said that Willard, "... "unhesitatingly slandered the entire Negro race in order to gain favor with those who are hanging, shooting and burning Negroes alive." Wells wanted to know   how influential white women could continue to turn a blind eye to the white mobs who threatened black lives.

Even earlier, In 1870, the suffragists found themselves on opposing ends of the equal-rights battle when Congress passed the 15th Amendment, enabling black men to vote (at least, in theory) -- and not women. That measure engendered resentment among some white suffragists, especially in the South.

I am not going to continue through history.  Let's move on.

When black women feminists complain about racism some white women within the feminist community, writes the blog Dear White Women, respond saying something akin to:



The blog goes on to point out accurately:


This may sound reasonable on the surface, especially with comments like “women of all races and classes” giving a nod to the idea of inclusion, but what it really amounts to is, “When you complain about racism in the feminist community, you cause divisions. So shut up and don’t complain.” We wrap ourselves up in all these cries for unity as if the division itself were the root of the problem. As if the problem is women of color having a problem with racism, and *not* the racism itself. It’s a way to sideline the issue of racism and shift the blame to the WoC who point it out. That way we never have to address it and actually fix it.


I know I am bouncing all over the place here, just sort of throwing darts out there, so let me try to bring this a little more together.



Too many just assume that white women are natural allies of Black people in the struggle against white supremacy.  If only it were so, but it isn't.  As Chauncey DeVega has pointed out eloquently:

White women were members of the KKK. White women owned black people as slaves. White women raped, tortured, and abused their African-American human property. White American women struggling for the right to vote in the early 20th century leveraged their status as “white” citizens, and the “offense” to the white racial order that was (ostensible) black male voting-citizenship, in order to win the franchise.

 But the fights against the White inferiority complex masquerading as White supremacy and white privilege are not perfectly congruent with the struggles by White women against the sexism faced by their group. Here, Third World Feminism, Womanism, and “White Feminism” are not always the same struggles.

The nomenclature and broader language attempts to capture that reality. The language of “allies” and “natural” must also be deconstructed and challenged. Would White women see their struggle as more aligned with Black women than with White men? And would they make that choice–again emphasizing the word “natural”–as a given and a default against the collective and group self-interest of Whiteness as a political and social force?

Among anti-racists, progressives, liberals, as well as those who are invested in “social justice” in the United States and elsewhere, one of the standing rules is that we are not allowed to “rank oppressions.” Sexism, racism, homophobia, able-ism, classism, and other types of inequalities and discrimination are all considered equal.

Such a rubric is a practical concession; in many ways it is also rooted in lazy thinking.

Based on empirical data, we can most certainly rank oppressions. Race and gender are social constructs that do not necessarily reveal with any precision or truth a great deal about how individual people fully locate themselves in society, approach politics, or go about their daily lives. Of course, race and gender remain real. Yet, this is true in relative, local, and absolute terms.


Ani DiFranco is a White woman who enjoys the benefits of both racial and class privilege in the United States. What does her plantation misstep tell us about sexism and racism? And as I signaled to above, are White women as a group any more (or less) committed to anti-racism, and fighting White privilege, than are White men?

The answer is no. There are exceptional White women who have fought, and continue to fight, the White inferiority complex masquerading as White supremacy in the United States and the West. There are White men who have done the same. Whiteness remains a powerful social drug which promises unearned material, psychological, and economic privileges for its signatories and beneficiaries.

White women have signed that contract in much the same way as White men.


An allegiance to White privilege and White racism (more often than not) unites White men and White women together This is one of the ugly, dirty, little secrets that those on the anti-racist Left are afraid to confront.

White conservatives are deeply invested in White supremacy. They are honest about it. By comparison, there is an ugly strain of White Liberal Racism, that while in comparison to the Right, is very different in how it is expressed. But Liberal Racism shares many of the latter’s racist assumptions about Black people…as well as an investment in maintaining and protecting White privilege.

Liberal and Conservative racism both do the work of White supremacy in the United States during the post civil rights era. Unfortunately, the public discourse in the United States has not matured enough to confront such a troubling and challenging social fact.


Why write all this?  Why go here?  

If white people are ever going to collectively and with real strength confront the legacy of and the power of white supremacy all whites, regardless of gender, have to  face up to reality.  White people have to become race traitors. Further, if we are ever going to confront in a real way Capital, white people, white workers, white activists, white leftists, have to do exactly the same thing.  We can't do that if we deny our (I say "we" and  "our" since I am white, too) history and complicity in all this.  A divided multitude or a divided working class will never successfully replace capital, global or otherwise, until whites deal with white supremacy and white privilege.  It just can't happen.  You can't unite a class that is in fact divided, and you can't overcome division by pretending all you have to do is shout "Black and white, unite and fight." You must deal with the very real material conditions and privileges that are the cause of the divide and that are the basis of white supremacy.  

In my book, that is a fact.

That's why this is here.  This is just one piece of the puzzle that really isn't all that puzzling.

The following is from Racism Review.


White Women and U.S. Slavery: Then and Now




It’s Tuesday and that means it’s Trouble with White Women and White Feminism, our ongoing series meant to offer a broader context and deeper analysis of the latest outrages by the melanin-challenged.
White women were active participants in, proponents of and key beneficiaries of the system of slavery in the U.S., both historically and now.
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While some historians, such as  C. Vann Woodward and Catherine Clinton, have argued that white women were secretly opposed to the system of slavery, scholar Elizabeth Fox-Genovese demolished this notion with her work, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women in the Old South (University of North Carolina Press, 1988).  Fox-Genovese draws on white slaveholding women’s diaries, letters, and postbellum memoirs, along with the Works Progress Administration’s narratives of enslaved black women as her source material to make a convincing argument that even though they worked in the same households there was no “shared sense of sisterhood” among black and white women in the plantation household.  Fox-Genovese makes a distinction between white women in the North, whose urban, bourgeois culture valued individualism and the redeeming power of domestic work, and white Southern women, whose hierarchical, dependency-based culture judged women’s worth on their success in conforming to the ideal of the “lady,” rather than on their thrift, industry, and devotion to all-sacrificing motherhood. By arguing that white, Southern women’s history “does not constitute a regional variation on the main story; it constitutes another story,” Fox-Genovese joined women of color and labor historians who were offering critiques of both the white, middle-class feminist movement and the histories it produced. (See this for a much longer and more thorough summary of Fox-Genovese’s work.)
ebony_ivyIt is a mistake to believe that slaveowning was an entirely Southern U.S. phenomenon. In fact, it was the Northeast where slavery began in the U.S. and where some of its enduring legacy remains. “Human slavery was the precondition for the rise of higher education in the Americas,” writes historian Craig Steven Wilder in his, Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery and the Troubled History of American Universities.  Wilder writes:
“In the decades before the American Revolution, merchants and planters became not just the benefactors of colonial society but its new masters. Slaveholders became college presidents. The wealth of the traders determined the locations and decided the fates of colonial schools. Profits from the sale and purchase of human beings paid for campuses and swelled college trusts. And the politics of the campus conformed to the presence and demands of slave-holding students as colleges aggressively cultivated a social environment attractive to …wealthy families.”
Wilder paints a compelling portrait of the ways that slavery was not merely part of the “context” present at the same time as the rise of higher education in the U.S., but in fact, was a crucial element that universities relied on to build facilities, endowments and legacies of elite social environments for cultivating subsequent generations of the nation’s leaders. While it’s true that these institutions were established for the benefit of white men, white women eventually demanded and won access.
White women in the academy, and I’m one of them, continue to benefit from the system of higher education built by enslaved human beings. According to the Almanac of Higher Education, women accounted for only 31% of all tenured faculty in US colleges and universities,but of these 78% are white women, compared to just 0.6% American Indian, 4% Latina, 6.7% Asian American, and 7% African American.  Wilder’s research is focused on Ivy League (elite) educational institutions, but it has implications for those of us outside those institutions as well. I work at CUNY (not, to my knowledge, built by enslaved people) but CUNY operates within an eco-system of other institutions of higher education from which we all benefit.
“But, my family didn’t own slaves!” also, “Slavery was a long time ago, isn’t it time to forget all that?
These refrains about a distant, non-slaveholding past are a commonplace among white people. The first is meant to suggest a lack of connection to the institution of slavery, and therefore, a lack of responsibility for understanding it; and the second is meant to suggest that historical amnesia is a salve for social ills. My family didn’t own slaves either (that I know of). This wasn’t an ethical stance, they just couldn’t afford to own any human beings.
The rush to forget, to distance from the legacy of slavery in the U.S. strikes me as peculiar.  Recently, this resistance to facing history has come out in the ways that white people talk about (and don’t talk about) the film ’12 Years a Slave.’    Most often, what I hear from white women friends, is this: ”I’m not sure I can go see 12 Years a Slave. It just sounds too painful to watch, and I wonder, why would I want to pay a babysitter so I can be in agony for two hours?”
Perhaps part of this resistance is a reluctance to come to terms with the way that, as Olivia Cole writes, white women ruined lives while wearing their pretty dresses.  While scholarly works like those by Fox-Genovese or Wilder may not reach a wide public audience, this film could if people are willing to go see it. Part of what the film reveals is the cruel treatment meted out by white women situated as the plantation mistress to the enslaved women they controlled.
Plantations: Topographies of Terror or Theme Parks?
Slavery does not exist solely in the mists of some distant past, but remains with us in the here and now of the U.S.  Plantations are increasingly popular locations for weddings for white women who are convinced they can “work around the racism” of such a setting.
Nashville-Plantation-Wedding-500x333
People who doubt the fascination we have as a society with the “plantation” theme, should watch “Gone with the Wind” (1939), which serves as a kind of cultural template for the aesthetics of this phenomenon. While some may see this as irrelevant to the contemporary milieu, the recent micro-controversies involving Paula Deen and Ani DiFranco suggest otherwise.
paula_deenPaula Deen is a celebrity who built a small empire on her southern cooking and down-home style.  Deen recently became embroiled in controversy when in June 2013, she became the target of a lawsuit alleging racial and sexual discrimination.  In her deposition, when asked if she’d used the N-word to describe African American people, she said “Yes, of course.”   Among the other revelations about Deen that emerged were the details of her “dream southern plantation wedding.”   Deen offered a tearful apology for her use of the N-word, the lawsuit was dismissed, but it may have been too late because there was already a Twitter hashtag #PaulaDeenRecipes with some truly hilarious, creative entries (e.g., Back of the Bus Biscuits #PaulaDeenRecipes). Deen had her television show cancelled by Food Network, and endorsement contracts cancelled by Smithfield Foods, Walmart, Target, QVC, Caesars Entertainment, Home Depot, diabetes drug company Novo Nordisk, J.C. Penney, Sears, KMart and her then-publisher Ballantine Books. However, several companies have expressed their intent to continue their endorsement deals with Deen, and fans flocked to her restaurants in a show of support.

ani_difrancoAni DiFranco is a singer, songwriter and is often regarded as a feminist icon.  DiFranco faced a controversy in 2013 when after the announcement that she was hosting a three-day artists’ workshop billed as the “Righteous Retreat” at Iberville Parish‘s Nottoway Plantation in White Castle, Louisiana.  Now operated as a luxury resort, Nottoway Plantation was one of the largest plantations in the South, and features the largest antebellum mansion. Its operator and founder John Randolph owned over 155 slaves in the year 1860. DiFranco’s choice of venue for the retreat was called “a blatant display of racism” on a petition at change.org that collected more than 2,600 signatures. On December 29, 2013 DiFranco cancelled the retreat and offered what many saw as a tepid, non-apology-apology. Chastened by the criticism that followed that first statement, DiFranco issued a second apology on January 2, 2014 in which she wrote, “..i would like to say i am sincerely sorry. it is obvious to me now that you were right – all those who said we can’t in good conscience go to that place and support it or look past for one moment what it deeply represents. i needed a wake up call and you gave it to me.” 
The public oppobrium that Deen and DiFranco faced are tied up in what Priscilla Ocen, writing at For Harriet, calls the subservience fantasy in the U.S.  The persistent cultural fascination with plantations as settings of an idyllic past positions them as locations that can be “reclaimed” as luxury resorts, wedding venues, and “righteous retreat” destinations. And, I would argue, it is not coincidental that it is white women who are fueling this fantasy.
There are other ways to approach our history. At the same time that the controversy with Ani DiFranco was roiling the interwebs, I was visiting Berlin. While I was there, I went to a museum called “Topographies of Terror,” a museum that marks the site of the former Secret State Police, the SS and the Security Main Office of the Third Reich.  The story of how the museum was created fascinated me as much as the collection itself. After the war the grounds were leveled and initially used for commercial purposes, and eventually became a vacant lot. Public interest in this site emerged gradually in the 1970s and 1980s. It was during this time that groups of citizens, historians, and activists began the work of commemorating the site and using it as a mechanism for confronting the difficult past of the Nazi regime.
In the U.S., we have very few (if any) of these kinds of monuments.  Imagine, if you will, a wedding held at a former concentration camp with a “Third Reich” theme, with the bride urging guests to “work around” the blatant anti-semitism. Offensive, right? Of course it is.  Then why is it that here in the U.S., we turn plantations – our own topographies of terror – into theme parks and luxury resorts?
As I said, I find the American rush to forget, to distance ourselves from the legacy of slavery strikes me as peculiar.  I suspect that part of this reluctance has to do with the affective, particularly for white women, who wish above all else, not to be made uncomfortable about race.  More about that in another post in this ongoing series, Trouble with White Women#tww.






MISSOURI SIMPLY CAN'T WAIT TO KILL SOMEONE

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Apparently the state in which I live just can't wait to kill someone.

Last minute requests for stays on executions are a common thing.  The one made by Herbert Smulls was not unusual in that regard. What was unusual, was that he was executed before his final request was decided by the High Court.


Last week the Supreme Court granted a stay in Smulls' case two hours before his scheduled execution. Two issues were pending before the Court: an all-white jury and the use of compounding pharmacy drugs.

Smulls, an African American, was executed before his last stay was denied.

But wait, maybe for Missouri this is not so unusual.   Last August, Missouri executed Allen Nicklasson before the Eighth Circuit could finish their en banc rehearing denial, never mind a possible Supreme Court appeal.

Huh?

Find Law reports about that:


Whether pro or anti-death penalty, Circuit Judge Bye's dissent from the Eighth Circuit's denial of rehearing en banc is an opinion worth reading. He notes, first, that "Missouri put Nicklasson to death before the federal courts had a final say on whether doing so violated the federal constitution."

And this isn't the first time. Judge Bye cites nine instances in four years in the mid-1980s where Missouri set execution dates before federal review was exhausted. In most of the cases, Supreme Court Justice Blackmun stepped in and scolded the state courts. They apparently haven't learned their lesson.

"In my near fourteen years on the bench, this is the first time I can recall this happening," he wrote. "By proceeding with Nicklasson's execution before our court had completed voting on his petition for rehearing en banc, Missouri violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the long litany of cases warning Missouri to stay executions while federal review of an inmate's constitutional challenge is still pending."


 Less then ten years ago Missouri's death penalty practices were condemned by the courts.  At that time it had to do with the drugs used to carry it out and the procedure itself. A medical journal noted that the three-drug regimen employed at the time would be insufficient to ensure a pain-free death, and that the regimen would be illegal for use on animals in nineteen states.  Missouri had been employing a dyslexic surgeon, who admittedly mixed up numbers and names of drugs, to carry out their executions. Worse yet was the lack of a written protocol and the surgeon's ability to adjust the formula on-the-fly, without consulting an anesthesiologist.



The court at that time concluded that "Missouri's lethal injection procedure subjects condemned inmates to an unnecessary [and unacceptable] risk that they will be subject to unconstitutional pain and suffering when the lethal injection drugs are administered." The issue was "resolved" by firing the physician and adopting a written protocol.
Then, recently,the drugs ran out, and Missouri, and other states, turned to compounding pharmacies. The briefly gained transparency of a written three-drug protocol has been replaced with a series of rapidly changed one-drug regimens using unknown amounts of drugs from unknown and possibly unreliable sources.

Guess what?
Nicklasson was challenging Missouri's one-drug execution protocol before he was executed mid-appeal. So was Smulls. As have many others.

Now back to Herbert Smulls.  Think Progress reports:

Herbert Smulls was in the middle of a phone call discussing his attorneys’ final efforts to save his life when he was reportedly seized by prison guards, hauled into an execution chamber, and injected with a toxic cocktail of drugs. At the time of his death, an appeal was pending before the United States Supreme Court asking the justices to halt his execution. 

The state of Missouri didn't have time for such legal niceties.  They had a man to kill and they wanted to do it right away.  Maybe the fact that  in January," an Ohio inmate reportedly took 15 gasping, strangling minutes dying" via lethal injection after a new drug was tested on him, violating the rule against cruel and unusual punishment worried them that the court might be willing to listen to such an appeal...or maybe they just relished the idea of killing a man this way.

For Scission Prison Friday I present the following from the Atlantic.



Missouri Executed This Man While His Appeal Was Pending in Court


Andrew Cohen


Herbert Smulls was pronounced dead four minutes before the justices in Washington denied his final stay. Did Missouri officials breach their ethical duties by permitting this to happen?





Reuters
It is 2014, not 1964 or 1914, and yet on Wednesday night a black man in Missouri, a black man convicted by an all-white jury, was executed before his federal appeals had been exhausted. He was executed just moments after reportedly being hauled away by prison guards while he was in the middle of a telephone call discussing his appeals with one of his attorneys. He was executed even though state officials knew that the justices of the United States Supreme Court still were considering his request for relief.
Asked repeatedly not to execute Smulls while appeals were pending, state officials failed even to respond to emails from defense attorneys that night while corrections officials went ahead with the execution. Smulls thus was pronounced dead four minutes before the Supreme Court denied his final stay request. This was not an accident or some bureaucratic misunderstanding and did not come as a surprise to Smulls’ lawyers. They say it was the third straight execution in Missouri in which corrections officials went ahead with lethal injection before the courts were through with the condemned man's appeals.*
Just last month, for example, Missouri officials similarly executed a man named Allen Nicklasson before his appeals were concluded. That timing of that execution prompted a federal appeals court judge, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kermit Bye, to declare that he was “alarmed” that Missouri proceeded with its execution “before this court had even finished voting on Nicklasson's request for a stay. In my near fourteen years on the bench, this is the first time I can recall this happening.”
Below are some of the emails sent Wednesday night from Smulls’ attorneys to state lawyers as the deadline drew near for the expiration of the death warrant authorizing their client’s execution. Over and over again, the defense tried to impress upon state officials the need to wait for the judicial process to play out before executing Smulls:


Such frantic communication from defense attorneys to state officials is not uncommon in the hours leading up to an execution-- the state, after all, has the body of the man it seeks to execute (literally, habeas corpus). What is striking here, though, is not just that state lawyers failed or refused even to respond to Smulls’ attorneys but that these officers of the court, and corrections officials, essentially divested the Supreme Court of jurisdiction by killing the litigant.
The timeline is everything here. Before 10:00 that night, Smulls’s attorney notified state officials that there were active pending appeals at the both the Supreme Court and the 8th Circuit. “Do not execute Mr. Smulls while claims for legal relief and stay are pending,” the defense attorneys pleaded with opposing counsel. There was no email response from Missouri’s lawyers, Smulls' attorney Cheryl Pilate told me Friday. There was instead a single telephone call, much earlier in the evening, in which a state attorney acknowledge the existence of a stay (before filing to have that stay removed).
At 10:11, the final lethal injection protocols were initiated. By this time, the 8th Circuit had rejected all of the claims before it—over another pointed dissent from Judge Bye—leaving only an active appeal before the Supreme Court. At 10:20 Smulls was pronounced dead. Ten minutes later, at 10:30, the Supreme Court notified the lawyers that Smulls’ final stay request had been denied at 10:24. This means that Missouri began to execute a man 13 minutes before it was entirely sure it could do so. Smulls was pronounced dead four minutesbefore the Supreme Court finally authorized Missouri to kill him.
Via email Friday, I asked state attorneys to comment upon the emails they received from defense attorneys and Missouri’s evident lack of response to them. I asked them to explain their rationale in proceeding with the execution knowing the justices still had the case. Through a spokeswoman, late Friday, they responded:
The law is clear: the pendency of litigation is insufficient to stop an execution.  Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U.S. 880, 895-96 (1983). The legal mechanism for a federal court to stop an execution is a court-ordered stay.  On January 29, 2014, the State of Missouri directly asked the United States Supreme Court if the execution of Mr. Smulls should be stopped.  The Court said no three times that day prior to execution, lifting all stays.
Attorneys for the State were in contact with the clerks of both the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court throughout the evening of the execution.  Both courts were aware that the execution would proceed once all stays had been lifted. No stay of execution was in effect at time of the execution.
Counsel for the State spoke to Ms. Pilate after the United States Supreme Court vacated the first two stays on the evening of January 29. Her subsequent emails, sent after the United States Supreme Court vacated the final stay, simply reiterated her demand that the State halt the lawful execution of her client but contained no legal authority for her demand (emphasis in original).
Some legal experts agree with that view. They contend that, at some point, the appellate process is over and that a man set for execution ought to be executed. This view posits that any other approach would give defense attorneys the power to pile appeal upon appeal in an effort to postpone the implementation of a death warrant. But this is not a universal view. Some death penalty advocates I spoke with on Friday say that state officials have an affirmative duty not to proceed with an execution if they know a Supreme Court appeal is pending. Clearly, Judge Bye, a veteran jurist, agrees with the latter approach.
In my view, if there were a breach here it was as much one of ethics as it was one of law. State lawyers acting as prosecutors (which is what Missouri’s attorneys were doing on the night of the execution) have special obligations to act as “a minister of justice and not simply that of an advocate,” according to the comment for Rule 4-3.8 of the Missouri Rules of Professional Conduct. “This responsibility carries with it specific obligations to see that the defendant is accorded procedural justice.” They should have been considering not just their obligation to execute Smulls, in other words, but their obligations to ensure it was done fairly and justly.
There is more relevant language in Missouri's ethics rules. The Preamble, for example, states that a "lawyer should demonstrate respect for the legal system and for those who serve it, including judges, other lawyers and public officials. While it is a lawyer's duty, when necessary, to challenge the rectitude of official action, it is also a lawyer's duty to uphold legal process." But because I am no expert in legal ethics, I asked some legal ethicists to weigh in on what happened here. One, Michael Downey, an ethics specialist at the St. Louis law firm Armstrong Teasdale, shared this view:

The lawyers at issue were representing the state were acting in a prosecutorial capacity. Moreover, this was a capital case, and Smulls was facing execution on the very night the communications occurred. When acting in a prosecutorial capacity, lawyers have special obligations to make sure that justice is done. Not to ensure that a criminal receives maximum punishment, but to make sure that justiceis done…
Perhaps the lawyers prosecuting the case have a very good explanation for why they did not respond. But it better have been a very, very good reason for not responding to defense counsel, and for allowing an execution – which may or may not have been proper – to occur.

I get that state authorities felt that they had their own legal obligations to enforce the death warrant before it expired and they had to jump through hoops to obtain a new one. What I don't get is the mindset of a lawyer telling the executioners to go ahead and kill a man knowing that at that very moment the justices are considering his case. What law school professor would teach a young student to make such a choice? What Attorney General would recommend that maneuver as official state policy?
“We strive toward excellence,” is the motto of the Missouri Department of Corrections. But let me offer a theory that undercuts that noble promise. State officials pressed ahead Wednesday night, knowing an appeal was outstanding, because they didn't want another delay in Smulls' execution-- didn't want to answer more questions about lethal injection.  But, stay or no stay in place, the knowledge that the justices were considering the case should have been enough to cause those officials to pause. Just imagine what we'd be talking about today if the justices had granted Smulls' stay request four minutes after he was pronounced dead. It was not open-and-shut against him. Judge Bye's dissent was not frivolous.
Indeed, it was Judge Bye on Wednesday night who best summed up the balance of factors involved. "Smulls faces the ultimate, irrevocable penalty in the absence of a stay," the judge wrote. "Missouri, on the other hand, merely faces the administrative work involved in obtaining a new date on which to execute Smulls." Judge Bye offered this blunt formula after explaining why Smulls' challenge to the injection protocols to be used against him were worthy of more substantial consideration by the federal courts that only a stay of execution would have provided.
What happened in Missouri this week is unacceptable in a nation that purports to worship its rule of law. It ought to be unacceptable even to the most ardent supporters of capital punishment. And the worst news of all is that there is no reason to think the problem is going to get better anytime soon. Missouri wasn't punished for its zealotry. And that surely signals officials in other death penalty states, like Louisiana, that they won't likely be punished, either, if they execute someone while his appeals still are pending. Herbert Smulls may have deserved to die. But surely not before the Supreme Court was through looking at his case.
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*Last November, for example, Missouri executed Joseph Paul Franklin in circumstances almost identical to those that occurred in the Smulls case. Franklin’s lawyers, in a federal complaint filed after his execution, contend that Missouri in these last three executions is violating the terms of its own written policy.
The Missouri Department of Corrections, the complaint alleges, precludes a prisoner from being escorted from his holding cell to the execution chamber while there is pending legal activity—not necessarily a stay—to halt the execution process. The Director of the Department of Corrections is supposed to ask the Attorney General: “Are there any legal impediments or reasons why the lawful execution of (Inmate Name) should not proceed?"
It’s hard to fathom how state lawyers could have answered that question in the negative Wednesday night knowing that the Supreme Court was at that very moment evaluating Smulls’ stay request.

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