tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21855952172412714252024-03-13T11:00:08.631-07:00Living In PhilistiaComments on the issues of our time shouted into the deaf ear of the World Wide Web.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.comBlogger536125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-79987014792617008512017-05-25T15:11:00.001-07:002017-05-25T15:11:10.939-07:00My first articles for CounterPunch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So I've submitted <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/jt-white/">two articles</a> to CounterPunch, one of the biggest English language newsletters and websites on the left. It's a great pleasure and honour to be published alongside such writers as Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn. I hope these two articles are the first of many contributions to CounterPunch.<br />
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My first contribution is entitled '<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/18/there-is-no-regressive-left/">There is no regressive left</a>' looks at the so-called 'regressive left' (as you might have guessed!) and what kind of people tend to deploy this term. I argue the phrase comes out of the Cold War divisions between the liberal left and the radical left, the latter took the side of the establishment against the former. Essentially, the term 'regressive left' is used to police radical thought and dress up the rightward surrender of liberals as something noble.<br />
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My <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/23/towards-the-corbyn-doctrine/">second article</a> takes a look at Jeremy Corbyn's speech on foreign policy at Chatham House. It takes apart the ideas of the Cook doctrine, the 'ethical foreign policy' of the first Blair term and how this quickly turned into a sloppy pretext for endless wars in the Middle East. I argue that Corbyn has emptied out the notion of an 'ethical foreign policy' and redrawn its limits to exclude the most hawkish elements of Blairism. He coopts and subverts the Cook doctrine for his own ends.<br />
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This is just a starting point for future writing. Watch this space.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-80187707205554589632017-05-25T14:42:00.000-07:002017-05-25T14:42:53.448-07:00Mourning the Manchester attack<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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After the terrible events of Monday night, the British government has suspended the election and the country is left shaken. The army has been deployed to protect “key sites” as the UK goes on ‘critical alert’ fearing an imminent terror attack.<span id="more-29780" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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Around 1,000 troops are being dispatched across the country. Up to 3,800 are available. It’s an unnerving show of strength as if to ward-off what we all fear is hiding in the shadows.</div>
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It’s also a natural move for Theresa May, our <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">beloved leader, </em>who is known for her authoritarian tendencies. May slipped and fell in the polls after an embarrassing U-turn over her ‘dementia tax’.</div>
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This ‘critical alert’ is as much a response to a genuine threat as it is a political manoeuvre.</div>
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In other ways, the response to the attack in Manchester has been the usual mix of virulent anti-Muslim racism, on the one hand, and conspiracy theory, on the other. Even before the body count emerged, social media was filled with comments like: “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims”. And that’s a polite example. Meanwhile, the conspiracists have trotted the theory that Ariana Grande ‘sacrificed’ the crowd for the Illuminati.</div>
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Apparently, the world isn’t scary enough for some people. Islamic State has claimed credit for the attack (though direct IS involvement has not been verified). People calling for a new war with ISIS ought to consider the group’s eschatology. Islamic State wants a war with the West in order to expand and entrench its support across the Middle East and beyond. This was the same logic behind 9/11.</div>
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Sometimes I get the feeling that people will listen to anything other than inconvenient truths. The fact that the UK was never attacked by radical Islamists until it invaded Afghanistan in 2001 is unmentionable. Let alone the subsequent wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. This picture is less comforting if you’re looking for a reason to stay passive.</div>
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If we want to secure ourselves from suicide bombings, we should set limits on what the British government can do abroad. Stopping the killings, the torture and the occupations would be a good start. Yet if you raise such concerns you will be accused of being a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. All the more reason not to be cowed into blind support for Western foreign policy.</div>
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There is a line to walk in these dark times. It’s important that the families of victims have time to mourn and solidarity has to be extended to the victims, alive and dead. But this solidarity has to be meaningful. It would be a disservice to the victims to support a violent, racist response. The unity of struggle means solidarity between the victims of Manchester and the victims of state violence.</div>
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Not only should we seek a rational account of attacks like this, we must do so for the sake of the victims. Pretending that the suicide bombing was an insane and senseless act, or that the perpetrators was a monster from birth, is a way of denying that the killer had any agency in the first place. To deny an action is rational is to deny the individual has any responsibility.</div>
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Seeking an explanation is not the same as excusing or even mitigating this atrocious crime. Even still, we’re told we should be blind to American aggression against the Middle East. As if it was inconceivable that the deaths of one million Iraqis would mean anything in the first place. As if no one would feel a deep, burning sense of rage about the state of play in West Asia.</div>
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The fear of introspection is a reactionary force in our lives. It’s the reason why certain people loathe Freud and Marx in equal measure. They offer the most inconvenient insights into the world we live in. The left should play the same role in exposing the crimes of states. But the left shouldn’t forget its aims are based on moving people to take action. It’s not enough to have the right ideas and an audience of twelve.</div>
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The danger is that the anti-immigrant right has fought and won a great deal of sway over the debates around multiculturalism, Islam and freedom of movement. Things that were once taboo are now mainstream. The left has not been able to combat this rightward lurch. The arguments in favour of labour migration and diversity are barely made, let alone understood.</div>
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This is why it’s vital for leftists to not just ‘call out’ the enemy. The problem for the left is that there is a lack of positive vision about what we want to do about the threat of terrorism. The left is right to defend the rights of Muslims, as well as refugees and the cause of free movement more broadly. But the defensive game can only go so far.</div>
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<i>This article was originally published at <a href="http://souciant.com/2017/05/terror-and-the-left/">Souciant</a>.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-61931285995437859362017-05-12T14:57:00.000-07:002017-05-25T14:58:06.385-07:00The French election: Defeating Le Pen<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s been a while since Western liberals have been able to cheer a victory. Emmanuel Macron has given them what they needed. He has triumphed over Marine Le Pen with more than 66% of the vote behind him. After Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, the liberals feared that France would fall next as if politics were just a series of trending hashtags.</span><span id="more-29687" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A vote for Macron was a vote for reassuring telltales. It wasn’t a vote for political substance. The man presents the same agenda as Hollande but clarified and purified. The extreme centre is back: $65 billion cuts every year, 120,000 less civil servants and corporation tax levelled to 25%. The idea that this is going to produce harmony in France is absurd. Yet that well-crafted illusion is exactly why the Macron platform has won.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Much like Obama’s team in 2008, the Macron campaign set out to create a blank slate for the popular imagination to project onto. Once this was achieved, Macron was able to unveil an austerity package and still expand outwards from his supporters in the media and the astroturfed crowds. Le Pen just provided a moral cover to his victory. And it was very apt of Obama to intervene on Macron’s side.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is enough for the liberals who don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong with Western society. So long as the European Union survives and technocrats remain in power, the system can destroy countless lives in the end of capital accumulation. The possibility of a recurring stand-off with right-wing nationalism is not something to worry about because it legitimates neoliberals like Macron in the end.</span></div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ghosts of the Algerian War</b></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The National Front’s success is not new. It became a permanent fixture in French political life in the 1980s. The immigration debate is dominated by the far-right and the French political centre dances to Marine Le Pen’s tune even if it doesn’t want to acknowledge it. The race problem in France has been transmuted into a Muslim problem, which has allowed the FN to monopolise identity politics in the country.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Macron may have won, but this election is the second time in 15 years that the far-right has come within shouting distance of the Elysee Palace. The last time was in 2002 when conservative President Jacques Chirac defeated Jean-Marie Le Pen with over 82.2% of the vote. The National Front leader won just 17.8% after politicians of the right and the left mobilised a ‘republican front’ against Le Pen. But the daughter is far stronger than the father.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many American and British far-righters wonder why ‘political correctness’ and multiculturalism have not permeated Southern Catholic Europe to the same extent that they have Protestant countries like the United Kingdom and the United States. And yet the level of diversity in France is greater than it is in the UK. For starters, France has the biggest Muslim population in Europe and the colonial legacy runs deep beneath the country’s race relations.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Not least because the French settler regime was defeated, but the ‘loss’</span> <span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">of French Algeria in a bloody conflict with the FLN led to outbreaks of political violence on the streets of Paris and ultimately hastened the demise of the Fourth Republic. It’s almost always forgotten that Vichy thug Maurice Papon had the cops attack a pro-independence march of Algerians in October 1961, killing an estimated 200 people and throwing their lifeless bodies into the Seine.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s also important to note that the Fifth Republic was founded during the May 1958 crisis, in which the French political class found itself at odds with the military establishment. General de Gaulle came out of retirement to draw up a new constitution with strong executive powers, all as part of the efforts to defend the French Empire. Yet in the end, it was de Gaulle who settled with the FLN and the narrative of ‘abandonment’ was confirmed for the French settlers.</span></div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Building Hegemony</b></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Historically, the National Front has based itself in the south of France, where you find a great deal of racial resentment from the former settlers. The hardcore of the FN are originally the former soldiers from the Algerian war, including Jean-Marie Le Pen, as well as Vichy collaborators and even monarchist elements.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As a lieutenant in the Algerian war, Le Pen has been accused of participating in torture and extrajudicial killings. Many of his early political allies were members of the Secret Army Organisation (OAS), the dissident right-wing paramilitaries who waged a terrorist campaign to sabotage the Evian Accords. This past would help establish Le Pen as a leading neo-fascist.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A plethora of far-right groups emerged in the 1960s, Le Pen set out to unite these disparate groups into a single force capable of breaking through the media and the post-war consensus. When the National Front was founded, the party was just one among many: there was the New Order (ON) and the Party of New Forces (PFN). This fragmentation prevented any one group making electoral gains.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Much like how the British National Party came out of fierce empire loyalists, the FN emerged from the ranks of colonials who lived and fought in Algeria only to return to France once the war was lost. Fascism is what happens when imperialism comes home. Where John Tyndall would fail in Britain, Le Pen has succeeded in France. The FN outlived all of its major rivals and eventually became the dominant far-right party in the country.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The long march to 2002 began in the 1980s when the FN first made its breakthrough into the mainstream. In 1984, the FN won 10 seats in the European elections and in the cantonal elections of the following year the party won 8.7% of the vote. By the presidential election of 1988, Le Pen had expanded his base to 14.4% of the vote. This was how the FN became legitimate.</span></div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Containment</b></div>
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In the 1980s, Le Pen styled himself as an anti-Communist with neoliberal economic credentials and a pan-European vision. With the end of the Cold War, the FN had to adapt to a new terrain and took on economic populism as a new electoral strategy. The party began to refocus its racism against French Muslims after the Salman Rushdie fatwa.</div>
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In the last 25 years, the FN would adopt a new strategy for building on its early gains. Shifting from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia, converting from pan-Europeanism and neoliberal reform to euroscepticism and protectionism. The collapse of the Communist Party and the failures of the Socialist Party opened up the ideological space for Le Pen to create a new base.</div>
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“There are two Front Nationals: one in the north of France which is anti-religious, very socialist, quite leftist; and one in the south, which accepts the euro, which is – economically speaking – liberal and Catholic,” Alain Minc, an adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy, has said. “The only thing which helps them to stick together is the prospect of winning one day.”</div>
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This is the challenge posed by Marine Le Pen today. If this coalition is to be broken, the French left has to build the alternative in northern France and reclaim working-class support and restrict the FN to its petit-bourgeois origins. That was the strength of Melenchon’s platform, which brought together the social and national with the political and economic. It might have been a winning ticket had the left not been so internally divided.</div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If Melenchon can’t capitalise on the gains he made in the presidential campaign and liberals sit back in complacency, the results of Macron’s austerity policies could be disastrous. Not only would Le Pen be able to grow her constituency further, but despair at the mainstream could lead to more abstentions. Le Pen got double the vote of her father, and once she reaches the 50% mark she’s in the winners’ league.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">June’s parliamentary elections will be a crucial test. Unlike Macron’s En Marche!, the National Front is a real party, with far more experience getting out the vote, particularly when it comes to local elections. Given its growth in regional polling during the Hollande years, it’s not unlikely that Le Pen will eventually get what she so desperately wants. Pity the French for not doing enough to stop her.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>This article was originally published by <a href="http://souciant.com/2017/05/le-pen-versus-macron/">Souciant Magazine</a>.</i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-83073928252029315432017-04-26T14:54:00.000-07:002017-05-25T14:55:57.516-07:00The French election: Macron or Le Pen<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Like most elections these days, the French presidential election have been unpredictable. First, it looked like Sarkozy would make a comeback, then Fillon beat him to it only to be taken out by a corruption scandal. Meanwhile Hollande bowed out of the race, leaving Benoit Hamon and Jean-Luc Melenchon to fight over the left-wing vote. And then, there were two: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.<span id="more-29490" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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Naturally, people were shocked that the far-right candidate got through. Just as they were shocked that Trump made it past the primaries, got nominated and took the White House. Some people have not been connecting the dots. Of course, this is partly down to distance. No one in France was surprised to see the National Front get past the first round. The truth is that the only certainty of this election was that Le Pen would make it to the second round. Everything else was up for grabs, or so it seemed for a while.</div>
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Now we’re told that the French establishment will mobilise a republican front united behind Macron in order to stop Marine Le Pen. This was how the French political class stopped Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002. The Socialist Party and the Republicans put aside their differences to ensure the conservative Jacques Chirac won a handsome victory of 82%. It didn’t amount to much because Chirac was fantastically shit, and the National Front continued to grow towards its current stature.</div>
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Today the polls suggest Le Pen will get around 40% of the vote and Macron will come out with 60%. Fifteen years ago, the FN got less than 20% and the Republicans secured over 80%. Although it looks unlikely right now, it may not be too far in the future before we see France elect a fascist head of state. No doubt this will come after another re-run of 2002, where the left and the right gather behind one mediocre centrist in hope of stopping the brownshirts. But for now, the name of that mediocre centrist is Macron.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The politics of a void</strong></div>
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Much like Obama in 2008, Macron has been successful by posing as a blank slate for voters to project their hopes and dreams onto. Yet t<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">he rise of Macron is a part of the decline of the Socialist Party. It is no insignificant fact that the leading presidential candidate was a member of the PS and a part of the Hollande government until fairly recently. Indeed, Macron was the Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs under Manuel Valls.</span></div>
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What we will probably end up calling ‘Macronism’ is set to be another variation on Third Way politics. We know what to expect from Macron because we’ve seen it all before with Clinton, Blair and Schroeder. There are some differences of tone, of course. In his most noteworthy rally, Macron just screams at his audience like his nuts are caught on something metallic. By contrast, Blair felt <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the hand of history</em> on his genitalia and spoke like a fervent preacher.</div>
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This time the Third Way comes with an astroturfed ‘movement’ and a candidate styled as an ‘outsider’ despite having all the credentials of an insider. The conditions did not favour a mainstream candidate, so it was necessary for the centre ground to reassert itself <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">outside</em> the mainstream. En Marche! (‘On the Move!’) was launched as a neither-left-nor-right platform with anti-establishment rhetoric. The purpose was always to deepen the neoliberal project of past governments. Except Macron says he will deliver where they all failed.</div>
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‘Macronomics’, as we will probably talk about it in the future, consists of tax cuts for the rich and a smaller state bound by an even smaller corset. Austerity is the name of the game, except not for capital. Macron promises to slash the budget by €60 billion and cut 120,000 jobs in the civil service. He wants greater integration within the EU and wants to sign up to CETA – the Euro-Canadian free trade deal. It is a fantasy for Nineties liberals.</div>
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Unfortunately for Macron, the Nineties ended a while ago and the situation today is very different. Not only is French society as volatile as ever, the world has seen a populist tide sweep away mainstream governments. There is a crisis of European social democracy, where only the far-right stand to gain until the radical left can rebuild itself and find the strategy it needs. But this also means that the Macron government can be challenged. The game is not over just yet.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The extreme centre is back</strong></div>
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At last, the liberal commentariat has found its man: a millionaire stockbroker with an astroturfed mass of support. Mainstream European opinion long ago coalesced around Macron, he is supposedly the guy who can save the centre ground and restore the Franco-German alliance. The hope is that the populist zeitgeist can be vanquished, and the clocks turned back, in just one vote. The illusion is that President Macron will change much for the better.</div>
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Without a united front <span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the French left was divided between Hamon and Melenchon, leaving a space open for Macron to reach the second round. Of course, I do think everyone should hold their nose and vote against Le Pen. However, the problem is that a negative vote is not enough in politics. Macron stands for a style of social and economic liberalism that is rapidly going out of date all over the world. And, in the end, the</span><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Macron programme will likely leave Le Pen and the FN in a much stronger position.</span></div>
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The good news is that La France Insoumise (France Defiant), the movement formed around Melenchon, might well be the basis for a new left-wing party and an offensive against the centre ground and the far-right. <span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">All the French left can do is try to build the alternative their country desperately needs. But, for the time being, you can expect more racism, more violence and an even more precarious existence for the working class. And that’s with the liberals in power.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>This article was originally published by <a href="http://souciant.com/2017/04/macron-a-french-blair/">Souciant Magazine</a>.</i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-2012867097837962402017-04-19T14:51:00.000-07:002017-05-25T14:52:52.774-07:00The French election: Melenchon's Moment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The rise of Jean-Luc Melenchon has caught the international media off guard. After ignoring the man for months, the English-speaking press is suddenly obliged to analyse the chances of the most viable left-wing candidate. Even the Anglophone left has been caught out here.</div>
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As always the English left is divided over its own concerns and strategy. Some see Melenchon as the only option in a race where the mainstream candidates are faltering. Others are suspicious of Melenchon’s platform and, in classical sectarian style, demand more purity of socialist convictions.</div>
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In short, the English left doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind about Melenchon, but this doesn’t matter if Melenchon makes it to the second round. The French people will decide.</div>
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Nevertheless, it’s worth exploring the reasons behind this division. It appears that the English left is looking at France in terms of the crises it faces at home. Brexit has polarised the left and the questions of nationhood rests at the core of this. For better or worse, Melenchon remains stubbornly committed to the idea of the nation-state. And this draws suspicion from some quarters of the left.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unsubmissive France</strong></div>
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A part of this is cultural, the English left is wary of all nationalisms. This is understandable given the history of flag-waving in the British Isles. It’s not like red patriotism has ever taken hold in England. A left-wing civic nationalism has emerged in Scotland and Wales, yet English nationalism remains trapped by potent forms of ethnic and cultural chauvinism.</div>
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It is possible to appeal to patriotism in the French context given that the nation-state itself was the creation of the 1789 revolution. The dark side of French history – the empire, slavery, the civilising missions in Africa, and the capitulation to fascism – are conveniently dropped; but this mythmaking is necessary to every form of patriotism. Whether or not it is a good thing is separate from its effectuality.</div>
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What cannot be disputed is that Melenchon’s charismatic appeals to French history and culture have gripped the imagination of many people. He has successfully married a left social democratic project to <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">la patrie.</em> The French left may be divided over strategy and candidates, but it’s clear who stands the best chance of subsuming all left forces under one umbrella in time for the second round: Benoit Hamon and Philippe Poutou were never going to play this role.</div>
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Not only does Melenchon have the edge because of his red patriotism, he has the Front de Gauche (The Left Front) – a coalition of the Left Party (his own creation), the French Communist Party and rogue elements of the New Anticapitalist Party and the Socialist Party. This bloc has allowed Melenchon supporters to move freely outside the French ruling class and the European establishment.</div>
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It’s why Melenchon has been able to build France Insoumise (Unsubmissive France) as a Podemos-style left populist insurgency. This has granted Melenchon a great deal of credibility. The fusion of grassroots and social media activism created the basis for his candidacy to finally breakthrough into the mainstream. It sets an example for the wider European left about how to advance against all the odds.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Questions of nationhood</strong></div>
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At the same time, there is a lot of disinformation going around. We’re told Melenchon is pro-Assad and pro-Putin because he opposes NATO in Ukraine and Western involvement in Syria. We’re told Melenchon is “soft” on racism and “hard” on immigrants. I can’t disperse all the claims here, but I will look at the debate around immigration – which is a vital one in the election.</div>
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As I understand it, Melenchon has argued for a ‘regularisation’ of illegal migrants in France so as to document and officialise migration. This seems like a good alternative to what Marine Le Pen wants, namely a racist police state based on the state of emergency. However, it is also true that the officialisation of migrants is a pre-condition for whether or not they are deported or granted residency. This is where the debate begins.</div>
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There is an ongoing debate about freedom of movement on the left. A traditional social democratic position would be that the flow of migrant labour has to be controlled under capitalist conditions because it serves as a reserve army of labour. In effect, the migrants provide cheap labour and in turn threaten the wages of workers in the host country. This is until the migrant workers can be unionised and brought into the labour movement.</div>
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The opposing view is that the free movement of labour is a progressive step forwards for the working class because it prevents the illegal status of migrant labour. After all, the existence of illegal workers is conducive to greater exploitation, not a barrier to low wages and falling standards of living. So if you want to stop wages from being undermined, you ought to throw out the possibility for illegal migration. Thus, free movement has a great deal of support on the radical left.</div>
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This is how the opening up of borders can allow for working class unity and an equal playing field. The answer to wage competition on that equal playing field is not to erect barriers, but to extend solidarity through trade unions. Yet there remains a contingent of left support for restricting immigration, and this has to be accounted for and understood. The Melenchon platform is not free from the more old-fashioned centre-left arguments about the necessity of migration controls. But it’s not inherently anti-migrant.</div>
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You can disagree with the line that border controls and workers’ rights are compatible, however, it is hardly in the same platform as the Le Pen position. After all the Front National wants to abolish dual nationality and force French Africans and Arabs to choose (at least until they can be deported back to their ancestral lands) whether they are really French or not. Make no mistake about it: the FN is still fighting for an ethnically pure France, whether Le Pen admits it or not.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Down with the centre!</strong></div>
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It still looks like the battle will be between Melenchon, Le Pen and Macron. Faced with this three-way split, the French electorate has a real choice for perhaps the first time in decades. The hope of Melenchon supporters is that Macron can be knocked out in the first round. If Melenchon and Le Pen both make it to the second round, the French may just get to make the kind of decision which was denied to the American people in 2016.</div>
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It could be the battle of outsiders that should have taken place between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Yet liberal centrists placed their bets on Emmanuel Macron and the alleged ‘safeness’ of his candidacy. Many American liberals believed the same about Hillary Clinton. They thought it was impossible for a self-described socialist to win against a populist outsider. They were so arrogant as to believe Trump could not win, and the flaws of Clinton were dwarfed by his vulgarity.</div>
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The French election is even more volatile. At first, it looked like Francois Fillon would be the main challenger to Marine Le Pen, but he has since been blown out of the water by a corruption scandal. The Socialist Party never stood a chance thanks to the unspeakable mediocrity of the Hollande government. Then the party base surprised everyone by picking Hamon. And then Macron emerged as a serious contender.</div>
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Suddenly, the liberal commentariat had found its man: a millionaire stockbroker with an astroturfed mass of support. Mainstream European liberal opinion began to coalesce around Macron, as the guy who can save the centre ground and restore the Franco-German compact. The populist zeitgeist could be defeated once and for all. But the possibility that it might be too late escapes their minds.</div>
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Almost everywhere you look the centre ground is in crisis. The time for moderation and compromise is not today; there is no gradualist strategy for fending off Le Pen indefinitely. Instead, the only sensible choice is to take the consensus with both hands and throw it to the ground shattering it into a million pieces. It’s only with Melenchon that France and Europe have a chance.</div>
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<i>This article was originally published by <a href="http://souciant.com/2017/04/melenchons-moment/">Souciant Magazine</a>.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-80997461770019266682017-04-13T14:48:00.000-07:002017-05-25T14:49:11.791-07:00An Interview with a Syrian radical<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Joseph Daher is a Swiss-Syrian academic and activist. Originally from Aleppo, Daher is a staunch opponent of the Syrian Ba’ath regime. He maintains the website <a href="https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Syria Freedom Forever</a>, which is dedicated to building a secular and socialist Syria.<span id="more-29357" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span> In his latest book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hezbollah-Political-Economy-Lebanons-Party/dp/0745336892/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491822877&sr=8-1&keywords=hezbollah+joseph+daher" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God</em></a>, Daher takes apart the misconceptions around Hezbollah and its role in Lebanese society.</div>
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In the years since the Arab Spring began the international left has become increasingly divided over Syria, particularly as the revolution turned into a civil war with plenty of interference from outside. As a result, the left has diverged into at least three main camps: those who see Western imperialism as the main foe, and others who claim Western intervention is vital for the Syrian rebels to triumph. But these two postures are not the only positions available.</div>
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There is another strain on the left, those who see no hope and no justice in either American or Russian involvement. Rather the case for Syrian emancipation requires a critical account of the different international forces at work in the civil war. Not just Russia and the United States, but also the roles played by the Gulf powers, Turkey and Iran. This is the premise of every serious analysis. And this is a vital part of Daher’s standpoint.</div>
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The following Souciant interview with Joseph Daher examines the poison gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun in the context of the civil war, as well as the interventions of foreign powers, the class character of the Assad regime and the politics of the Syrian opposition.</div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun stirs memories of the Ghouta attack in 2013 for a lot of observers. Why do you think the Assad regime resorts to such measures?</b></div>
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First of all, I would like to say that since the chemical attacks Eastern Ghouta in 2013 until the gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun, many attacks with chemicals occurred and on a regular basis since 2013. This despite the fact Assad declared in June 2014 that chemical weapons had been removed from Syria to be destroyed. These kinds of attacks have become so frequent in Syria that most have not made it to the international news headlines.</div>
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The <a href="http://sn4hr.org/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR)</a> has actually documented 167 attacks using a toxic substance since the first U.N. resolution in September 2013. Forty-five of those attacks were carried out after August 2015, when the U.N. passed a resolution establishing the Joint Investigative Mechanism to identify perpetrators using chemical weapons in Syria. In 2017, SNHR documented 9 attacks using toxic substances by regime forces.</div>
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The chemical attack was another step in the murderous campaign to destroy what is left of the popular opposition to the Assad regime. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>After putting under siege and destroying Eastern Aleppo, the most important center of the popular and democratic opposition, and forcing the survivors as well as the survivors from other besieged opposition areas to go to Idlib, the regime is now concentrating its forces on bombing the civilian population in Idlib and Aleppo provinces. Syrian regime has actually focused its use of poison gases on opposition-held areas where 97% of its chemical attacks targeted opposition-held areas while 3% of the attacks were carried out in ISIS-held areas.</div>
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The objective of chemical weapons is clearly to instil terror in people, while there are few ways for civilians in liberated areas to protect themselves. This also showed the impunity with which the regime conducts its war against the Syrian people.</div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many people have called for a military intervention against the Assad regime and we’ve just seen the US bomb a Syrian government airbase. What’s your view of Trump’s missile strike in response to Khan Sheikhoun?</b></div>
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I think we need to understand why for some sections of Syrians, especially within the country, were satisfied or happy at US bombing of a regime’s military base from which the chemical attack was launched. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>After more than 6 years of a constant war and in total impunity of the regime against the Syrian people, this was the first time a military base of the regime was targeted for its murderous actions.</div>
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This said, no kind of optimism or illusions should be put in US administration in bringing anything positive to the Syrian people to achieve democracy or relieve even their pain. Many Syrians in liberated areas also understand this very well, as we can find many testimonies saying for example that the strikes were not to punish Assad too harshly, but to make him understand that he must not cross the “red lines”, in other words the use of chemical weapons, while it is okay that its military forces continue to use barrel bombs, vacuum rockets, cluster bombs, phosphorus weapons, etc.</div>
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Residents of Khan Sheikhoun actually suffered from regime’s bombing few days after the chemical attack on Saturday, 8<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> of April, which killed one woman and wounded several other people. Regimes and Russian warplanes also bombed last weekend various provinces, resulting in the deaths of new civilians.</div>
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The USA have not changed their strategy in Syria: the priority is still “the war on terror”, in other words <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Daesh</a>, and try to reach stability in Syria in maintaining the regime, with at its head or not Assad. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is expected to visit Moscow on April 12 for talks with Russian officials, actually said on ABC’s This Week program there was “no change” to the U.S. military posture toward Syria.</div>
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The way also the US bombing occurred showed that they did not want to hit too “hard”, to say the least. Moscow officials confirmed that they received advanced warning from the U.S. about its strike on Syria, while according to some testimonies, regime soldiers were prepared for the 35-minute strike and, in advance, evacuated personnel and moved equipment out of the area. Within 24 hours of the strike, regime’s warplanes were actually again taking off from the bombed Shayrat air base. So for the moment, a change of strategy of the USA is still to be seen, although we also have to be careful as well as Trump is unpredictable, as he likes to say.</div>
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In addition to this, recent American airstrikes in Mosul, Aleppo and Raqqa, which are supposedly aimed at stopping ISIS, have also brought about large civilian death tolls. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They have been some of the deadliest since U.S. airstrikes on Syria started in 2014. On Saturday 8<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> of April, At least 15 civilians, including four children, were killed in a suspected US-led airstrike on Saturday near the city of Raqqa. This shows that greater U.S. military intervention in Syria will only lead to more death and destruction. According to Airwars, during the month of March alone, as many as a thousand civilians have been killed by U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in the name of the “War on Terror”.</div>
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In general, since coming to office, the Trump administration has given every indication that its goal is to promote authoritarian, racist, sexist Arab leaders and strengthen the repressive environment of the Middle East. These realities not only reveal the Trump administration’s motives but also compel us to condemn all the states that are carrying out wars against innocent civilians in the Middle East: <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Syrian and Iranian regimes, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, all the other authoritarian regimes in the region, IS, Al Qaida, and other religious fundamentalist movements, as well as Russian and Western military interventions. </div>
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These moves are all part of an imperialist logic and the maintenance of authoritarian and unjust systems. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They all oppose the self-determination of the peoples of the region and their struggles for emancipation. Hence, anti-war activists whether in the Middle East or the West need to address all forms of repression and authoritarianism, and condemn all forms of foreign intervention against the interests of the people of the region, instead of limiting their criticisms only to the West and Israel.</div>
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Clearly, no peaceful and just solution in Syria can be reached with Bashar al-Assad and his clique in power. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He is the biggest criminal in Syria and must be prosecuted for his crimes instead of being legitimized by international and regional imperialist powers.</div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some people on the left have tried to defend the Syrian Ba’ath regime as a ‘lesser evil’ to Islamic State and jihadi rebels. How would you describe the character of the Assad regime and its role in the region?</b></div>
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This perception of these sections of the left is completely wrong and destructive of the “lesser evil”. The solution to struggle against Islamic fundamentalist movements does not lie in the collaboration with authoritarian regimes like the Assad regime, quite on the opposite. When it comes to the IS and similar organizations, it’s necessary to tackle their root causes: authoritarian regimes and international and regional foreign interventions.</div>
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IS emerged as the result of crushing the space for popular movements linked to the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. The interventions of regional and international states have contributed to ISIS’s development as well. In addition to this, neoliberal policies have impoverished the popular classes, together with the repression of democratic social and trade union forces, have been key in providing ISIS and Islamic fundamentalist forces the space to grow.</div>
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The left must understand that only by getting rid of these conditions can we resolve the crisis. That means we have to side with the democratic and progressive groups on the ground fighting to overthrow authoritarian regimes, defeat the counter-revolutionary Islamic fundamentalists, and replace neoliberalism with a more egalitarian social order in Syria and the region. Without addressing the political and socio-economic conditions that allowed and enabled the development of the IS, its capacity of nuisance or that of other similar groups will remain.</div>
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The solution is therefore of course to oppose the IS and other reactionary and jihadists forces, which as a reminder the Ba’ath regime has encouraged their developments at the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria by liberating the worst jihadist and Salafist personalities from its prisons, while killing and repressing democratic and progressive forces, but also and especially the barbaric, criminal and authoritarian regime of the Assad family.</div>
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The Assad regime is the main responsible of the disaster in Syria and of the exile of millions of Syrians. Both actors are barbaric and they feed themselves and are therefore to be overthrown to hope to build a democratic, secular and social society in Syria and elsewhere. This requires the support of democratic and popular movements that oppose these two counter revolutionary forces (authoritarian regimes and Islamic fundamentalist forces) and different forms of international (United States and Russia) and regional imperialisms (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and Turkey) that are all fighting against the interests of the people in struggle in the region.</div>
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The Assad regime is an authoritarian, capitalist and patrimonial state using various policies such as sectarianism, harsh repression, tribalism, conservatism, and racism to rule, very far from being anti-imperialist and secular as presented by some of its supporters. The patrimonial nature of the state means the centres of power (political, military and economy) within the regime were concentrated in one family and its clique, the Assad, similar to Libya and Gulf monarchies for example, therefore pushing the regime to use all the violence at its dispositions to protect its rule.</div>
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In the economic sector, for example, following the accession to power of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian regime engaged in an increased and accelerated process of implementation of neoliberal economic policies. The latter have benefited in particular a small oligarchy, which had proliferated since the era of his father, because of its mastery of the networks of economic patronage and their loyal customers. Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rami_Makhlouf" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rami Makhlouf</a>, the richest man in Syria, perfectly embodied this Mafia-like process of privatization conducted by the regime in favour of its owns. Makhlouf controlled huge sectors of the economy directly or indirectly, according to some nearly 60%, thanks to a complex network of financial holdings.</div>
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In addition it has played a destructive role regionally, collaborating with various imperialist forces. We shouldn’t forget that Assad’s regime collaborated with the second gulf war in 1991 with US led coalition. Syria participated in 2001 in the war on terror working with US security officials. In 1976, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_occupation_of_Lebanon" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Syria intervened in Lebanon</a> to crush the Palestinian resistance and the Lebanese national movements, a coalition of nationalist and leftist forces. The regime has also historically instrumentalized and cooperated with jihadist groups after the Iraqi invasion by the USA in 2003 or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah_al-Islam" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fatah al-Islam</a> in Lebanon in 2007, while liberating most of the jihadists and Islamic extremists in the various amnesty calls at the beginning of the Syrian revolutionary process.</div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In what ways does the regime headed by Bashar al-Assad differ from the way his father ran the country?</b></div>
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The structures and core of the Ba’ath regime were built by Hafez al-Assad at its arrival in power in 1970 and they have rivalled by their murderous repressive campaigns. This being said some real changes did take place.</div>
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From 2000, Bashar al-Assad strengthened the patrimonial nature of the state in the hands of the Assad family and relatives through a process of accelerated implementation of neoliberal policies and the replacement of sections of the old guard by relatives or close individuals to Bashar al-Assad.</div>
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The first years of Bashar al-Assad in power were actually concentrated on establishing himself as the main decision maker and marginalizing the centers of power within the regime challenging this aim. This process was achieved as we have seen in 2005 with the resignation and then departure of Abdel Halim Khaddam in exile in 2005. It is at this period that the social market economy strategy was launched. It constituted in many ways the culmination of at least two decades of regime-bourgeoisie reconciliation.</div>
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The social market economy strategy led to a shift in the social base of the regime constituted at its origins of peasants, government employees, some section, with at the heart of the regime coalition were the crony capitalists – the rent-seeking alliance of political brokers (led by Bashar’s mother’s family) and the regime supportive bourgeoisie. It was this bourgeoisie that funded 2007 Assad re-elections and the one that expressed its support for the ruling regime by propaganda and proclamations in the first months of the revolution when demonstrations of support for the Assad regime were still a pressing need for the regime, in addition to funding after militias loyal to the regime.</div>
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This shift was paralleled by disempowerment of the traditional corporatist organizations of workers and peasants and the co-optation in their place of business groups, while a new labor law ended what the regime’s section pushing for neoliberal policies called overprotection of workers. The corporative and fierce nature of the state under Bashar al-Assad was even more weakened than at the time of Hafez al-Assad, relying exclusively in coercive policies as the corporative organizations were undermined considerably. In other words, the reconfiguration of authoritarianism under Bashar did not strengthen it but on the opposite limited even more its popular basis.</div>
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Large section of the society left out of the liberalization process, particularly from villages to medium sized cities, would be at the forefront of the uprising. The policies of the regime were opposing the interests of the popular classes and serving and benefiting a small minority of crony capitalists linked to the ruling class. This is the principle contradiction the Syrian popular masses had and have to face until today.</div>
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In terms of foreign policy, the major change was the deepening of relations with Iran and Hezbollah, not only considered tactical allies, which we can use on some occasions, but strategic ones.</div>
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The absence of democracy and the growing impoverishment of large parts of Syrian society, in a climate of corruption and increasing social inequality, prepared the ground for the popular insurrection, which thus needed no more than a spark.</div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s often said that the Syrian political opposition differs from the military front. To what extent have Islamists taken over the frontline in the struggle against the state? Does this pose a problem for the revolution?</b></div>
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We should remember first that the Syrian grassroots civilian opposition was the primary engine of the popular uprising against the Assad regime. They sustained the popular uprising for numerous years by organizing and documenting protests and acts of civil disobedience, and by motivating people to join protests. The earliest manifestations of the “coordinating committees” (or tansiqiyyat) were neighborhood gatherings throughout Syria.</div>
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The regime specifically targeted these networks of activists, who had initiated demonstrations, acts of civil disobedience, and campaigns in favor of countrywide strikes. Their qualities as organizers and their democratic and secular positions undermined the propaganda of the regime, which proclaimed that “armed Islamic extremists” constituted the entire opposition. Large numbers of dissidents were imprisoned, killed, or forced into exile on the back of this lie.</div>
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Despite this Syrians continued to play an important role in the ongoing revolution and led various forms of popular resistance against the regime. By early 2012, there were approximately 400 different tansiqiyyat in Syria, for example, despite intense repression from regime security forces. On top of this, Syrian revolutionaries would later endure the authoritarianism of various religious fundamentalist forces (like IS, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nusra_Front" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Al-Qaida</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaysh_al-Islam" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jaysh al-Islam</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahrar_al-Sham" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ahrar al-Sham</a>), which enjoyed wide expansion across the country and attempted to co-opt the revolution or crush its democratic and inclusive message.</div>
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Activists also established popular organizations and put together democratic, social, educational, and cultural activities. Local radio stations and newspapers sprang up. Many campaigns opposing both the regime and Islamic fundamentalist forces emerged. All the while, activists and grassroots organizations strove to deliver an inclusive message against sectarianism and racism. These organizers challenged some armed groups’ authoritarian practices and opposed Islamic fundamentalism<span class="s1" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</b></span></div>
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Tragically, each defeat of the democratic resistance strengthened and benefited the Islamic fundamentalist forces on the ground. The rise of Islamic fundamentalist movements and their dominations on the military scene in some regions was negative for the revolution, as they did not shared its objectives (democracy, social justice and equality).</div>
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These movements not only acted as a repellent for the far majority of religious and ethnic minorities, and women with their sectarian and reactionary discourses and behaviors, but also to sections of Arab Sunni populations in some liberated areas where we have seen demonstrations against them, more especially to large sections of the middle class in Damascus and Aleppo. They attacked and continue to do so the democratic activists, while they often tried to impose their authority on the institutions developed by locals in areas liberated from the region, bringing often resistance from local populations against their authoritarian behaviors.</div>
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<b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As I understand it, the Syrian revolution established democratically elected councils to run public services and provide water, food, education and health-care in the areas under rebel control. How do these councils relate to the armed struggle?</b></div>
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By the end of 2011 and toward the beginning of 2012, regime forces started to withdraw, or were expelled, by opposition armed groups from an increasing number of regions across Syria. In the void they left behind, grassroots organizations began to evolve, essentially forming ad-hoc local governments.</div>
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On many occasions, popular and local coordination committee activists were the main nuclei of the local councils. In some regions liberated from the regime, civil administrations were also established to make up for the absence of the state and take charge of its duties in various fields, like schools, hospitals, water systems, electricity, communications, welcoming internally displaced persons, cleaning the streets, taking the garbage away from the city center, agricultural projects, and many other initiatives.</div>
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Local councils were either elected or established on consensus. In addition, some local councils encouraged campaigns of activists around democratic, artistic, educational, and health-related issues. It is important to note that many popular youth organizations were established throughout the country, as well free media outlets such as newspapers and radios.</div>
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These local councils represent democratic alternatives in Syria, free from the regime and reactionary movements, which is precisely why the areas in which they operate are often the most targeted by the regime and its allies. At the same time, this does not mean that problems and contradictions did not exist in some Local Councils, such a lack of women’s participation or a lack of representatives from minority communities. Still, it was impossible to ignore the way that popular power flourished in even dire conditions.</div>
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However, all the cities and neighborhoods in which there was a popular, democratic, and inclusive alternative were targeted, such as Eastern Aleppo or the city of Daraya in the province of Damascus. They are in fact still being targeted along with the civilian infrastructures on which these experiences are based. Between March 2011 and June 2016, 382 medical facilities were attacked, killing more than 700 medical workers. Assad and Putin are responsible for 90 percent of these assaults. They have also bombed other civilian institutions, including humanitarian workers, as well as bakeries, schools, and factories.</div>
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It estimated that around more than 250 valid local councils in the opposition-held areas are still operating. In mid January 2017, elections were held for the first time in Idlib to elect a civilian council of 25 representatives to manage their city, nearly two years after it was overrun captured by an armed coalition called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_Conquest" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Army of the Conquest</a> (Jaysh al-Fateh), led by Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. Until then, it was a committee appointed by the Army of Conquest that had run the city’s affairs.</div>
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These examples of popular and democratic self-organizations are the elements most feared by the regime since 2011. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Since 2011, the regime has most feared these democratic organizations, even with all their imperfections. Assad worries much less about the corrupt and exiled official opposition and the Islamic fundamentalist forces. After all, the regime’s authoritarian and sectarian practices encouraged and fostered ISIS’s, Jabhat al-Nusra’s, and other similar organizations’ development — better to have a Islamic fundamentalist foe than one that could capture widespread international solidarity and popular legitimacy at home.</div>
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The relation of local councils with armed opposition groups depended from the equilibrium of forces between these two and if the opposition armed groups had a good relation with local civilians. This said, often problems occurred between these two entities, while at the same time some relations were models to follow such as Darayya before it was recaptured by the regime in 2016 and its population displaced.</div>
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In the town of Darayya, the FSA factions were under the direct authority of the Local Council and any military operation had to be coordinated with it. The city also disposed of only one financial treasury, which managed the donations and financial assistance given to the city. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The local council was in charge of distributing the funds, which were allocated to various services such as the support of the FSA factions, relief and humanitarian operations and the distribution of daily aid to the besieged population in the city. The Local Council also ordered them to avoid any kind of human rights violations and any extremist sectarian discourse or behavior.</div>
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<i>This article was originally published by <a href="http://souciant.com/2017/04/joseph-daher-syria-interview/">Souciant Magazine</a>.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-46791122897803947962017-04-07T07:25:00.002-07:002017-04-07T07:25:54.164-07:00Tell me lies about Syria<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We're told that the Syrian civil war is just a proxy conflict between various powers: Bashar al-Assad is the face of an axis of resistance forged by Iran and Russia, while the US and its allies are backing the Islamist rebels as they try to takeover Syria bit by bit. This wrongheaded narrative has become incredibly powerful. The Syrian revolution has been subsumed into a geopolitical analysis of regional players.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The agency of armed groups in Syria has been supplanted for the flows of arms from the Gulf states and the US, the role of Turkey, the militias organised by Iran and the air campaign of Russian fighter jets. The context of the Arab Spring is completely lost, and the left-nationalist character of the uprising is concealed from public view. Instead, the Syrian civil war is just another senseless event, or the proxy struggle between the West and its anti-imperialist foes.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through this narrow lens the use of poison gas in Khan Sheikhoun is either a false flag operation or just the symptom of the spiralling chaos of war. It looks like the Assad regime and its Russian patrons have resorted to poison gas out of exhaustion. The target is primarily civilian because the basis of the revolution were the elected councils fostered in rebel-held territory. This democratic alternative had to be snuffed out.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the same time, the Western powers - the US, Britain and France, in particular - have not done much at all to support the Syrian opposition and the cause of a democratic Syria. The political support for the rebels only meant limited supplies of arms and funds, while the US has been happy to collaborate with Russia in bombing Syria. France and Britain have too taken to bombing the country. Yet the West has failed to provide air drops of food aid and take responsibility for the humanitarian fallout.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although I oppose the West bombing Syria, don't mistake me for a fool who thinks Assad is worth defending. The Syrian regime is responsible for the bulk of deaths and suffering in the country, and it has a long record of collusion with the United States. The Assads sided with the US against Iraq in 1991 and the 'rendition programme' of torturing terror suspects after 2003. There's a reason the Blair government considered bestowing an honorary knighthood on Bashar al-Assad.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don't tell me the Syrian Ba'ath regime is "anti-imperialist". Hafez al-Assad seized power from Salah Jadid in late 1970 after dragging his heels over the Syrian intervention on the side of the PLO in Jordan. At the time, the PLO was fighting to bring down the Hashemite monarchy and takeover the country. Perhaps fearing a rival Arab nationalist regional power, Assad was not eager to support Yasser Arafat. This is also why Syria would invade and occupy Lebanon in 1976.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Assad regime sought to clip the wings of the PLO and prevent the Lebanese Left from taking over Lebanon. The Syrian occupation would converge with American and Israeli interests in keeping the Christian Maronites in power and expelling the PLO from Lebanon. Later, Syria would support the US military response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. This would help bring the Lebanese civil war to an end, as the Iraqi regime would withdraw support for its allies in the war.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Syrian Ba'ath regime was no more "anti-imperialist" than its rival in Iraq. Both Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad were Soviet clients for many years, before defecting to the American camp. Iraq invaded Iran with full US approval, whereas Syria was more than happy to side with the US when Iraq went off the reservation. Meanwhile Syria has not challenged Israel since it lost the Golan Heights in the Six Day War and failed to recapture the territory in the 1973 war.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">As for the claim that the Ba'ath regime is a secular socialist government, Hafez al-Assad rewrote the Syrian constitution to ensure that the president would always be a Muslim and constructed an alliance between the Alawite military leadership and the Sunni capitalist class. The state acted as a means of economic organisation and established a patronage network to sustain itself. This may have meant that the Syrian regime was willing to nationalise industry, but it was also willing to privatise these assets later on.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">People continue to claim that the mixed nature of the Assad dynasty means that the state is the only non-sectarian alternative to Islamist barbarism. This fails to take into account the extent of violence and discrimination by the state against the Sunni working-class. Not only has the economy depended upon the exclusion of the Sunni urban and rural poor, the state has routinely repressed non-violent protest and tortured activists. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The armed uprising was made inevitable by the regime because the Syrian security forces thought they could win easily.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">When faced with an armed resistance the Syrian regime opened its prisons and released thousands of Islamists. Saddam Hussein did the same when faced with the US invasion. The Islamists have played a dual role: providing a strong front line for the rebels, but also acting as a counter-revolutionary agent. These militants may have been the toughest fighters, however, their actions have undermined the support for the revolution. This is all true even without taking into account ISIS and its monstrous actions.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's hard to see how the civil war could end on just terms. As long as the Assad regime stands its ground, the hope of democracy and freedom in Syria is blighted and the reasons why the uprising happened go unchanged. In many ways, the Syrian opposition has more reason to keep on fighting than to settle in negotiations. The immense suffering in the country is down to the Syrian regime and its allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. For this reason, I suspect and fear that the war may continue to rage for years to come.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-55240374723283692252017-04-07T07:22:00.000-07:002017-04-07T07:22:24.802-07:00Why is Trump bombing Syria<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;">Well, there we have it. The liberal chickenhawks should be cheering </span><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><span class="_58cm">Trump's</span></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"> airstrikes against the Syrian regime. They've finally got what they wanted. The Donald has just done what Obama wanted to do back in 2013, though the administration dropped the idea of 'punitive strikes' because it lacked a clear strategy and the support of major allies. By contrast, Trump has no such restraint and has gone ahead anyway. This is a senseless display of state violence and no good will come of it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 19.32px;">Not that this signals a major change in US policy, the Trump administration has made clear it does not support regime change in Syria and t</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 19.32px;">he US has been bombing Syria for three years now. What changed last night was the target of the bombing. It was the first time the bombing campaign directly targeted the regime as part of official policy. It may reflect a shift in the struggles over policy in the US government, but not a break with history.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 19.32px;">In fact, it is a sign of continuity after</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 19.32px;"> Steve Bannon was kicked off of the National Security Council. This is the end result of Michael Flynn being booted out of the administration for not disclosing his meetings with the Russian ambassador. The deviation from the traditional leadership of the Pentagon was not meant to last. Intelligence leaks and a media hysteria have allowed the old order to reassert itself. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 19.32px;">These 'punitive strikes' are not a humanitarian intervention. Rather the strikes represent the consolidation of Pentagon aims.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 19.32px;">It's been apparent for some time now that the US has no coherent strategy in Syria. Obama may have pledged political support for the Syrian opposition. This support was translated into limited supplies of arms and funds. However, the US and its allies could have moved against Assad much earlier. If the Israelis had mobilied forces on the Syrian border, the armed forces would have been split and thus left vulnerable to a rebel offensive. But this never happened.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 19.32px;">There is evidence that the Russians floated the idea of Assad stepping down in 2012, but the Americans threw cold water on the idea. The US government was waiting for the regime to cave to the rebel opposition, so it could control the outcome of the war. The problem may have been that the US wanted to see Assad go and keep the Ba'ath regime in place. This is quite similar to the US position on Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 19.32px;">Eventually the American ruling class decided it was better to invade and dismantle the entire regime and replace it with a new client state. Al Gore was calling for a US invasion of Iraq in 1998, and in 2003 the Bush administration finally toppled Saddam. It's possible to imagine that the Syrian civil war will conclude with the defeat of revolutionary forces and the emergence of a weak, broken state dominated by Assad and Islamist groups.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-1801185609236073372017-04-06T03:58:00.002-07:002017-04-06T03:58:24.410-07:00Western Hypocrisy Over St. Petersburg Attacks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was a welcome change to hear the Western media acknowledge that the St. Petersburg bombing might have something to do with Russian foreign policy: the interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria. Yet you will never hear such an angle raised when its an atrocity carried out in an American or a Western European city. In such cases any attempt to explain terrorism would be dismissed as <i>making excuses</i> for violence.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This moral blackmail was not deployed over St. Petersburg. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">What do we know about the attack? The main suspect </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Kyrgyz national, is accused of killing 14 people and injured 50 others in detonating a bomb in the St. Petersburg underground. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Six people have now been arrested. They have been accused of recruiting for ISIS. The suspects are all from Central Asian states. This would fit with the analysis that the bombing was staged in reaction to Russian aggression.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Not only was Central Asia dominated by the Soviet Union, the region was on the frontline in the war in Afghanistan. Once the USSR had invaded Afghanistan, the war aims quickly changed to building a new society and occupying the country for the time being. The United States and its regional allies - particularly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - established a network of jihadists to fuel the Afghan resistance to the Red Army.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan would come to a close by 1989. Gorbachev oversaw the withdrawal and warned the West that the forces they had mobilised in Afghanistan would come back to haunt them. Of course, the network behind Osama bin Laden and the attacks on the World Trade Centre had their origins in the Afghan struggle. The war itself would create a space for Eastern European dissidents to challenge regimes backed by the USSR. This combined with economic factors would bring down the Eastern bloc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Events in Chechnya would be even more crucial for the terror factor in Russia. As the USSR was dismantled in 1991, Chechen Ichkeria declared independence under the nationalist leadership of Dzhokhar Dudayev. Growing instability and tension in the region would lead to the eruption of armed conflict in North Ossetia, the Chechens feared the presence of the Russian armed forces would be the first stage of mission creep. Dudayev imposed a state of emergency after Russia deployed troops to the border.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">At the same time, Dudayev was facing a groundswell of opposition in the fledgling state. This opposition would turn to armed force in 1994. Boris Yeltsin pledged Russian support for the attempt to overthrow the Dudayev government. Yeltsin was desperate to bolster his domestic support in the midst of his disastrous economic reforms. The instability in the Chechen region offered an opportunity. The Russians backed the opposition in order to overthrow Dudayev and crush the example of independence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However, Dudayev held his own from October to November against the forces Yeltsin had mobilised. Russian armed forces would play a clandestine role, but the Battle of Grozny left the Russian government humiliated after the Chechen independence forces captured a large number of military vehicles and personnel. It was meant to be a swift operation to topple the government. Faced with this, Yeltsin sanctioned the invasion of Ichkeria ostensibly to restore the territorial integrity of Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Russian army began bombing the Chechen air capabilities and within ten days the invasion was underway. Just as Brezhnev had mistakenly thought the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan would be successful within weeks the Russians now thought the Grozny government could be toppled. The war would rage for two years before a ceasefire was signed on Russian terms. Dudayev was assassinated in an 1996 airstrike.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">With American help, Yeltsin would survive the Presidential elections of 1996. Estimates of the people killed in the first Chechen war range up to 100,000, along with 500,000 people displaced, in just two years of fighting. A new war would start in 1999 following the apartment bombings in Moscow and the rise of Vladimir Putin. The second war was waged by Russia and its Chechen allies to kill off independent Ichkeria and snuff out the emergent Islamist movement in the Northern Caucasus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The first aim was secured, but an insurgency continues to this day. Russia has been struck by numerous bombings by Chechen Islamist fighters, and a key reason for the Russian intervention in Syria has been partly to extent the war against those same Chechens - now fighting in Syria alongside the mainstream rebels and an array of jihadist groups. Of course, the main reason has been to back the Assad regime - the only Russian ally in the region.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">An honest look at the situation finds that the Russian government relies upon the Islamist threat to <i> justify </i>its aggression in Syria. Even though Russia has been motivated partly by counter-insurgency in Chechnya, the main targets of Russian bombing have been the Syrian opposition and the civilians living in their territory, not Islamic State or al-Nusra. This in turn is a key factor in the continued threat of terrorism in Russia.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-55737263139504082702017-04-04T17:01:00.003-07:002017-04-04T17:01:48.827-07:00Ken Livingstone don't give a fuck<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The furore over Ken Livingstone and his remarks about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTFj9239fEs">Hitler and Zionism</a> last year has resurfaced. Finally the verdict is in: Livingstone has not been expelled from the Labour Party for his comments, but he has been suspended for another year. Before all this happened Ken was on the NEC and posed as a key ally to Jeremy Corbyn. Now he is out of the game until the summer of 2018.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The story has been covered as if the Labour Party should have stripped Livingstone of his membership and anything short of this makes them cowards. The Blairites and Brownites have been queuing around the block to hurl dog muck at the Labour leadership. One anonymous MP told the New Statesman: "Years from now, the foul stench of anti-Semitism will become one of the defining characteristics of the Jeremy Corbyn era in the Labour Party. A shameful and totally unforgivable chapter in our history."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Every wing of the British media establishment has taken part in the shit storm around Labour and anti-Semitism – from the BBC and <i>The Guardian</i> to <i>The Telegraph</i> and <i>The Spectator</i>. The Naz Shah scandal, and Ken Livingstone’s unhelpful intervention, is just the latest to be picked up. The British press has manufactured this scandal in a bid to create a crisis and, in turn, undermine the Labour leadership. But this hysteria also represents the high emotional stakes in Israel among the </span>commentariat<span style="background-color: white;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">As a critic of the Israeli government, I have defended the Palestinian cause and its supporters against charges of anti-Semitism. And I have defended Ken Livingstone and his <i>loose lips</i> on more than one occasion. Still, I wish Ken had not brought up Hitler and Zionism in the middle of the Shah case. I do not think it was anti-Semitic, though I do think it was reckless and played into the hands of the Blairites.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Ken Livingstone ran into the Shah scandal like a bull into a china shop. Hopefully, we have just heard the last vase smash against the floor. Plenty of leftists have pointed out the </span>Haavara agreement<span style="background-color: white;">, the Nazi plans to deport European Jews to Madagascar and elsewhere. However, the facts of Nazi Germany are not really relevant or helpful here. The real controversy is over Livingstone’s use of the term ‘Zionism’ to describe Nazi policy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Laying out the historical record cannot dispel the outrage (even as much of it phony). The damage is done, sadly. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Even before this, Livingstone was rated as an anti-Semite by certain people thanks to the media. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Vilification campaigns are successful because it is virtually impossible to resist mudslinging. If you explain yourself, deny the claims or even apologise, you’re screwed. It’s too late. It’s never enough.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In this sense you can understand why Ken Livingstone has not apologise or concede ground, he just fires back against the press and his opponents in the party. Journalists kept asking him: "Do you recognise that you caused offence?" He does not, clearly. Much like the honey badger, Ken Livingstone don't give a fuck.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-14120987706143024742017-04-03T07:48:00.002-07:002017-04-03T07:48:33.069-07:00Marxists Are Not Social Justice Warriors<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Everyone hates 'social justice warriors' (SJWs). It's become one of the favourite swearwords used by laptop reactionaries to categorise liberals and the wider left. If you're arguing for a redistribution of wealth and power, you could easily be pigeonholed as a social justice warrior. Anyone concerned with racism, homophobia or the inequality between men and women, can also be pinned with the same label.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's a way of throwing some dirt over the fence with the hope that it lands on a leftist passing by. Yet the term itself reveals a paucity of understanding (maybe that's the point). Social justice comes out of the Catholic left and liberation theology. It's about compassion for the poor and social equity, basically distributing the goods we have amassed over time without necessarily changing the relations behind the distribution in the first place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is where social liberals, progressives and distributists differ to more radical socialists and Marxists. The economic and social problems we have cannot just be <i>corrected</i> by a quick reform, charity, different interpersonal conduct or a change of lifestyle. It's not just that the redistribution of wealth will solve exploitation, the relations of production and forms of ownership have to change too.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Believe it or not Marxism is not about social justice because it sees such a demand as impossible under capitalism. Justice is a moralistic demand in the first place, it presupposes that the system is capable of putting right its own iniquities. Not only is it impossible, the demand for justice fails to account for the fundamental problems of society. It implies that the question can be solved by a simple change.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some Marxists are completely opposed to moralism and talk of justice. Others might view such demands as a tactical means of advancing a cause. For instance, I wouldn't say that the injustice inherent to capitalism is a reason for black activists to <i>give up</i> on the possibility of holding police accountable for their violence against the black community. It's just convicting police officers for murder is a step forward in a struggle.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another example would be the labour movement. Some ultra-leftists would say that the attempts by trade unions to improve the wages and working conditions of their members are ultimately conservative, e.g. the unions just end up reinforcing the capitalism system with concessions for workers. So attempts to alleviate the pressures heaped upon working people just end up preventing revolutionary change. This is clearly wrongheaded.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Improvements to living standards can embolden people to push for more than what they've already got. Post-war social democracy in the West </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">laid the basis for future struggles over gender, sexuality and race, thus the social movements of the Sixties and Seventies. The achievements of the counter-culture were later assimilated into the dominant culture, and even the struggles for racial and sexual equality have been co-opted by the neoliberals.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a result, you can find words like 'intersectionality' and 'privilege' in Hillary Clinton's Twitter feed, but you will never see the word 'working class' (except to disparage the poor). If you remove class politics from the questions of race, gender and sexuality, you end up with neoliberalism with a left-wing face. The answer is to rediscover the importance of class and drop convenient illusions about 'social justice'.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-88032667735485720042017-04-03T06:27:00.001-07:002017-04-03T06:30:45.283-07:00Full Fat Politics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Conservative journalist Peter Hitchens once went on an epic rant against the rising popularity of skimmed milk in corporate coffee chains, but particularly the skinny cappuccinos sold by such franchises. Hitchens is right that the conflation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jun/06/high-fat-mediterranean-diet-does-not-cause-weight-gain-study-finds">fat with weight gain</a> has diverted attention away from sugar and its role in the obesity epidemic. He has done well to write about this subject in <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3614637/PETER-HITCHENS-Nutrition-experts-stuffing-low-cal-baloney.html">his column</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is a great deal of confusion out there and a</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">dvertising has taken full advantage. The trending support for healthy food - whether <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/07/09/the-organic-monopoly-and-the-myth-of-quot-natural-quot-foods/">'natural'</a>, <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/08/05/your-whole-paycheck-for-organic-foods/">'organic'</a> or even just '<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10668189/Low-fat-foods-stuffed-with-harmful-levels-of-sugar.html">low fat</a>' - has been used to sell many of us barely edible garbage. Even 'low sugar' or 'zero sugar' is just a way of getting us to buy drinks loaded with vast doses of aspartame. Meanwhile the country gets fatter and suffers the results, as the collective anxiety about weight and diets intensifies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, the popular diets probably succeed in weight loss because they are effectively a form of self-imposed starvation. But this is also why so many people fail to eat well. They try to slim down by eating very little, and inevitably transgress later, only to feel awful about themselves. It's all about the super-ego. And I doubt many people are totally living healthy lifestyles (myself included) in terms of what they eat and how much exercise they ought to be doing (I write as the owner of a Fitbit watch).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Unfortunately, Blighty remains an island of ill-health and bad food. Yet British society continues to follow such celebrity chefs as Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson. Cooking programmes are a staple of the viewing diet. One wonders the extent to which people just tune in and never try out the recipes. Perhaps the cooking programmes are just vicarious. I can only speculate about this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the one hand, we are bombarded with celebrity-endorsed diets and newly branded 'healthy' food in supermarket isles; while culinary luddites demand that we get on the 'slow food' train and rely on local produce, on the other. It's a rather farcical situation. The fast food culture is just as worrying - and certainly guilty of sugar peddling! - and it leaves us with a political question. If we can't fix our food by personal choice, what do we need to do about at the level of the polis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On that note, I will defer to the writing of others. I recommend reading Rachel Laudan's article on '<a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/05/slow-food-artisanal-natural-preservatives/">culinary modernism</a>' from last year for a start. Nick Srenicek and Alex Williams have a great section on 'slow' and local food in their book <i>Inventing the Future</i>. These are just starting points for the critically minded.</span>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-13013422760753836452017-03-30T06:52:00.002-07:002017-03-30T06:53:11.566-07:00Four things Brexit means for the UK<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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When the EU referendum came around last year, I was conflicted over the vote if I'm honest. I could see the 'Lexit' case for voting to leave: the European Union is a neoliberal project with a serious democratic deficit. I have a great deal of time for the old Bennite arguments against the common market. However, it was also clear that the balance of forces were overwhelmingly right-wing, so any withdrawal from the EU would be shaped by the Conservatives and UKIP. In the end, I decided to vote Remain out of caution.<br />
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Many months later it's clear that the rupture was coming for some time. The problem was that the left was nowhere on the EU debate. You had a split between the Lexit camp, who were typically hard left, and the Remain camp, mostly left-liberals and reformist socialists. Both positions were reactive to the terms set by the right and its dominance over the question. The referendum itself was held by David Cameron for party political reasons. It was about the internal dynamics of the Conservative Party. Not about the future of the United Kingdom.<br />
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Without a clear position, the left could either side with the liberal wing of the establishment or the right-wing reaction to it. This was not a good place to be. I could have lived with Brexit if there was a strong left-wing government in place, or a chance that the right would lose power any time soon. Only under those conditions would the British government likely maintain an open immigration policy and pursue a radical programme to restructure the UK economy for working-class interests.<br />
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So where are we left now? As expected, I've been following the situation develop since the vote last summer and I've tried to consider the social and economic impact of Brexit carefully. Here are just a few thoughts on the unfolding crisis.<br />
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<b>1. Brexit means the end of the UK</b><br />
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Despite the hopes of British nationalists, Brexit may mean the United Kingdom will cease to exist in the not-too-distant future. It was already possible that the UK would begin to fall apart over the next twenty years. The realignment of Scottish politics in 2015 shows that the conditions for a second referendum were already emerging, but the withdrawal from the EU has hastened calls for an independent Scotland.<br />
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Scottish independence is now a realistic possibility in the near future. If Scotland votes for independence in 2018 or 19, Theresa May will have to resign and the Conservative government will face serious questions over its credibility. They will go down in history as the party that literally broke the country in two. At least this could put the Labour Party on course to government (presuming the Blairites don't move to dislodge Corbyn). This is just one case.<br />
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Meanwhile in Northern Ireland, the republicans have gained a majority in Stormont for the first time. Ulster unionism is in crisis over corruption at the heart of government, and Brexit has stoked fears of a hard border arising between the North and the rest of Ireland. I wouldn't say Irish reunification is an imminent prospect, though it is clear that the UK cannot take Northern Ireland for granted. Even demographically, the Catholic community are likely to tip the balance towards Irish nationalism.<br />
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As for Wales, the situation is far more stable (for now) as the Welsh nationalists have yet to develop a strong constituency for independence. Unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland, Wales was very much for Brexit and the Welsh national question is not shaped in quite the same way. It's much more likely that the Welsh will remain tethered to the English, as the Scots and the Northern Irish break free. But this doesn't rule out Welsh independence in the long-term either.<br />
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<b>2. Brexit is a disaster for the UK economy</b><br />
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As the pound continues to fall, the goods flowing into Britain will continue to rise in price and this is just after decades of wage stagnation and underemployment. Under these conditions inflation may well take a dreadful toll on working people, let alone people out of work. At the same time, the only way to generate growth would be to resort to an industrial strategy to bolster exports through state investment in the economy. This isn't going to happen. The Conservatives have spent 40 years dismantling industry and reorienting the economy towards finance.<br />
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For too long cheap labour has been a substitute for capital investment, as the British government has dropped its commitment to bolster the economy through Keynesian projects. Likewise, the Thatcher administration inflicted a historic defeat on the labour movement in the 1980s, from which organised labour has still not fully recovered. Without high levels of employment and high wages, the economy had a continuous need for demand and the only available means for this was to free up credit. This pattern looks set to continue.<br />
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The financial sector and the property market have become the core growth sectors, as services overtook manufacturing and old industry. Wealth became even more concentrated in even fewer hands than it has been historically. Yet it should be obvious that the debt bubble can't be inflated forever. Something will have to give. Another financial crisis or a property crash might do the trick. This is even with the European Union. Without the EU, Britain faces a situation where the strategy has already been ruled out by the political class.<br />
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<b>3. Brexit is a disaster for migrants</b><br />
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Obviously, Brexit means that the British government will get to dictate the terms of inflows of EU migrant workers into the UK. Freedom of movement, as we know it, with the EU will change forever. The UK will still try to hold onto free movement with Ireland, possibly by introducing new mechanisms for regulating Irish migration onto the British mainland. This would be more sensible than sending British troops to the Irish border. Otherwise, the backdoor for EU nationals would be left wide open.<br />
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Many right-wing people voted leave because they wanted to close the borders. I suspect this will not happen due to simple economic factors: the UK relies on cheap labour. What is more likely is that the border controls will be adjusted to maintain a precarious workforce. The numbers may change, but not indefinitely. As the opening in the border narrows, the government would lose tax revenue from migrant labour and so would likely initiate greater austerity. Theresa May will have a new excuse for selling off the NHS, schools and pensions.<br />
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Expect more racist rhetoric. The calls for new pressures to be heaped upon migrant labour will only become more bold, and the Tories will pander to the xenophobes at every turn. VISA costs, repatriation and detention centres are just one front in this struggle. However, the aim will not be to reverse past immigration, but to shape future immigration to suit business interests. The divide and conquer strategy will continue to hammer the migrants already here and those who hope to settle here in the future. But this will help keep down British workers at the same time.<br />
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<b>4. Brexit is a disaster for racists</b><br />
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Contrary to liberal hysterics, the threat of the far-right in Britain is marginal. UKIP has lost its raison d'etre, and Farage is off galavanting in the United States. The party's new leadership is incapable of seeing through the media's illusions of a white working-class thirst for fascism. As if UKIP ever had a chance of breaking through in Copeland or Stoke-on-Trent. The party's core support has always come from disaffected Tory voters, and even the former Labour voters it attracts passed through the Tories first. The real threat is that the Tory government is becoming UKIP to neutralise the threat of the party. This is far more serious than Paul Nuttall's antics.<br />
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Not that I would say the far-right is no threat at all. I suspect if Brexit doesn't pay off (which it won't) that the new far-right narrative will be that the Tory government "sold out". If immigration isn't totally restricted, the far-right will claim the EU is still violating everything we've held most often. Farage might even make a comeback with a new party. As people are hit by rising food prices and a shrinking job market, they will naturally seek out someone to blame. The usual nihilists and misanthropes will provide the scapegoats: immigrants, Muslims and the left. A populist upsurge is still a possibility in the future.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-30913129818445620252017-03-30T05:21:00.000-07:002017-03-30T05:21:22.707-07:00Chomsky ponders Trump 'False Flag' Op<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As you may know, I'm a big advocate of the work of Noam Chomsky. His writing and talks changed my political outlook. I discovered Chomsky when I was 17 and it quickly set me on the course to where I am today. Though I am no longer a left-wing libertarian, I am still a socialist and I think there are important lessons to be drawn from the anarchist tradition. Chomsky is a key figure in contemporary anarchism.<br />
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One of the main attractions of Chomsky's work is the level of moral clarity and intellectual honesty. He cuts through the bone to the marrow with precision. Going to the fundamentals of a political question is the cornerstone of radical thought. As an analytical critic Chomsky takes apart US foreign policy and unravels its claims before our eyes. It's a thankless task in many ways. Another side of this has been Chomsky's opposition to 9/11 conspiracism on the left.<br />
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Yet in <a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/noam-chomsky-it-fair-worry-about-trump-staging-false-flag-terrorist-attack">a recent interview</a> Noam Chomsky contradicts his past record on combating conspiracy theories. He suggests that the Trump administration may opt for a 'false flag' operation to save its right-wing agenda. When I first heard about this I didn't believe it until I read the Alter-Net interview. In his own words, Chomsky says: "I think that we shouldn't put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly."<br />
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I was very surprised to read these words and I even feared the old man may be losing his touch. If you want the full context, here it is for your judgement:<br />
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<strong>JF: Do you think there will ever be a moment of awakening, or a disconnect for Trump's supporters of his rhetoric and what he's been doing in Washington, or can this just keep going? </strong></div>
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NC: I think that sooner or later the white working-class constituency will recognize, and in fact, much of the rural population will come to recognize, that the promises are built on sand. There is nothing there.</div>
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And then what happens becomes significant. In order to maintain his popularity, the Trump administration will have to try to find some means of rallying the support and changing the discourse from the policies that they are carrying out, which are basically a wrecking ball to something else. Maybe scapegoating, saying, "Well, I'm sorry, I can't bring your jobs back because these bad people are preventing it." And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people: immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be. And that can turn out to be very ugly. </div>
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I think that we shouldn't put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly.</div>
Now let's break this down. It's certainly true that the Trump administration is increasingly unpopular and isolated. President Trump's approval rating stands 35% - a historically low precedent for a new president. Even George W Bush only reached 25% at his lowest point, just as Nixon reached 36% after Watergate. In these conditions, it is plausible that the administration would want something, anything to shore up support for the government. But this is not the basis for a false flag operation.<br />
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I should add I'm not saying the US government has not been guilty of false flags in the past: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident">the Gulf of Tonkin</a> being the obvious example. It's now uncontroversial that the Johnson administration leapt on Tonkin to expand the war against Vietnam. It's also true that there are real conspiracies in history. Look up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO">COINTELPRO</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-contra">the Iran-Contra affair</a>, if you want to see a real conspiracy in action. There are even questions around Pearl Harbour and the extent to which FDR provoked Japan.<br />
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So, what is the problem with Chomsky's points here? Professor Chomsky might be defended on the grounds that this was a throw-away remark - one line in a full interview, with little clarification. There are gradients of what a 'staged' or 'alleged' attack could mean. Many of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists accept the case that the Bush administration had "advance knowledge" and simply allowed the attacks to go ahead. A more plausible theory is that the administration was so incompetent that it failed to act on the information it had about the plot.<br />
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This is a long way from the Ickean dimension of reptilian lizards, the whackjob theory that the Twin Towers falling was CGI, or the blatant anti-Semitism behind the idea that it was all staged by Mossad. However, the view that the US government had some role in the 9/11 attacks still belongs to the conspiracists. Chomsky has dealt with these theories well in the past. He would point out that the 9/11 attackers were mostly Saudi citizens. If it was an 'inside job', it would make little sense to frame Saudi Arabia if the aim was to invade Iraq. This is still a major hole in the theories.<br /><br />
I have yet to hear an account of the 9/11 attacks which can account for this hole. Most conspiracy theorists don't even talk about it because it's outside the reach of their assumptions. The politics of conspiracism are uncritical of the surrounding world, in fact, the point of such theories is to reinforce passivity and provide excuses for inaction. Why try to change the world when the Illuminati run everything? They're all powerful. So any attempt to challenge them is doomed to failure. This is why there are no movements or parties based on these theories.<br />
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Serious political action and theory requires hard work. It requires commitment. Naturally the online 'truthers' have jumped on Chomsky's comments, while the remarks have left many of Chomsky's friends and fans perplexed. I am not alone in this regard. Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook has criticised Chomsky's comments. Here's what Cook posted on his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Jonathan.Cook.journalist/posts/1144883065620339?pnref=story">Facebook page</a>:<br />
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One doesn't need to be convinced that Bush-Cheney or the US security services were implicated in 9/11 to see that there is a deep problem with Chomsky adopting his new position. He has previously suggested in different places both that a major false-flag operation in the US would be almost impossible to conceal and that it is a waste of the left's energies, and its credibility, to indulge in this kind of speculation. </blockquote>
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That was at least a plausible position for him to adopt. But it is entirely inconsistent with his new position that we should expect Trump to carry out a false-flag operation and even accuse him of intending to do so before it occurs.</blockquote>
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I have no doubt that Chomsky was right to argue that conspiracy theories are a dead-end for the left. So it's disappointing to read these comments, even in their full context. This isn't a reason to discard everything Chomsky has ever written. Demanding infallibility is unrealistic and ultimately puerile and rather conservative. Let's be mature about this. Furthermore, it is more in line with Chomsky's free thinking to disagree with him than it is to blindly follow him.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-54437045106200083002017-03-28T12:01:00.000-07:002017-03-30T12:01:56.106-07:00How Martin McGuinness won in the end<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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When I heard the news that Martin McGuinness had died I thought of my granddad, who served in Northern Ireland as a British troop. He recalls the soldiers sticking razorblades into the rubber bullets they would fire on crowds of civilians. On one occasion a troop stuffed a large battery into his gun before firing it at a crowd. The shot killed a man, my grandfather claims.</div>
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He also remembers the sight of twin girls tarred and feathered for <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">fraternising</em> with British troops. This practice was allegedly supported by Martin McGuinness in the early years of his IRA involvement. McGuinness would later speak out against knee-capping – a brutal practice in which powerdrills were driven into people’s knees. The culture of violence was all pervasive at the height of the conflict. It brutalised and degraded its victims and its practitioners.</div>
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My grandfather’s experiences as a British soldier are complicated the fact that he came from an Irish Catholic family. His mother was from Donegal, and his uncle was a gunrunner for the IRA. Yet my granddad found himself as a soldier with a list of key targets, including the dearly departed. Whereas Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams was a spokesman, Martin McGuinness was regarded as a <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">real menace</em> in the early Seventies. Not that this stopped the British from negotiating with him at the time.</div>
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This was the same phase of the conflict that saw British soldiers shoot 26 people on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)" style="border: 0px; color: #c81f19; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Bloody Sunday</a>, they left 14 people dead that day. It was a landmark event in the conflict, and a major reason why so many young Catholic men turned to the Provisional IRA. This was long before the British government came to understand it could not win in the Irish North. The same realisation would come to the IRA leadership as the Catholic community was exhausted by the years of violence.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Man of Violence</strong></div>
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It’s important to view Martin McGuinness in historical terms. Otherwise you run the risk of losing sight of the man, and, more importantly, the times in which he lived. What we call euphemistically “<a href="http://spectre-online.org/irish-questions/" style="border: 0px; color: #c81f19; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">the Troubles</a>” began when Stormont and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Ulster_Constabulary" style="border: 0px; color: #c81f19; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">the RUC</a> tried to repress the emergent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_Civil_Rights_Association" style="border: 0px; color: #c81f19; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Catholic civil rights movement</a> in the Sixties. The popular demands for an end to the sectarian state, full voting rights and jobs went ignored. Instead the violence of loyalists would engender a violent response from Irish nationalists.</div>
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Fearing losing control of the situation, the British government deployed troops as a <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">temporary measure </em>to secure peaceful relations in the Six Counties. Of course, the reality was that the British establishment sided with Stormont and collaborated with loyalist death squads to this end. The status quo was predicated upon the electoral disenfranchisement of Catholics by way of property. But this settlement could not last forever. By the Sixties, it was rapidly approaching boiling point.</div>
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It was at this time that McGuinness came of age in Derry. At 18 Martin was turned to the civil rights cause by the sight of cops brutally beating protesters. It was the last straw when British soldiers fired upon a demonstrations with live rounds – killing Dessie Beattie and Seamus Cusack – in 1971. The non-violence of the civil rights marches had transitioned into the political violence of the Provos. Not much later McGuinness would become one of the leading IRA figures in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Derry" style="border: 0px; color: #c81f19; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Free Derry</a>. The slain of Bloody Sunday would bolster the Republican cause.</div>
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The official narrative has it that McGuinness was a terrorist who came to his senses. This fits well with the way the conflict is framed, with IRA bombs as the sole cause. The truth is always more complex, for starters the Provisional IRA was founded as the Troubles began in 1969 in a break with the Official IRA over tactics. Originally focused on defensive actions the Provos soon graduated to offensive tactics. It was a question of means and ends for the nationalists.</div>
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Terrorism is the catch-all term used here. The most widely accepted definition of terrorism is violence perpetrated in the name of a political cause, usually against civilian targets though not exclusively. The last part is often used to absolve Western powers of such crimes, as if the intention defines the action and its impact. Noble motives are only assigned to the British and the Americans in these arguments. In reality, the British state used violence to try and quell the IRA into accepting the status quo.</div>
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The main assumption of Operation Banner was that the IRA was disrupting the harmony of Northern Ireland, when in actuality there was no such harmony except for the Orange state that had run the show since the war. Putting it bluntly, the British government were just as guilty of political violence as the IRA were. This fact does not justify, or excuse, the killing and brutalisation of civilians. Nor does it reinforce the pretext for occupying Northern Ireland in the first place. But it does throw the use of the phrase terrorism into doubt.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Means and the End</strong></div>
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After years of inter-communal violence, the peace process got off the ground as the armalite and ballot box strategy was clearly falling short of its ultimate aims. Yet negotiations became fruitful because all sides were exhausted by the violence, but also because the British public did not care enough about Northern Ireland to support the occupation indefinitely. At the time, the British government was increasingly unwilling to meet the costs. The idea of bombing your way to a united Ireland was always a fantasy.</div>
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It speaks rather well of McGuinness that he was able to see this opening for what it was and ended up in government with arch-loyalist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Paisley" style="border: 0px; color: #c81f19; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Ian Paisley</a>. The Good Friday agreement laid down the basis for power-sharing, but it also allowed the space for the most recent elections – triggered by McGuiness’s decision to resign – where the republicans gained the upper-hand for the first time. This situation combined with the potential for a referendum means Ireland may be closer to reunification than it has been for decades.</div>
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So we might say Martin McGuinness won more gains than he lost in the end. For the first time, the balance seems to be shifting in favour of nationalism, and the shift away from sectarian violence to democratic consent may have created the pre-conditions for Irish reunification. Not only do the demographics seem to favour it, but the conditions of peace allow the erosion of the strict Catholic-Protestant divide. If this continues, the dream of a united Ireland may well be fulfilled in our lifetimes.</div>
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<i>This article was originally written for <a href="http://spectre-online.org/martin-mcguinness-the-troubles/">Spectre</a>.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-4285341061474768712017-03-21T11:56:00.000-07:002017-03-30T11:57:59.566-07:00Chasing Dirty Sexy Russian Money!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unless you’ve been in a cave, you will have heard the good news: George Osborne has found work at long last! The former Chancellor will soon be the editor of <em style="border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Evening Standard</em>, the only free London newspaper, distributed at tube stations across the city. Plenty of people have raised the issue of a conflict of interests, losing track of who has gone through the spinning door. The full picture is far more absurd than one politician’s decision.</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Evening Standard</em> is owned by Alexander Lebedev and watched over by his son Evgeny. Former editor Sarah Sands is going to take up a new role at BBC Radio’s Today Programme – the bane of many progressive listeners! Clearly, Sands is no longer content with just presiding over a conservative newspaper. But wait there is still more to the spinning door of the mainstream media. The BBC media editor Amol Rajan, who oversaw the coverage of this story, was the editor of <a href="http://littleatoms.com/can-independent-carve-its-niche-online" style="border: 0px; color: #c81f19; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Independent</em></a> (another Lebedev publication).</div>
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So we have the former Chancellor joining the Lebedev payroll, with former Lebedev employees moving to prominent roles at the BBC. It’s almost as if it were not farcical enough for the former Chancellor to take a top job in the media. The line between the independent media and the political establishment appears to be increasingly blurred. In fact, it’s almost as if the presumed independence of the media is up for debate, the wall between the media and the establishment turns out to be nonexistent. The two turn out to be on the same side of one coin.</div>
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Should anyone be surprised by this? No, the mainstream media is the establishment. What we might call <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the commentariat</em> has always existed. It has different sections of capital behind it, and different political factions within it. The vast bulk of the mainstream media is broadly right-wing and generally supports the Conservative Party, the left-liberal media is in the minority: you have <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Guardian</em> and its sister <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Observer</em>, along with <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Daily Mirror</em> (the only pro-Labour daily newspaper).</div>
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If people think the Russian factor makes this story unique, think again. London is awash with Russian money, including lots of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/20/british-banks-handled-vast-sums-of-laundered-russian-money" style="border: 0px; color: #c81f19; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">dirty money</a>. So the factor itself is not unique, though the details do matter. Fortunes amassed in the Yeltsin era of market-based chaos would be consolidated under the stewardship of Vladimir Putin. Former KGB man Alexander Lebedev emerged a wealthy man and soon began building a media portfolio and working with Gorbachev and others on political projects.</div>
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It’s not the first time Osborne has fraternised with Russian oligarchs. He was caught on a yacht in Corfu with<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-corfu-controversy-how-the-world-really-works-973817.html" style="border: 0px; color: #c81f19; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"> Oleg Deripaska</a> in 2008. It was alleged Osborne was looking to secure a £50,000 donation from the aluminium magnate. Also present was Peter Mandelson. It’s a great image, New Labour and the Conservative Party coming together aboard the yacht of a Russian oligarch. This isn’t to suggest anything <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">improper</em> was going on. Not at all, though it is interesting what goes on perfectly within the confines of law.</div>
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<i>This article was originally published at <a href="http://spectre-online.org/osborne-dirty-sexy-russian-money/">Spectre</a>.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-85299296785006753972017-03-11T14:30:00.003-08:002017-03-11T14:30:40.330-08:00How welfare supports the 'gig economy'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last Friday, I was sent to a jobs fair by my work coach. The fair was at another job centre a short bus ride away. There, the claimants waited patiently, and some impatiently, to speak with seated representatives of various companies and public bodies. I found long queues for the local council — offering admin jobs and other opportunities — and nonexistent queues for tutoring and personal training (I went for the former).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Apart from admin roles, tutoring and personal training, the fair had desks for construction work, retail, catering, even health and social care. Names of brands caught my eye: Westfield, Nando’s and Tesco. It got me wondering. How much of this is about what the employers want? Take a guess. Here we are, the reserve army of labour, queuing to sell our time and our skills to would-be employers. Is this really what the unemployed need?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, there was a catch: if I failed to attend the jobs fair, I would face the possibility of my benefits being slashed to £10 a week for up to 90 days. This is what’s called a ‘sanction’. Once at the fair, you queue to talk to the reps, sign up in the hope of an interview and they sign you off for having applied for a job. It’s unclear how much of this is about paper-shuffling. A cynic would suspect quite a lot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However, this is not a worry in itself. I suppose some people may find a job this way, and I might even be starting out in some temporary arrangement. But it is an example of something else. The work coaches are eager to get claimants to sign up for agency work, which will provide temporary employment and sometimes ‘self-employed’ or ‘free-lance’ contracts. I’ve worked these before. It can leave you at the beck and call of a company.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you’re on Universal Credit and working you can keep 35p for every pound you make. That’s £35 for every £100 (in theory). I’ve yet to find out if this system works (in practice), but it sounds like it could serve as a transition back to full-time work. It’s meant to ‘wean’ the claimant off of the public teat. So you re-enter the labour market and never return. This may help reduce the official figures of unemployed too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is an industry in waiting for the jobless. The ‘gig economy’ — so-called for its offer of work on ‘<a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/19/self-employment-dream-governments-gig-economy" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/19/self-employment-dream-governments-gig-economy" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.439216); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">self-employed</a>’ contracts, such as <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37905425" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37905425" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.439216); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Deliveroo</a> and<a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/28/uber-uk-tribunal-self-employed-status" href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/28/uber-uk-tribunal-self-employed-status" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.439216); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Uber</a>— is eager to gobble up cheap labour. These types of flexible contracts leave workers with their rights undermined, including the minimum wage, sick pay and holidays. It shows just how fragile these protections have become. And maybe this is why unemployment is officially falling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the time of writing, unemployment stands at <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment" href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.439216); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">4.8%</a> and, at least on paper, the UK has reached an employment level of 73%. This is the highest since records began in the early 1970s. Naturally, Tories like Toby Young love to play this up as an achievement for the right. Yet the lowest unemployment rate on record was at 3.4% in 1973. Those were the days when governments aimed for ‘full employment’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although employment is officially high, real wages have fallen by more than 10% in less than a decade. The TUC <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jul/27/uk-joins-greece-at-bottom-of-wage-growth-league-tuc-oecd" href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jul/27/uk-joins-greece-at-bottom-of-wage-growth-league-tuc-oecd" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.439216); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">found</a> that the wages have continued to stagnate, leading to a fall of 10.4% from 2007 to 2015. The UK is now alongside Greece in terms of shit pay for a hard day’s work. Even Poland has seen real wages increase by more than Britain. Meanwhile the super-rich continue to <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/08/uks-top-bosses-earned-10-pay-rise-2015-average-salary-hit-55m" href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/08/uks-top-bosses-earned-10-pay-rise-2015-average-salary-hit-55m" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.439216); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">pig-out</a>, with their salaries hitting £5.5 million.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It looks like the job centres are pushing claimants into short-term, low paid jobs — only for them to be kept on a lower rate of benefits. The government gets to say unemployment is falling, while the reasons for people falling out of work are worse than ever. As we’ve established, Universal Credit isn’t much of a cushion to land on, especially with the ‘sanctions’ regime of benefits. No wonder most people would rather be rinsed by the ‘gig economy’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>This article was originally published at <a href="https://medium.com/notes-from-the-underclass/how-welfare-supports-the-gig-economy-2fae57db064b#.728z7q5yc">Notes from the Underclass</a>.</i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-46462573858261915372017-03-04T05:33:00.000-08:002017-03-30T05:34:10.157-07:00What does Corbyn have to lose?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">For a long time, I thought that the Conservative government was a weak regime depending on a slight majority in Parliament. This starting point was necessary to proceed on the assumption that the Labour Party stands a chance of winning in 2020. Particularly as Jeremy Corbyn and his left-wing supporters are trying to turn the party around from Blairism. However, the new terrain of Brexit shows 2020 is far from a certain defeat for the Tories.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">What I failed to take into account: The Conservatives could well expand their majority by swallowing up the UKIP vote. The Tory majority, the smallest since 1974, counts on just 24.6% of the eligible electorate, which translates to 36% of the vote under our antiquated electoral system. Note UKIP counted for 12% of the vote in 2015 - that's 4 million votes. So Theresa May is going for a full-blooded Brexit </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">because she thinks she can steal back these right-wing voters.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">If the Corbynistas are to succeed, the Labour leadership needs to refocus its policy initiatives around a few key areas, adopt a permanent campaigning style to remobilise the base, a voter registration drive and, perhaps most importantly, reshape the media debate. This is vital if Labour is to answer the questions facing the country. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">In short, Labour's only hope is to increase voter turnout (which is easier said than done) to thwart Tory incursions and expand into enemy territory.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><br />This is why the by-elections are not simply reflective of future prospects. For starters, the victory in Stoke was partly based on a low turnout and yet Labour came out on top: the Tory-UKIP vote fell by 4,000 votes, but remained split in the end. So the first-past-the-post system favoured Gareth Snell's Blue Labour campaign to rescue English nationalism from the racists. In other words, this win was not an unambiguous one. Though it is possible to rebuild the party's Stoke base over time, it just depends on what happens over the next three years.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">That being said, it was great to see Paul Nuttall knocked back on his ass. It wasn't just because Nuttall lied about Hillsborough though, more importantly UKIP has lost its <i>raison d'etre</i> since Leave won the referendum. Still, Paul Nuttall was thick enough to believe the bogus media narrative that the Northern working class vote was more UKIP than Labour. The UKIP base has always been a strange right-wing coalition: one part Tory lite, one part fascist, one part libertarian fruitcake. This is a multi-class bloc, but the working class element are unlikely to come from the Labour base.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">At the same time, the real triumph of Nigel Farage may be that the Conservatives are taking up UKIP's nationalist agenda. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">The May government has made it clear it is going for a hard Brexit and that it is open to restricting immigration, even at the detriment to economic growth and stability. Farage has already won without ever coming close to real power. The electioneers around May will have calculated that the party can survive the social fallout, while Labour remains divided and weak.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">By opting for a hard Brexit, Theresa May has successfully neutered the UKIP threat to her party. UKIP was only gaining in Labour seats because it was subsuming the right-wing opposition vote under one umbrella. If the Tories had been more focused on Stoke they might have eaten through Nuttall's base and squeezed Labour's majority even further. But the Conservative leadership decided to focus on the easy target. This brings us to Copeland.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">There's no doubt about it, the loss of Copeland was a serious blow. It revealed three factors: 1) the </span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Conservatives were able to swallow up UKIP, while the Labour vote was squeezed on two fronts by 2) the Tories over Sellafield and 3) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/24/stoke-copeland-labour-remain-richmond-copeland-ukip">the Lib Dems</a> over Brexit. The lack of a clear message on nuclear power cost Labour the jobs vote, whereas Corbyn's three line whip on Article 50 cost the party support among Remain voters. The latter factor may be far more important in the end, compared to the more localised nuclear issue.</span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">None of this takes place in a vacuum, the Labour Party is in historic decline because the Blair years cost the party 5 million voters. The New Labour strategy of taking the working class vote for granted, as <a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-02-22-why-working-class-voter-may-be-turning-away-labour">it chased after middle class families</a>, has cost the party dearly. This is why the 2010 and 2015 elections were lost. It's partly why Scotland was lost. Despite the flaws of the Corbyn leadership, the Blairites and Brownites lack an alternative. A return to New Labour is not possible in a world where the combined Tory-UKIP vote stands at 48%. But a nationalist turn won't cut it either.</span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">The promise of Corbynism to reverse this trend has not yet been realised. I put this down to a lack of political strategy and coherence on policy and message, as well as the overwhelmingly hostility of the media and the efforts of Blairites to undermine Corbyn. The illusion is that Corbyn is the fundamental problem for Labour, when it was clear that the Brown government lost power and Ed Miliband lost Scotland. Putting a David Miliband or a Dan Jarvis in Corbyn's place will not change the reasons why Labour is in a losing streak.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">It's not about your jawline or what suit you wear. The bid to transform Labour is still real for as long as there is no alternative to the radical left in the party. But it takes work to repair 40 years of damage. Some pessimists would argue it is hopeless. If Labour is unsalvageable, then Corbyn may go down with the ship - taking the blame for decades of rot. Even still, I think it would only ensure the collapse of the party to turn back now. It's not about Corbyn, it's about what kind of country we want to live in. The old phrase "socialism or barbarism" is more than rhetorical now.</span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Bizarrely, Conservative Lord Finkelstein has offered some recommendations in his <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/corbyns-only-hope-is-to-take-a-sharp-left-turn-wdsms55m8"><i>Times</i> column</a>. Far from arguing for retreat in the hope of saving face (as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/01/corbyn-staying-not-good-enough">Owen Jones</a> has done), Danny Finkelstein suggests the only hope for Corbyn is to instigate <a href="https://theclarionmag.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/fink/">a new antagonism</a> within the Labour Party to change it forever:</span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">"[Corbyn's] only hope must be as a subversive challenger, relentlessly organising to take over the party and talking about his efforts to do so. He should come out with huge, earth-shaking radical left-wing policies and not care that Yvette Cooper and I both think that they are bonkers. He should skip prime minister's questions in order to attend protest rallies. He should organise to deselect critics and win selection contests for his people."</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Finkelstein is not alone, but it's interesting to hear this from a prominent right-wing journalist. Another writer, Benjamin Mercer, has taken to the pages of <i><a href="http://www.thenationalstudent.com/Opinion/2017-03-03/how_to_fix_the_labour_party.html">The National Student</a></i> to make the case for far-reaching democratic reform within the Labour Party. This is surely the best case for Corbynism, and the best hope of the Labour left:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">"Much as the franchise has been expanded for the leadership elections, so it must be expanded at the level of the CLPs. power should be transferred downwards from the General and Executive Committees to the grassroots. Participation should be made easier and the decisions should be made by a committee of the whole membership, not merely a clique of the same. Every member of the CLP must have the right to become its MP, and the membership should be ballotted before every election - or by-election - in order to choose the party's candidate. This should end the practice of 'parachuting' supposedly orthodox candidates into allegedly safe seats. No more Hunts in Stoke. labour Party MPs will be accountable, first and foremost, to their constituencies and not to the leadership, the PLP or the NEC. Re-selection at every election will ensure that this remains the case."</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Up until now Jeremy Corbyn has stuck to a centrist style of leadership. However, the Labour coalition of liberals, social democrats and socialists, may just be too broad for the new situation. The broad church approach has been a recipe for incoherence on policy and a lack of strategy on the media. If Corbynism is to succeed, the party has to be transformed in the long-term and that requires thinking beyond 2020. A surrender or a retreat would just offset this process of democratic reform.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">If the experiment ends with Corbyn stepping down in 2020, the opening for transforming Labour into a mass democratic party would be lost. This would close the space for a radical leadership. Not only would it mean that the left would not be able to contest the elections in 2025 and 2030, it would mean Labour would fall back into the hands of the extreme centre. Contrary to Blairite illusions, the party would resume its lacklustre performance under Ed Miliband, or, worse, try to stake out a position as the party for English nationalism under the guise of Blue Labour. Either way, Labour is dead meat.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><i>This article was originally written for <a href="http://souciant.com/2017/03/no-turning-back/">Souciant</a> on March 3, 2017.</i></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-65851090964897799852017-02-04T11:52:00.000-08:002017-03-30T12:04:30.872-07:00"Red, White and Blue Brexit"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">In a little over 70 pages, Theresa May has confirmed the worst nightmare for Remainers. Not only is Britain leaving the EU, we are leaving the single market and the customs union too. This may mean immigration controls are being placed before economic growth. The political is being put before the economic. This is what she meant when she engaged in such sloganeering as “red, white and blue Brexit”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Speaking at Lancaster House, May deployed the language of internationalism, Theresa May laid out the contours of the plan for Britain to leave the EU and become a “great, global trading nation”. She was careful to talk about diversity, multiculturalism and fairness. It was not a speech at a UKIP rally. Instead, May has tried to rearticulate the centre ground as a nationalist space.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the aftermath of the June referendum, Britain was left in a state of shock. Even the Leave voters could not believe they had won, for many the vote was an opportunity to register their distaste with the establishment. Not many people expected Brexit to go ahead, certainly not in the Remain camp where people felt they had fallen into a parallel universe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nearly eight months on, the unknown is still here. It haunts us all every day. We voted for it, and we don’t know what will happen next. The pound has been degraded, and some people have lost thousands from their pension pots. Inflation and instability are on the rise. And this is just the beginning. The process has not even started yet.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mayday, Mayday!</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Electoral strategy has trumped economic stability. Withdrawing from the EU will allow the Conservatives to ward off the threat of UKIP and satisfy their own Eurosceptic backbenchers. The question of European integration has been a crucial question for Conservative administrations going back to Ted Heath. Those were the days when the Tories were passionate Europhiles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Since then Euroscepticism moved across the aisle and became embodied by right-wing mavericks on the Tory backbenches. Despite her reputation as ‘anti-European’, Margaret Thatcher signed Britain up for the Single European act and took the country into the ERM before her resignation. Yet it would be John Major, whose government would be lacerated by infighting over Europe. David Cameron would offset the issue until 2016 when he finally held the referendum.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Unlike her predecessors, Theresa May wants to resolve the European problem once and for all. She hopes she can save face by taking Britain out of the single market and the customs union. May promises she can do this with minimal pain. This is akin to David Cameron’s promise to cut spending without hurting public services. It was wrong in 2010, and it’s wrong in 2017. But this is not May’s consideration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Freedom of movement with the EU will come to an end, but it’s unclear what this may mean. Contrary to popular misreading, the end of free movement with the EU does not necessarily mean immigration will cease. May has already gestured towards a deal on EU nationals living in the UK, and for UK nationals living in the EU. The real issue is the economy’s need for more and more cheap labour as the population age and approach retirement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One scenario is that the UK will continue to accept migrant labour and use the tax receipts to prop up its pension system. The government could still introduce new penalties to squeeze migration, turn away more refugees and continue to suppress wages. In another scenario, the UK restricts its border thereby reducing its own labour market and creating the pre-conditions to privatise the pensions system. In either scenario, the working class stands to lose out.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A Not-So-New Economy</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the reasons why I doubted Brexit was possible was the loss of British manufacturing. If we’re going to weather the storm ahead we will need an industrial base as part of a viable economic strategy, yet this economic base was destroyed by four decades of Thatcherism. So, the industrial option no longer exists, the Conservatives are left in a tricky position.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There are few options on the table for any government right now. Before the Conservatives were simply trying to reflate the housing bubble – that flourished under New Labour, only to go pop in 2008 – as they tried to stripped the state down to the buff. The Cameron era is over, and the May government must chart a new course.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Unfortunately, the Tories have destroyed the other options, it looks like they are going to give supply-side economics another try. Thus, Chancellor Philip Hammond has suggested the UK should slash taxes for the rich and take a hatchet to what little regulation is left. Who will pay for this? Everyone who depends on benefits, state schools, the NHS and state pensions. It’s all up for grabs now. The profits must be extracted from somewhere.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">More important than growth, the system needs to facilitate the accumulation of capital. It’s a mistake to think the capitalist buzzword is ‘growth’. The neoliberal period is marked by low growth rates in many cases. The average rate of growth in the 1970s was 2.2%, and under Thatcher it was 2.2%. All that changed was the distribution of growth. Profitability was restored by the defeat of organised labour, whose demands for high wages were eating into revenue.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">At the same time, Trump says he wants to cut a deal with the UK once in office. Expect the free trade deal to mean a “bonfire of regulations” presided over by the Treasury. It could be worse than TTIP. You can imagine an unprecedented pig-out by the rich, in which the NHS, state pensions and education, are all eviscerated and served up on a silver platter. This isn’t to say the Tory government wasn’t going to do this anyway.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All of this as the country is hit by the consequences of a falling pound and little to export. The trade deficit is already massively bloated, whereas financial capital is the only thing going for the economy. This is likely just the beginning of a very bumpy ride.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>This article was originally written for <a href="http://spectre-online.org/the-may-plan-for-brexit/">Spectre</a>.</i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-9568432375985005902017-01-21T08:08:00.000-08:002017-04-03T08:10:43.861-07:00Remember Mark Fisher.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Cultural theorist Mark Fisher died last week. He was just 48 years old. Ideologically committed to the ethos of Punk Rock, Mark Fisher was an influential <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/18/mark-fisher-k-punk-blogs-did-48-politics" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">music critic</a> and blogger at K-Punk. Unlike liberal critics, Fisher did not engage with pop culture without recourse to critical theory and politics. And by politics, I mean radical politics.<span id="more-28796" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">From what we know, Fisher committed suicide after a lifelong struggle with depression. I hesitate to use the dreadful cliche ‘struggle’ together with depression. This condition requires greater nuance, and he himself wrote a lot about <a href="http://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=12841" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the politics of depression</a> and what he called ‘depressive hedonism’, the cycle of pleasure and sadness enforced and regulated by social media and other forms of enjoyment. The inability to escape from the relentless treadmill of desires brings us to despair again and again.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He was right to see depression as a key figment of the era. It’s not just that the capitalist system has produced an alienated working class, the new threat is an all encompassing gloom – feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. This takes subtle forms. Fisher talks about ‘magical voluntarism’, which he <a href="https://rs21.org.uk/2014/04/27/kpunk/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">describes</a> as “the belief that it is within every individual’s power to make themselves whatever they want to be”.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After all, if you are a truly free individual then you have only yourself to blame for your problems. It’s not just right-wing politicians pushing this idea. It’s in Reality TV, CBT and the popular guff of self-help therapy, ‘positive thinking’ and ‘mindfulness’. We’re rendered still by ‘reflexive impotence’, Fisher argues, but it’s not an individual matter. It’s political and socio-economic in the end. It’s about the induced decline of class consciousness. And this is where it gets interesting.</span></span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is an alternative</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The politics of depression fit neatly within a broad political analysis of our predicament. This brings us to the notion of ‘capitalist realism’. In his book of the same name, Mark Fisher attempted to encapsulate the ideological field which prevents us from seeing beyond the horizon of the capitalist system. It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism itself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As a term, ‘capitalist realism’ is an obvious play on socialist realism – the stultifying aesthetic and cultural policies of the Soviet Union that snuffed the life out of the Russian avant-garde in the 1920s. This is itself a wonderfully subversive tactic of appropriation. In an interview with </span><a href="https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/interview-mark-fisher-on-capitalist-realism-and-more/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ceasefire Magazine</a><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, Fisher summed up his analysis:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Put simply, capitalist realism is the view that it is now impossible even to imagine an alternative to capitalism. Capitalism is the only ‘realistic’ political economic system, and, since this is the case, all we can do is accommodate ourselves to it. This leads to the imposition of what I have called ‘business ontology’ – a version of social reality in which every process is modeled on corporate practices.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘Business ontology’ is Fisher’s name for the incapacity to see the world outside of business and corporate terms. This is probably a play on Alain Badiou’s phrase ‘market ontology’. Even leftists struggle to see the world outside of market forces and the structures of business, big and small. In this sense, capitalist ideology – in the domination of culture, not just the economy – shapes the limits of thought and discourse, not just practical action.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fisher was adept at coining such terms. ‘Market Stalinism’ was another great invention, referring to the enforced practices of companies. He singles out examples like employees being obliged to wear items expressing their individuality. Later, Fisher would use the phrase ‘liberal Stalinism’ to refer to the increasing tendency of the left towards moralism on social media. He would use this to dissect the Twitter mob as a new puritanical force.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Far from a conservative, Fisher was concerned by the decline of left-wing political experiments as a loss to revolutionary politics. Note, this was before <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Occupy Wall Street </a>broke out in 2011. He wanted the left to avoid the drift into purely theoretical discourses, but not move towards action for the sake of action. This is not a desperate call for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Black Bloc </a>to save us. And it’s not a diversion into the obscure corners of academia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Instead, the focus is on the system and how it ensnares us. Capitalist realism dissolves agency and politics as we know them. It leaves, in its wake, the notion of individual responsibility and guilt. If you can’t find a job, that’s your fault. It’s not down to the structural functions of the economy, and its need for cheap labour and unemployment as a pressure for keeping wages low. All the while, we’re told we can do anything and be anybody.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Much like Slavoj Zizek and other thinkers, Fisher was responding to the ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">end of history</a>’ and its almost universal acceptance. This led Mark to question the stagnant, managerial politics of the New Labour era. His work called into the question one of the fundamental assumptions of neoliberalism, namely the idea that “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">there is no alternative</a>” to a liberal market economy. Fisher was not alone in his efforts to tear down the limits being foisted upon the human imagination. But, at the same time, he was not uncritical of the contemporary left.</span></span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The retreat into identity</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In </span><i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=11299" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Exiting the Vampire Castle</a>,</i><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Mark Fisher attempted to diagnose the ailments of the modern left, singling out its fetish for social media and the growing trend towards so-called ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">identity politics</a>’. The loss of a sense of organisational form, instead drifting into petty bourgeois moralism about personal conduct and individual virtue. He takes the posh left’s animosity towards Owen Jones and Russell Brand as key instances of this.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Taking issue with ‘<a href="http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2013/13_12_05.mp3" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">call out culture</a>’, Fisher sees the fixation on moral failings (whether real or imagined) as a return to a new puritanism on the left. He points us to the abusive outbursts of Twitter mobs, and he is right. Ultimately, he argues, this shift serves to paralyse us – feeding back into the hopelessness endemic to the system. In short, petit-bourgeois moralism isn’t a substitute for political theory and action, in fact, it might actually be a hindrance to it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At the same time, Mark is careful to make clear he does not think straight white guys should be treated with reverence. Nor does Fisher dismiss the struggles of queer people, women and people of colour. Rather he takes issue with the creeping influence of petit-bourgeois moralism, which appropriates these struggles and ties them to liberal reformism. He detects this influence in university life, and suggests it deters working people from getting involved.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, Fisher was not alone in his scepticism of the shift towards identitarian politics on the left. He was very critical of what he called ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_anarchism" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">neo-anarchism</a>’, a name for a specific breed of anarchism espoused by privileged millennials – who have never known life before neoliberalism. The neo-anarchists fall back into the ditch of neoliberal thinking, as they hold twentieth century social democracy and communism in contempt, but refuse to concede parliamentary or state politics ever achieved any good at all.</span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It sounds like a close cousin to what Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams call ‘<a href="http://www.redpepper.org.uk/inventing-the-future/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">folk politics</a>’. They argue that the organised left has fallen by the wayside and become enamoured with spontaneous local action over organised, hegemonic projects for universal emancipation. Instead, the collective focus is on localism and the immediacy of particular struggles rather than vertical, hierarchical attempts to restructure the world and build a far-reaching alternative.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This may be why horizontalism and anarchism are in vogue. Yet Fisher doesn’t see any hope in a return to old leftist ‘economistic’ notions of class. He sees the limitations of social movements at present, but does not see salvation in past models. In this regard, Fisher sounded like most other so-called postmodern theorists, but he was not necessarily wrong in this emphasis. The post-capitalist future is in the present, and the struggle is not just to defeat the present system but to bring about that future.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This article was originally published at <a href="http://souciant.com/2017/01/k-punk-politics-mark-fisher/">Souciant</a>.</span></i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-68276692673899665392017-01-14T08:01:00.000-08:002017-04-03T08:10:37.475-07:00Pax Europa: Obama and the European Dream.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The last time Barack Obama intervened in European politics was during the Brexit referendum campaign. Coming out for the Remain camp, Obama backed the UK’s membership of the EU on the grounds of economic stability.<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial;"><span id="more-28650" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span> He even appeared to dangle a sharp object over the Leave camp. The outgoing president claimed Britain would be at the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/22/barack-obama-brexit-uk-back-of-queue-for-trade-talks" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">back of the queue</a>” for a trade deal with the US. In other words, the UK is worth more in the EU than outside it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The British right began circling Obama soon after his speech. Anti-American jibes became fashionable among conservatives again. Suddenly, you could read Boris Johnson rambling on about the president’s <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/politics/1139354/boris-johnson-uk-and-america-can-be-better-friends-than-ever-mr-obama-if-we-leave-the-eu/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenyan ancestry</a> and how these roots informed his anti-British prejudices <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in utero</em>. It was a bizarre few days. Apparently, Obama always hated the British. That’s why he handed back <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/22/barack-obama-winston-churchill-bust-oval-office-britain" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Churchill bust</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">These same quarters began to see Donald Trump’s victory as an opportunity to renew the ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Relationship" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">special relationship</a>’. British politicians were soon climbing over each other to kneel before the next president. It caused some fuss that Nigel Farage beat <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/14/theresa-may-plans-trump-charm-offensive-after-snub-to-farage" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Theresa May</a> to meeting Trump. All of this is a testament to the servility of the British political class. But they would rather dress it up as a ‘special relationship’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet Obama’s relationship with Europe much broader than this. Obama’s time in office has charted key events. The EU has been shaken to its core by an economic crisis, everywhere right-wing populism seems to be on the march and Brexit poses a break with the status quo. Meanwhile the project seems to be facing new challenges on its doorstep: the refugee crisis, civil war in Ukraine and atrocities in Turkey.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Greater Europe</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Obama administration has tried to maintain the American-European alliance. This meant support for the EU as the project for a ‘Greater Europe’. At the centre, Germany and France had come together to overcome the competition between their elites. This alliance was expanded to include the UK and other countries. It is now composed of nearly thirty member-states. But EU expansion has always been controversial.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">History is full of ironies. Charles de Gaulle opposed British entry into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Community" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the European Economic Community</a>. He saw ‘perfidious Albion’ was an extension of the United States, the NATO agenda to bound Western Europe to Washington. The French right wanted to lead the European project, using the German economy as a horse for its own chariot. But this was not to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The whole point of the EU and NATO has been to wed the European powers to the US under <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/09/23/how_america_built_its_empire_the_real_history_of_american_foreign_policy_that_the_media_wont_tell_you/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">German leadership</a>. Much like in East Asia, where American governments would try to reinstate Japan as the leading economic power – the US wanted Germany as the leading power in Europe. This shows up the absurdity of the so-called ‘special relationship’. The UK is one major European state, it is not necessarily the main player in Europe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, peace in Europe really meant within the EU. Outside the EU, in places like Ukraine and the Balkans, the story has been quite different. For starters, European powers supported <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_Yugoslavia" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the breakup of Yugoslavia</a> to expand southwards. In Ukraine, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Euromaidan uprising</a> saw a realignment with the EU as necessary to move further away from Russian influence. Faced with this, Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into Crimea and began to destabilise the rest of Ukraine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The cases of Ukraine and the Balkans are not isolated. The periphery is where the EU project reveals itself. Thus, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis_timeline" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Greek debt crisis</a> threatens the credibility of the Eurozone. If Greece can default, then Portugal and Spain will soon follow. If Portugal and Spain can do this, Italy and Ireland could follow. As in other foreign policy areas, the Obama administration has sought out stability in the EU.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Obama administration may have preferred <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/13/barack-obama-calls-for-meaningful-debt-relief-for-greece" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">a more restrained austerity</a> in Europe, just for the sake of the economic order. This may be why the IMF was more sceptical of another round of austerity being imposed on Greece. Even still, the IMF found itself outvoted by the European Central Bank and the European Commission. Though the US is still the dominant power in the world today, its power is not absolute.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Old Enemies, New Crises</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Much like in East Asia, where the US aimed to reinstate Japan as the leading economy to maintain its own hold on the Pacific. This plan was first threatened by the ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_China" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">loss</a>’ of China in 1949, then came the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Both fought to secure the post-war settlement. Likewise, the US rebuilt West Germany to secure its hold on the future of Europe. Here we find Russia is the ‘outlier’ trying to maintain its own sphere of influence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As the Euromaidan demonstrations forced out <a href="https://louisproyect.org/2013/12/26/whats-going-on-in-the-ukraine/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Viktor Yanukovych</a>, the activists pushed for closer ties with the EU and the consensus in Ukraine was still very much against joining NATO. Once Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, the support for NATO membership increased dramatically in Ukraine. The tensions with Russia served to validate US policy, and vice versa Putin used NATO as a pretext for aggression. It wasn’t always like this, though.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Many Russian liberals began to look westward in the early 1990s. They saw Russia as part of a ‘Greater West’, fit to join the EU, even suited for NATO membership. Incidentally, Boris Yeltsin tabled <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/world/soviet-disarray-yeltsin-says-russia-seeks-to-join-nato.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">this idea in 1991</a>, but the US was totally opposed to Russia joining NATO. The US feared it would lose its allies should Germany and Russia forge closer ties. The North Atlantic alliance may be rendered void in such a scenario.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, this also shows that the Russian government is not anti-Western by nature. Every US administration has tried to ‘reset’ its relations with Russia. Obama tried to repair ties following <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Georgian war</a>. But each time the relationship is ‘soured’. Most recently, the split reopened over Ukraine and Obama sought to contain Russia economically. Now Putin is vying for another ‘reset’ once Trump is in office.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As we look back on the Obama years, we find a cautious president looking to stabilise the system amid turbulent times. And the fundamental problems remain in place: tensions with Russia may be inevitable for if NATO continues to expand, and the EU will face economic crisis as it remains wedded to the neoliberal model. This in turn has reinforced the appeals of nationalism. These flaws may be fatal in the end.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This article was originally published at <a href="http://souciant.com/2017/01/obama-europe-legacy/">Souciant</a>.</span></i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-33513326810920334252017-01-05T07:59:00.000-08:002017-04-03T08:04:05.802-07:00American Africa: Obama's Imperial Wars.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Remember the funeral of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama stood before the South African people to pay tribute to Madiba. “He makes me want to be a better man”, the American president confided with his audience.<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial;"><span id="more-28719" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span> It felt like he had just wandered astray from the official script. But really it was very well choreographed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By this point, Africa has become a major focus of American counter-terror efforts. At the same time, US dominance has not gone unchallenged, Chinese competition has meant African governments have more than one economic titan to do business with. In some ways this takes Africa back to the Cold War struggles, when <a href="http://souciant.com/2016/11/castro-in-africa/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Soviet Union and Cuba</a> often vied with the US and China for influence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the years since the Cold War ended, the politics of Africa has been dominated by the ‘war on terror’, neoliberal globalisation and Chinese state capitalism. These factors remain key for understanding US policy towards the continent today. The Obama administration has built on the existing pretexts for war in Africa and extended the Western scope of military operations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the key events of the Obama era was the NATO intervention in Libya. The Libyan uprising against <a href="http://souciant.com/2016/06/the-twilight-of-gaddafi/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Colonel Gaddafi</a> created an opening for the Western powers to intervene. Yet the Libyan rebel leaders opposed greater Western interference. The country has since slipped into <a href="http://souciant.com/2016/05/losing-libya/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">a strange limbo</a>, with no one power able to hold the state. And this laid the groundwork for new conflicts.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Africa’s War on Terror</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Let’s look at Mali in 2012. Returning from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_(2011)" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Libyan civil war</a>, heavily armed Tuareg fighters waged a new rebellion in the West African Muslim state. The aim was to establish <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azawad" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Azawad</a> as an independent country for the Tuareg people. As the insurgency progressed, radical Islamist groups like Ansar Dine rushed in to take advantage of the conflict. Once Azawad declared independence, the Malian government was ousted in <a href="http://livinginphilistia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-about-mali.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">a coup d’etat</a> by US-trained army officers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With US-backing, France invaded Mali in 2013 to defeat the Islamists and secure the nation-state, however, the problem manifested by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/22/islamic-extremist-pleads-guilty-at-icc-to-timbuktu-cultural-destruction" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the destruction of Timbuktu</a> was not contained to one area. The French soon found themselves expanding their operations across the region. The jihadi groups began targeting hotels in <a href="http://www.theworldweekly.com/reader/view/storyline/2016-01-21/as-al-qaeda-strikes-again-burkina-faso-and-mali-seek-to-end-the-jihadi-threat/6405" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Burkina Faso</a> and <a href="http://www.theworldweekly.com/reader/view/storyline/2016-03-17/why-al-qaeda-struck-cote-divoire/7122" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Cote d’Ivoire</a> – especially those frequented by Westerners – to stretch the operation further and eventually break its back.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To this day, the US is backing <a href="http://www.theworldweekly.com/reader/view/storyline/2016-03-16/france-ready-to-deploy-west-african-response-force/7109" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the French intervention</a> in West Africa and the Sahel to stamp out the rise of jihadi groups. Of course, the less convenient story is that the French can secure their economic presence in the region by extending a ‘defensive umbrella’ through West Africa. France is heavily dependent on nuclear power, and the Sahel region is <a href="https://wikileaks.org/car-mining/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">rich with uranium</a>. It’s also the case that the French want to fend-off Chinese mining interests.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The US is happy to see France beat China for <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21318043" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Niger’s uranium</a>. This is where counter-terrorism meets US and Chinese competition. In the past, French Africa was in competition with Anglophone Africa, but this changed in the last couple of decades. France and Britain are now on the same side in Africa, namely the American side. Thus, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the NATO bombing</a> of Libya was a joint operation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Today Libya has no government, while three governments claim this status real power is held by armed groups. African refugees pass through in hope of making the perilous journey from the Libyan coast to the shores of Italy. This is the situation that concerns the EU and the US. Obama has acknowledged the NATO bombing failed. He placed the blame on Britain and France for their lack of “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/04/obamas-worst-mistake-libya/478461/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">follow-up</a>”.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Great Power Play</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although it is sometimes claimed that the Gaddafi regime was ousted because it was opposed to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">AFRICOM</a>, the Libyan regime was open with AFRICOM. This was long before the American military force established relations with almost every African state. The idea of hosting US troops on Libyan soil was anathema, as it remains for most Africans. By contrast, the rebels in Benghazi opposed AFRICOM as <a href="https://louisproyect.org/2011/06/18/was-libya-attacked-because-of-its-attitude-toward-africom/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Louis Proyect</a> pointed out some years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since then the Obama administration has continued to expand AFRICOM and deepen its reach on the continent. In 2015, Obama planted a new US base in Cameroon to launch drones and station 300 troops. Note Cameroon is just next door to Nigeria and faces incursions from the <a href="http://souciant.com/2016/02/boko-haram-for-beginners/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Boko Haram</a> insurgency. Obviously, the US wants to contain the Islamist insurgency in northeastern Nigeria and stand behind its regional allies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet the US would rather not arm Nigerian soldiers directly. Instead, the conflict in northeastern Nigeria is used as a pretext to extend the US reach in West Africa. The US and its allies provide funding for the regional task force. Economically, the US remains close to Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea for oil, as do the other Western powers, though these interests fall out of sight through the counter-terror prism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is no coincidence. The Bush administration created AFRICOM after having established a major base in <a href="http://www.theworldweekly.com/reader/view/storyline/2016-04-07/why-tiny-djibouti-matters-to-the-worlds-powers/7382" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Djibouti</a> as part of its ‘war on terror’. From Djibouti, 10,000 American troops can oversee world trade flows through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bab-el-Mandeb" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bab-el-Mandeb</a> heading up to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Suez Canal</a>. The Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Peninsula are all within reach from this vantage point. But even here the US is not unchallenged.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">China is opening a massive base in Djibouti. It will station <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2016/10/chinas-experiment-in-djibouti/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">10,000 Chinese troops</a> in the tiny country, rivaling the American presence at its height. The Chinese government also wants to open a base in Namibia on the over side of the continent. This would give China a great strategic advantage. Just as China is challenging the US in Africa, the Americans are encircling China in the Pacific. These may be the dark clouds coming over the horizon, as the real storm approaches.</span></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The US in Somalia</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All of this is going on as the US continues to try to create a client government in Somalia. The official pretext is, once again, fighting the terror of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shabaab_(militant_group)" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">al-Shabaab</a>. The AU-backed government in Mogadishu is treated as the only legitimate authority in the country. But there is a problem with this. Regions like Galmudug, Puntland and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-36300592" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Somaliland</a>, basically govern themselves. The Somali federal government was established by southern warlords and an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Somalia_(2006%E2%80%9309)" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ethiopian invasion</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On Obama’s watch, the US has repeatedly bombed Somali targets with drones. Key US allies Rwanda and Uganda were providing ground troops to mop up resistance. Much to its own detriment, Kenya joined the occupation of Somalia in 2011. Al-Shabaab has struck back at Uganda with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2010_Kampala_attacks" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Kampala bombings</a> of 2010 and Kenya with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_attack" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Westgate mall siege in 2013</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garissa_University_College_attack" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the 2015 massacre of Garissa University students</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">None of this has seen the Kenyan government to question its role in Somalia. For example, when al-Shabaab attacked a Kenyan AU base possibly killing <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-somalia-kenya-idUSKCN0VY1VL" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">more than 200 soldiers</a>, the Kenyan government refused to publish the official body count. In response, US drones targeted al-Shabaab and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/nobody-knows-the-identity-of-the-150-people-killed-by-u-s-in-somalia-but-most-are-certain-they-deserved-it/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">killed over 150 people</a> in one operation. This pattern will likely continue for years to come.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ten years of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union_Mission_to_Somalia" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">AMISOM</a> has not left Somalia with a stable, federal government. The US needs a reliable ally on the Horn of Africa, while Ethiopia and Kenya have an interest in keeping Somalia fragmented. Both countries have restive Muslim populations and contested borders with Somalia. In the 1960s, Somali bandits rampaged across the Kenyan border and later General Said Barre would wage war on Ethiopia laying claim to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogaden_War" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Ogaden desert</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fast forward to 2006, Ethiopia invades Somalia with US approval to smash the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Courts_Union" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #cd2e7d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Islamic Courts Union</a>. AMISOM is set up to foster a new government in Mogadishu, backed by warlords and composed of former Puntland rebels. Al-Shabaab emerges soon after to challenge the AU forces occupying the country. Much like Afghanistan, Obama passes Somalia on to his successor. This saga looks set to continue with no end in sight.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This article was originally published at <a href="http://souciant.com/2017/01/obama-american-africa-legacy/">Souciant</a>.</span></i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-50576009892810271082016-11-09T14:34:00.000-08:002017-03-11T14:34:50.513-08:00I am Daniel Blake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Watching <i>I, Daniel Blake</i> I am not ashamed to say I was moved to tears. I left the cinema still welling up inside. It does take a lot to make me cry, but an overwhelming sadness was not the only thing I felt. The other feeling can only be described as white-hot fury. I can still feel the heat of that burning anger now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s not that the film shows us what we didn’t know, it’s that the film conveys the reality some of us know all too well. Dan embodies the suffering and humiliation of benefit claimants. Katie and her children stands for the single-mums and their plight in these dark times. I thought of my mother as I watched Katie go hungry to feed her children — as my mum so often did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We know what it was like to live in damp houses without proper heating or appliances. We know what it was like to live from hand to mouth with the fear of not being able to make the rent and the bills. We know how to fill a bath with water boiled in a kettle because there is no hot water. We know how to get to sleep on bare floorboards.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Truly morally-stunted people will dismiss <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">I, Daniel Blake</em> as just a work of fiction from an old left-wing filmmaker. These people are irredeemable. You can’t expect people like <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3869182/Why-Lefties-misty-eyed-movie-romanticises-Benefits-Britain-says-TOBY-YOUNG.html" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3869182/Why-Lefties-misty-eyed-movie-romanticises-Benefits-Britain-says-TOBY-YOUNG.html" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.439216); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Toby Young</a> and <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" data-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbzNnsNiHw0" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbzNnsNiHw0" rel="nofollow noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.439216); background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) 50%, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 50%); background-position: 0px 1.07em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 2px 0.1em; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Kwasi Kwarteng</a> to see the truth that they are paid not to see. There is no point trying to persuade these people of the scale of misery in this country. It is no accident the degradation of poor people escapes their purview.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s not like it is common for a film to take the side of the benefit claimant, one of the most demonised figures in British society. We live with <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">Benefits Street</em> and Jeremy Kyle, where the unemployed are presented as a bunch of free-loading scumbags. People who need a dose of tough love. By contrast,<em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">I, Daniel Blake </em>has been criticised for showing us an unemployed man, who is not dysfunctional and struggling with addiction.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Daniel Blake is out of work because of no fault of his own. His bad heart means he can’t work, yet he is found fit for work by the job centre. He comes across Katie and her kids, who have been sent to live in Newcastle having been evicted by a landlord in London. We follow Dan and Katie through hungry queues at food banks and the bureaucracy of the benefits system. Yes, people do live like this in real life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is not a saccharine depiction of working-class life. It is not ‘sentimental’ to portray an unemployed man with a moral compass. Middle-class people are often shown on film as upstanding, moral citizens with few problems (except maybe a break-up or the odd murder). Meanwhile the only problem facing the super-rich is what to do with all their ill-gotten gains, as we see in movies like <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">Wolf Of Wall Street</em>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In this regard, Ken Loach has succeeded in capturing the travails of working-class people without concessions to the gutter press and its view of poor people. It would be inappropriate to show Dan smoking dozens fags and drinking his way through six packs of cheap lager every night. Not to mention the fact that the man suffered a major heart attack.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So we’re meant to expect an irresponsible feckless stereotype as a representative of the out-of-work poor. Shell suits, Burberry caps and roll-ups are in order. Cans of watered down lager, obligatory. Anything short of this tabloid image is ‘unrealistic’. This is what we’re led to believe by the chattering classes. It’s almost as if working-class pride has been erased from public life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Working-class people are regularly stripped of their dignity. You can see this whenever you turn on daytime television or open a red-top newspaper.<em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">I, Daniel Blake</em> covers the form this humiliation takes at the job centre. Ken Loach and Paul Laverty are not obliged to play to the middle-classes and how they view less privileged people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The critics who deny the film’s accuracy confirm its truth in doing so. The media response shows you why <em class="markup--em markup--p-em" style="font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'salt' 1;">I, Daniel Blake</em> is accurate and why it had to be made. It is a fictional account of what happens to ordinary people, both good and bad. The point is that if you are a respectable member of the ‘deserving’ poor, the system will not spare you. There are no exceptions and the odds are stacked against a happy ending.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If there weren’t thousands of Daniel Blakes across Britain, this film would have never been made and it would not be dismissed if it weren’t true. Too many people don’t like the truth. It’s inconvenient and often painful to accept. Like many great film makers Ken Loach raises a mirror and demands that we look at ourselves. So he should. And we are obliged to do so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>This article was originally written for <a href="https://medium.com/notes-from-the-underclass/i-am-daniel-blake-5e08aa4a580a#.nppo26dx2">Notes from the Underclass</a>.</i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-47499960434633174552016-10-20T15:48:00.000-07:002017-03-11T14:37:23.203-08:00How to get your Universal Credit raised<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In case you don’t know, Universal Credit is the greatest achievement of Iain Duncan Smith. It is the only thing IDS achieved in government. It is his crucible. His life’s work, and his life’s worth. And it is utterly shit. But this should surprise no one.</div>
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In theory, Universal Credit encompasses all the benefits you’re eligible to claim. It’s relatively simple when it comes to Jobseekers and housing benefit, but it becomes more complex when it comes to other claims. The idea is to reduce bureaucracy by combining claims into one simple process. In practice, it just means the claimant has to go through an arduous process of filing out forms, providing evidence and chasing up the payments (and back-payments).</div>
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A friend of mine living with their parents in deepest, darkest Kent was set just over £251 a month under Universal Credit. This is the standard allowance for someone under 25. It would take into account housing benefit on top of this sum. It may not sound bad, if you’re living at home. But the system is highly punitive. You can have your benefits cut or suspended for several months for just missing an appointment.</div>
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If you live in London, where your rent is likely exorbitant you may still be expected to get by on a pitiful amount. Even if you’re lucky to have very cheap rent, say £400 a month, the system might give you this or it could dole out the bare minimum — just £117 a month. This is on top of any living allowance. That’s just £368 a month. If you’re 25 or over, it will be £434 a month. Could you get by on £8.50 a week? Would that cover your bills?</div>
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What’s the impact? You’re gradually forced backwards, sinking deeper into debt. You’re either drowning in your overdraft, or lending money from friends and family. You could end up homeless, or coach-surfing. However, the answer is simple, it’s just not widely known. If you call up the Scottish office (that’s 0345 600 0723, by the way) and question the payments, you can get your benefits fixed. Be politely annoying, it’s usually the way forward.</div>
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I’ve done this myself (I was expected to live off of £21 a week, incidentally) after getting advice from a friend, who works as a support worker. If you’re set a pitiful amount of money to live on, the worst thing to do is nothing. Universal Credit was devised, not to provide a safety-net for people who fall through the cracks, but to force people to accept low-pay for long hours of shitty work. Perhaps this is why wages have fallen by 10% in recent years.</div>
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<i>This article was originally written for <a href="https://medium.com/notes-from-the-underclass/how-to-get-your-universal-credit-raised-f75ed395b158#.amdb3ck63">Notes from the Underclass</a>.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2185595217241271425.post-5868334821542059682016-09-14T14:48:00.000-07:002017-03-11T14:48:46.643-08:00Getting Paid (Late)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Originally, the payment was due on the first day of September. It didn’t come through. All the documents were already handed in. All ‘the evidence’ was in Scottish hands. So, I was perplexed to find myself slipping into my overdraft. When I went to see my work coach — that’s Dick, to you — he told me to call up Scotland, again. A few minutes of Vivaldi followed.</div>
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This time the phone was answered by a chirpy Scotswoman. A welcome change from the dour voices of past calls. She couldn’t find a reason why the payment hadn’t been made, but she reassured me that I would get my money that very day. I would get a text message, apparently. This was surprising good news from Scotland.</div>
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On my way out, I passed Dick at his desk and explained. Dick surmised that “they probably forgot to push the button”. For a moment, I imagined the dour office types being thrown out of a plane and skydiving towards a huge red button with <span class="markup--strong markup--p-strong" style="font-weight: 700;">PAYMENT</span> across it in black letters. Sadly, the parachutes never work, but the splatter does send the money.</div>
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Just over an hour later, I got the text: “Mr White We will make a Universal Credit payment of approx £XXX.XX to your usual account. It should arrive by the end of today. DWP Universal Credit”.</div>
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Bear in mind, I was made redundant on July 15 and I went into the job centre four days later. The first week was taken out of the assessment, you don’t get anything for that time. Overall, my first round of Universal Credit was almost two months late. That’s how it goes, I suppose.</div>
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<i>This was originally written for <a href="https://medium.com/notes-from-the-underclass/getting-paid-late-dc1184f9c82b#.eh8ofhknz">Notes from the Underclass</a>.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04880996831778197602noreply@blogger.com0