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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Arabica Robusta

Arabica Robusta

In defence of left-wing populism - 0 views

  • In Greece, Syriza, born of a coalition of different left movements around Synaspismos, the former eurocommunist party of the interior, succeeded in creating a new type of radical party. Its objective was to challenge neoliberal hegemony through parliamentary politics. The aim was clearly not the demise of liberal democratic institutions but rather their transformation into vehicles for the expression of popular demands.
    • Arabica Robusta
       
      This is such a naive, myopic description!
  • Even if it was reformed, it is not always possible or desirable to force democratic demands expressed through horizontal social movements into the hierarchical verticalist mode. We need a new form of political organisation that can articulate both modes, where the unity of progressive people will be constituted not, as in the case of right-wing populism, by the exclusion of immigrants, but by the determination of an adversary represented by neoliberal forces. This is what I understand by “left-wing populism”.
  • The agonistic struggle is more than a struggle between conflicting hegemonic projects. It is a struggle about the construction of the people. It is important for the left to grasp the nature of this struggle. Seen in terms of a “collective will”, “the people” are always a political construct.
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  • Many of the demands that exist in a society do not have an essentialist reactionary or progressive character. It is how they are to be articulated that determines their identity. This brings to the fore the role that representation plays in the constitution of a political force. Representation is not a one-way process going from the represented to the representative, because it is the very identity of the represented that is at stake in the process. This is the central flaw of those who argue that representative democracy is an oxymoron and that a real democracy should be direct or “presentist”. What needs to be challenged is the lack of alternatives offered to the citizens, not the idea of representation itself.
  • Collective political subjects are created through representation. They do not exist beforehand. Every assertion of a political identity is thereby interior, not exterior, to the process of representation.
  • I use “passions” to refer to the common affects at play in the collective forms of identification that constitute political identities. Passions perform a central role in the construction of a collective will at the core of any left-wing populist project.
  • The EU is currently composed of consumers, not of citizens. It has been mainly constructed around a common market and has never really created an European common will. So it is no wonder that, in times of economic crisis and austerity, some people will begin to question its utility. They forget its important achievement of bringing peace to the continent.
  • We could say, following Gramsci, that we are witnessing an “organic crisis” where the old model cannot continue but the new one is not yet born.
Arabica Robusta

How the Harper Government Committed a Knowledge Massacre | Capt. Trevor Greene - 0 views

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    "Scientists are calling it "libricide." Seven of the nine world-famous Department of Fisheries and Oceans [DFO] libraries were closed by autumn 2013, ostensibly to digitize the materials and reduce costs. But sources told the independent Tyee in December that a fraction of the 600,000-volume collection had been digitized. And, a secret federal document notes that a paltry $443,000 a year will be saved. The massacre was done quickly, with no record keeping and no attempt to preserve the material in universities. Scientists said precious collections were consigned to dumpsters, were burned or went to landfills."
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Iraq, Libya, Syria: Three reasons African Americans should oppose U.S. inte... - 0 views

  • In “normal” times the racist megalomania of the U.S. that produced and is producing the carnage in Iraq, Libya, Syria and throughout the world would have been enough to caution African Americans against any pleas to the U.S. to militarily intervene to “bring back our girls” in Nigeria. But of course these are not normal times.
  • A critical read of U.S. policy on Africa from that perspective, one that is alien to the pro-imperialist perspective of Barack Obama, suggests that throughout the post-World War II anti-colonial struggles that took place in Africa there is not one instance of the U.S. being on the side of African independence, not one.
  • By the fall of 2008, many among the capitalist elite and within the agencies of the U.S. government had concluded that the U.S. would have its first (and hopefully only) black president. It was also in the fall that the U.S. Strategic Command (AFRICOM) was created.
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  • By the fall of 2008, many among the capitalist elite and within the agencies of the U.S. government had concluded that the U.S. would have its first (and hopefully only) black president. It was also in the fall that the U.S. Strategic Command (AFRICOM) was created. The clear objective of U.S. policy in Africa, as spelled out by U.S. State Department advisor to AFRICOM Dr. J. Peter Pham in 2007, was “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.”
  • In line with the historic role of capitalist development in Africa, a capitalist relationship that at its core has always been dependent on violence and plunder, is it an incredulous position to conclude that the real interest of the U.S. policy in Nigeria is less a concern with the lives of Nigerian girls and more with bringing key strategic areas in Africa under their control in order to block the Chinese?
  • while all of us mourn for the more than 200 girls who have been kidnapped and can only imagine what their families must be going though, we also have to make sure that we don’t allow the very real emotion of the issue to cloud our analysis – something that is probably easier for us who are not directly impacted. We have to do this because it is precisely at these moments that we have to be clear-eyed and not allow ourselves to be manipulated.
  • while all of us mourn for the more than 200 girls who have been kidnapped and can only imagine what their families must be going though, we also have to make sure that we don’t allow the very real emotion of the issue to cloud our analysis – something that is probably easier for us who are not directly impacted. We have to do this because it is precisely at these moments that we have to be clear-eyed and not allow ourselves to be manipulated.
  • The aggressive posture of U.S. imperialism over the last few years has proceeded with very little organized opposition from the capitalist center in the U.S. Not just because of the institutional weakness of left and progressive forces but, even more ominously, because of the ideological collaboration and alignment by left forces with the imperial project. This latter phenomenon is more characteristic of positions taken by some of the more chauvinistic elements of the white left than our ranks, but even within our ranks the confusion seems to be increasing when, for example, you look at the positions taken by some on Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the U.S. NATO assault on Libya.
Arabica Robusta

The Efflorescence of American Fascism » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names ... - 0 views

  • A figurehead? Only in the sense that he fronts a stage of advanced capitalism which itself, to reach that point, presupposes a tightly organized ruling stratum. I use “stratum” rather than “class” so as to signify the accommodation by upper groups, economic, social, political, of diverse others useful to purposes of social control at home, hegemony abroad—i.e., leaders of the military and intelligence communities as both stabilizing/conservative influences and resources for enforcing group dominance.
  • In sum, he is a willing figurehead—the most dangerous kind. Militarism especially attracts him, like a fly to flypaper.
  • The liberal mask Obama presents in justification for the Democratic party’s proclivity toward war, intervention, and sacrifice of the class interests of working people and minorities at home, is just that, a mask that covers inner moral emptiness as well as fools the constituency to be addressed and the public at large.
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  • Too harsh? We hear that surges, assassination, spying, must be laid at Bush’s door, hence exonerating Obama (part of the mythology of liberalism and the presumption a black president somehow must stand for social justice).
  • From this brief background, I shall take up Obama’s obsession with besting Putin (luckily for him, not a matter of two out of three falls), and then, in a subsequent article, his cover-up of a war crime (not his own, e.g., drone assassination, but that on Bush’s watch), which, nonetheless, he was able to keep largely under wraps for more than six years. In this case, liberals’ blame is heaped on Bush with no admission of Obama’s silence tantamount to complicity.
  • The real fear in Washington is that Putin is telling the truth and is seeking a peaceful solution. For in that way, it becomes more difficult both to maintain tensions and scare the EU into America’s arms.
  • Peace is ridiculed as an expedient to those maintaining a confrontational stance in international politics, i.e., the US, and as events play out, even, now moving closer to the present than in Baker’s piece, with Poroshenko of Ukraine signing a trade agreement with the EU (June 27), Putin’s continued pursuit of an overall settlement fails to make a dent in the Obama administration’s belligerent attitude (read, state of readiness).
  • Overreach intuitively seems unlikely in capitalism, yet the realization is slowly sinking in that, particularly egged on by the Congressional Right, Obama ultimately may be bad for business.
  • Bad enough we as a nation have to endure massive surveillance of our own people, bad enough to have Kerry smother Sisi with love as journalists go to prison, bad enough that Obama is back to drone assassination and the use of the Espionage Act to prevent revelations of USG wrongdoing. But to an overt face-off against Putin when Putin has not given cause, is ugly, bizarre, madness, as though Obama wills intervention and war as politically expedient and somehow economically rejuvenating.
  • His fear is that Poroshenko will not be as compliant, i.e., anti-Russian, as was originally hoped. Obama may be right. [No, written the 25th; Poroshenko has ended the cease-fire on the 30th, and July 1 sees massive Ukrainian air and land attacks in the East.]
  • Ukraine Signs Trade Agreement with European Union,” but the finer points hardly suggest an unqualified Obama victory over Putin and Russia. Russia, of course, was angry, envisioning the West’s attempt at absorbing into its orbit not only Ukraine but Georgia and Moldova, as part of a concerted effort to dismember the Russian Federation piece-by-piece, a not unreasonable assumption because generally bruited about in Neo-Con circles (though not mentioned by the reporters, themselves not even willing to credit the fact of a coup, simply saying that Poroshenko “won Ukraine’s presidential election in May to fill a post left vacant by Mr. Yanukovych’s flight from the country in February”). Angered, too, again not mentioned, that Ukraine would make possible the movement of NATO forces to the Russian border.
  • Poroshenko’s initial renewal of the truce implied that he viewed the trade agreement as just that, affecting trade and not part of an anti-Russian mobilization of forces to promote confrontation. When a Putin senior adviser, Sergei Glazyev, charged the Kiev government was “Nazi,” Putin’s spokesperson contradicted him, stating this was “not the official position” of Russia—perhaps further indication Putin seeks an accommodation rather than war with the Ukrainian government.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Tribute to Chris Hani on the 20th anniversary of his assassination - 0 views

  • The close links between the liberation movement and the Soviet Union very likely had an important role in affirming the ANC’s non-racial perspective. In their biography of Hani, Smith and Tromp describe his first visit to the Soviet Union (in the early 1960s): ‘In the USSR now, the men were witnesses to the way a powerful nation was run. For Hani, having joined the Communist Party a mere two years earlier, but having read extensively on socialism and Marxism, it was the culmination of theory, reading, imagining… There were no beggars and no blatant poverty. The activity in the city was frenetic: houses being built on one side, flats on the other.
    • Arabica Robusta
       
      It is likely that Hani and his associates were taken where the Soviet state elite wanted them to go. I am sympathetic to arguments that the Soviet Union was a place of state capitalism, rather than socialism.
  • Chris Hani was murdered on 10 April 1993 in Johannesburg by a fascist gunman by the name of Janusz Waluś, who was working with a senior South African Conservative Party MP on a plot to assassinate a number of prominent liberation fighters and thereby spark a civil war along race lines, derailing the negotiations to end apartheid. Their plot was unsuccessful, as the massive wave of shock and grief at Hani’s death was channelled towards a new momentum in the peace process. South Africa’s first democratic election – one of the most historic events of the twentieth century – took place a year later, on 27 April 1994.
  • ‘I think finally the ANC will have to fight a new enemy. That enemy would be another struggle to make freedom and democracy worthwhile to ordinary South Africans. Our biggest enemy would be what we do in the field of socio-economic restructuring. Creation of jobs; building houses, schools, medical facilities; overhauling our education; eliminating illiteracy, building a society which cares, and fighting corruption and moving into the gravy train of using power, government position to enrich individuals. We must build a different culture in this country... and that culture should be one of service to the people.’
Arabica Robusta

US Expansionism by stealth: Militarism from Africa to the Pacific Islands - 0 views

  • Though Nick Turse’s article doesn’t comment on land and water grab, mineral resources, oil etc, it seems to me that it is important to at least ask how US militarism in Africa and the Pacific facilitates corporate America’s involvement with all of these issues and ultimately what is the purpose of the massive presence in these regions if not to protect these  interests?
  • When the US presence in  Africa is placed side by side with the expansion  in the Pacific – the Pacific Pivot, and the Middle East we begin to see the true picture of US globalized militarization which includes bases in all four corners of the world.   The frame now is no longer that of  outreach policeman,  but of grand patriarch and protector of the  homeland – of the women and the children, a horrible heteronationalism led by a black saviour astride a white horse.
  • The US strategy has been to open small units or bases which initially appear small scale and then expand their usage so for example the military base in Niger was initially set up to deploy one predator drone. Now it is being used to deploy larger multiple drones on a daily basis. 
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  • AFRICOM also provides a  massive role for private military contractors such Berry Aviation
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Chavez, socialism and the urgency of resistance - 0 views

  • Well, if you are surprised by this loud call to a more radical engagement with the powers-that-be, then you should not skip Carlos Martinez’ article marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Chris Hani, leader of the people’s armed struggle against apartheid South Africa. Hani’s understanding of revolutionary violence is something to chew on.
Arabica Robusta

Pernicious martial law imprints still palpable - AT GROUND LEVEL By Satur C. ... - 0 views

  • Why have the pernicious imprints of martial law remained palpable 40 years after Marcos imposed one-man rule, and 26 years after a popular uprising ended his dictatorship?
  • None of the key martial-law authors and implementers has been called to account and appropriately penalized for his or her crimes against the people. Some of them have even cunningly transited to power in the post-Marcos governments, including the Marcos widow, Imelda, and children Imee and Bongbong.
  • President Cory, who vowed to make her government the “exact opposite” of the dictatorship, retained certain Marcos repressive decrees, against the strong recommendation of Jose W. Diokno, then chair of the Presidential Human Rights Committee.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - It is all interconnected, why pretend otherwise? - 0 views

  • The tragedy that is unfolding in front of our eyes is not just about the excesses of one industry, be it financial, nuclear, oil, etc. It is about the continued and deliberate silencing/sidelining of the majority of humanity by a tiny dictatorial fraction that, for centuries and generations has always gotten away, literally with murder.
Arabica Robusta

U.S-Instigated War Brings Mass Death to Somalia - 0 views

  • The horrific wrong inflicted on Somalia was absolutely premeditated, an integral aspect of American plans to bring the bogus "war on terror" to Africa, as a cover to dominate the continent and its wealth. Ever since the end of formal European colonialism in Africa, U.S. policy has been to spread chaos wherever Washington failed to impose rule by its own favored strongmen.
    • Arabica Robusta
       
      A critical point about U.S. policy in much of the world. If they can't find a loyal SOB, they would rather destroy the area and the people in it.
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    American foreign policy is the direct cause of the humanitarian crisis in Somalia - the worst in all of Africa, according to United Nations officials. That's why, until recent days, U.S. corporate media said little or nothing about the hundreds of thousands of Somalis - now numbering at least half a million - who face death by starvation and disease because of a war instigated and facilitated by Washington.
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