Skip to main content

Home/ social movements/ Group items tagged america

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Arabica Robusta

Amilcar Cabral's Revolutionary Anti-Colonialist Ideas | PopularResistance.Org - 0 views

popularresistance.org/tionary-anti-colonialist-ideas

cabral liberation social movements africa

shared by Arabica Robusta on 10 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Cabral understood that the extension and domination of capitalism depends critically on dehumanizing the colonial subject. And central to the process of dehumanization has been the need to destroy, modify or recast the culture of the colonized, for it is principally through culture, “because it is history”, that the colonized have sought to resist domination and assert their humanity. For Cabral, and also for Fanon, culture is not some aesthetic artefact, but an expression of history, the foundation of liberation, and a means to resist domination. At heart, culture is subversive.
  • The history of liberalism has been one of contestation between the cultures of what Losurdo refers to as the sacred and profane spaces.
  • The democracy of the sacred space to which the Enlightenment gave birth in the New World was, writes Losurdo, a “Herrenvolk democracy”, a democracy of the white master-race that refused to allow blacks, indigenous peoples, or even white women, to be considered citizens. They were regarded as part of the profane space occupied by the less-than-human.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • I discuss how neocolonial regimes have attempted to disarticulate culture from politics, a process that neoliberalism has exacerbated. But as discontent after nearly forty years of austerity (a.k.a. “structural adjustment programs”) in Africa rises, as governments increasingly lose popular legitimacy, there is a resurgence of uprisings and protests, and once again culture is re-emerging as a mobilizing and organizing force.
  • This attempt to erase the culture of Africans was a signal failure. For while the forces of liberalism destroyed the institutions, cities, literature, science and art on the continent, people’s memories of culture, art forms, music and all that is associated with being human remained alive, and were also carried across on the slave ships to where African slaves found themselves, and where that culture evolved in their new material conditions to become a basis for resistance.
  • “After the slave trade, armed conquest and colonial wars,” wrote Cabral, “there came the complete destruction of the economic and social structure of African society. The next phase was European occupation and ever-increasing European immigration into these territories. The lands and possessions of the Africans were looted.” Colonial powers established control by imposing taxes, enforcing compulsory crops, introducing forced labor, excluding Africans from particular jobs, removing them from the most fertile regions, and establishing native authorities consisting of collaborators.
  • Cabral pointed out that whatever the material aspects of domination, “it can be maintained only by the permanent and organized repression of the cultural life of the people concerned.” Of course, domination could only be completely guaranteed by the elimination of a significant part of the population as, for example, in the genocide of the Herero peoples in southern Africa or of many of the indigenous nations of North America, but in practice this was not always feasible or indeed seen as desirable from the point of view of empire.
  • What is important here is the assertion that Africans are not only human beings, but that their history, struggle and experiences are part of the struggle for a universal humanity that “belong[s] to the whole world.” “We must have the courage to state this clearly,” wrote Cabral. “No one should think that the culture of Africa, what is really African and so must be preserved for all time, for us to be Africans, is our weakness in the face of nature.” This is in marked contrast to the ideology of “Negritude” that emerged in the 1930s and 1940s in Paris and was to become associated with the writings of Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire.
  • Movements that had sought a radical agenda to advance the people’s interests were systematically removed through coups d’état and assassinations (for example, Lumumba in Congo, Nkrumah in Ghana, Sankara in Burkina Faso). As stated earlier, Cabral too was assassinated by a group of his own comrades, apparently with the support of the Portuguese secret police (PIDE), on 20 January 1973.
  • As Cabral pointed out: “True, imperialism is cruel and unscrupulous, but we must not lay all the blame on its broad back. For, as the African people say: ‘Rice only cooks inside the pot’”. And “here is the reality that is made more evident by our struggle: in spite of their armed forces, the imperialists cannot do without traitors; traditional chiefs and bandits in the times of slavery and of the wars of colonial conquest, gendarmes, various agents and mercenary soldiers during the golden age of colonialism, self-styled heads of state and ministers in the present time of neo-colonialism.
  • Now that political independence had been achieved, the priority was “development” because, implicitly, the new rulers concurred that its people were “under-developed”. Social and economic improvements would come, the nationalist leaders said, with patience and as a result of combined national effort involving all. In this early post-independence period, civil and political rights soon came to be seen as a “luxury”, to be enjoyed at some unspecified time in the future when “development” had been achieved. For now, said many African presidents, “our people are not ready” — echoing, ironically, the arguments used by the former colonial rulers against the nationalists’ cries for independence a few years earlier.
  • Cabral was adamantly opposed to this tendency. He did not believe that independence movements should take over the colonial state apparatus and use it for their own purposes. The issue wasn’t the color of the administrator’s skin, he argued, but the fact that there was an administrator. “We don’t accept any institution of the Portuguese colonialists. We are not interested in the preservation of any of the structures of the colonial state..”
  • Culture never has the translucency of custom. Culture eminently eludes any form of simplification. In its essence it is the very opposite of custom, which is always a deterioration of culture. Seeking to stick to tradition or reviving neglected traditions is not only going against history, but against one’s people.
  • Culture was no longer considered a means of liberation. Instead, disarticulated from such notions, it was left empty of meaning beyond representing a caricature of some imagined past comprised of customs and traditions, consistent with notions of the savage that still prevailed in liberalism and which provided fodder for tourists’ imaginations.
  • the commodification of anything that can make a fast buck. Just as the early years of liberalism were characterized by the plethora of charitable organizations, so today Africa is replete with development NGOs contributing to the depoliticization of poverty by diverting attention away from the processes that create mass impoverishment and misery. Citizens have been transformed into consumers, and those without the means to consume have been thrown on the dung heap of history as the seldom or never employed. And neoliberalism has attempted to rewrite the histories of the damned (Fanon’s Les Damnés de la Terre), seeking to erase their memories of the past through its invasion of the curriculums of schools and universities.
Arabica Robusta

Jayati Ghosh, "The Emerging Left in the 'Emerging' World" - 0 views

mrzine.monthlyreview.org/...ghosh260612.html

social movements intervention human development rights corporate industry socialism

shared by Arabica Robusta on 08 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • For much of the twentieth century, it was easier to talk of an overarching socialist framework, a "grand vision" within which more specific debates were conducted.  Of course there were many strands of socialism, however defined, and there were also fierce and occasionally violent struggles between them.  Even so, they shared more than a common historical lineage -- they also shared a fundamental perception or basic vision.  At the risk of crude simplification, this vision can be summarised in terms of perceiving the working class to be the most fundamental agent of positive change, capable (once organised) of transforming not only existing property and material relations but also wider society and culture through its own actions.
  • But in recent times the very idea of a grand vision has been in retreat, battered not just by the complexities and limitations of "actually existing Socialism" in its various incarnations, but more recently and thoroughly by the ferocious triumphalism of its opposite.  Indeed, it may be fair to say that, insofar as any grand vision has existed at all in recent times, the one that increasingly came to dominate public life almost everywhere in the world by the late 20th century was that of the market as a self-regulating and inherently efficient mechanism for organising economic life.  This idea had already fallen by the wayside a century previously, before it was resurrected and dusted off for use in a slightly more "post-modern" format that became the theoretical underpinning for the vast explosion of global economic integration under the aegis of finance capital that has marked the period of globalisation.
  • The association of the ideology of supposedly free markets with strong tendencies towards greater concentration of capital and the use of the state to further accentuate these tendencies and aggrandise capital has been laid bare for all to see.  That the material processes unleashed by such a trajectory of unevenly shared burdens of crisis are no longer seen as socially acceptable is also becoming evident, in many parts of the developing world that have experienced quiet or not-so-quiet revolutions, as well as currently in the European continent.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • A basic lack of confidence in anything other than capitalism as a way of organising economic life still permeates popular protests in Europe and the United States, such that the purpose of the Left is seen to be to somehow exert a restraining influence on the worst excesses of current capitalism -- the Left as a civilising and moderating force, not so much a transformative (much less revolutionary) force.
  • But elsewhere, in Asia, Latin America and Africa, the discourse is becoming quite different.  There is much more dynamism within the global Left than is often perceived, and there are variegated moves away from tired ideas of all kinds.  So the rejection of capitalism also tends to be accompanied not only by imagining alternatives, but also by shifting views about what constitutes the desirable alternative.  This in turn has meant interrogation of some previously standard tenets of socialist understanding.
  • Some critical areas of commonality of these diverse tendencies can be identified.  I would like to point to seven common threads that appear in what I have described as "the emerging Left" in what are otherwise very distinct political formations and in very dissimilar socio-economic contexts.
  • The first is the attitude to what constitutes democracy.  In contrast to some earlier socialist approaches in which the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat was misinterpreted (and, in some cases, still continues to be so used) to suppress formal democracy, there is much greater willingness of the emerging Left to engage with and even rely upon formal democratic processes and the procedures and institutions associated with "bourgeois democracy": elections; referenda; laws delivering rights and related judicial processes.
  • While this tendency is not universal, there is evidence that within emerging Left groups there is increasingly a trend towards the rejection of top-down models of party organisation (such as is exemplified in the idea of democratic centralism in Communist parties, for example) and moving towards more open, democratic forms of parties and coalition building, such that, within an overarching framework and set of goals, a plurality of opinions within the Left is not just tolerated but even respected.
  • The second relatively "new" feature is the rejection of over-centralisation.
  • It is also true that material conditions have changed to make largeness less desirable or necessary in some respects.  First, there is the recent experience of the downsides of largeness (such as banks that are too big to fail, MNCs that become so big that they are unaccountable and untaxable, and so on).  Second, technology -- especially the convergence of ICT and energy technologies -- is opening up new possibilities of productivity growth in decentralised settings, which increase the possibilities for a locally managed, decentralised, but globally connected post-carbon economy.
  • the third major difference of the emerging Left from earlier models of socialism that did away with all private property and only recognised personal property.  New Leftist thinking is generally vague or ambivalent about private property -- disliking it when it is seen as monopolising or highly concentrated (for example in the form of multinational corporations) but otherwise not just accepting of it but even (in the case of small producers, for example) actively encouraging it.  Increasingly there has been explicit recognition or incorporation of other forms of property rights, particularly communal property associated with traditional, indigenous or autochthonous "communities" who in turn are no longer derided as pre-modern relics that have to be done away with.
  • Just as the emerging Left tendencies in the emerging world engage more positively with formal democratic institutions and processes, so they also tend to speak more and more in the language of "rights".  This is the fourth relatively new tendency.  These rights are not seen in the individualistic sense of libertarian philosophy.  Rather, rights are more broadly defined in terms of entitlements as well as through recognising the need for social and political voice -- not just of citizens, but also of communities and groups, in the manner described earlier.
  • Fifth, the emerging Left goes far beyond traditional Left paradigms in recognising various different and possibly overlapping social and cultural identities that shape economic, political and social realities.  The standard socialist paradigm that emerged in the 19th century and was developed in the 20th century saw class as the fundamental contradiction within societies, with imperialism as the defining feature of relations across countries.
  • the resilience of such socially determined patterns, as well as the capitalist system's remarkable ability to incorporate patterns of linguistic/ethnic/social exclusion and discrimination as factors in commercial activity and labour markets, has forced a more nuanced understanding.  This has led to the realisation that addressing issues only in class terms is not sufficient, and many strands of the emerging Left are now much more explicitly (even dominantly) concerned with addressing the inequalities, oppression and exploitation that arise from such non-economic forces.  It is a moot point whether this shift in focus is always justified, especially as class and imperialism still remain such powerful determining forces, but certainly this is an important characteristic of many emerging Left movements.
  • The most significant such social/material attribute is gender, which forms the next important aspect that is explicitly incorporated into many emerging Left tendencies.  
  • Finally, the relationship of human societies with nature is undergoing much more comprehensive interrogation than ever before.  
  • Consider this passage from the new Constitution of Ecuador, which (like Bolivia) grants rights to nature independent of people: "Nature, . . . where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.
  • these seven features of the emerging Left do represent some departures from the traditional Left paradigm in the ways outlined.  But there are some crucial features of strong continuity: most significantly, the attitude to the significance and role of the nation-state, and the attitude to imperialism.  It is intriguing that despite the many economic, social and cultural changes wrought by globalisation, these concerns have remained especially in the developing world.
  • At one level, of course, the focus on the nation state is obvious: the demand for rights of individual or communities or Nature must be defined in relation to the locus whereby such rights will be ensured, and the nation-state remains the basic location for such demands and negotiation.
  • The fundamental premises of the socialist project remain as valid: the unequal, exploitative and oppressive nature of capitalism; the capacity of human beings to change society and thereby alter their own future in a progressive direction; and the necessity of collective organisation to do so.  The fecundity of the socialist alternatives cropping up in different parts of the world suggests that -- whatever we may think to the contrary in what are generally depressing times -- that project is still very dynamic and exciting.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Bilderbergers beware - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...82757

social movements intervention human rights development corporate industry africa pambazuka neoliberalism economic adjustment structural neoclassical theory crisis

shared by Arabica Robusta on 13 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Protesters hurled creative abuse at the black limousines rolling past towards the Chantilly Marriott Hotel entrance, and to protect them, police arrested a few activists who dared step onto the road. These particular masters of the universe first met at a hotel (The Bilderberg) in Holland in 1954, co-hosted by Dutch royalty, Uniliver and the US Central Intelligence Agency. The obscure brainstorming session would become an annual intellectual and ideological “testing grounds for new initiatives for Atlantic unity,” according to Sussex University scholar Kees van der Pijl, perhaps the world’s most rigorous scholar of transnational ruling classes.
  • On this year’s agenda were “Transatlantic Relations, Evolution of the Political Landscape in Europe and the US, Austerity and Growth in Developed Economies, Cyber Security, Energy Challenges, the Future of Democracy, Russia, China and the Middle East.”
  • This crew is bound to draw the ire of many victims, yet instead of the kind of Occupy protests I witnessed in London last month – a march through The City with socialists and anarchists furious about parasitical banking practices – or at Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park last year and in various subsequent anti-bank protests by US leftists, the weekend’s Bilderberg protest displayed paranoia about the conspiracies being hatched in the Virginia hotel.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • This is where I found myself differing most with Jones’ supporters: never before in history have world elites been so tempted to address global-scale crises, but – thanks to the adverse power balance represented by neoliberal ideology in the 1990s, neoconservatism in the early 2000s and some fusion of the two since Obama came to power – never before have they acted so incoherently.
  • Van der Pijl’s exceptionally rich study of Bilderberg and subsequent US-European geopolitical maneuvres, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (which thankfully Verso Press is about to reissue), provides the theoretical underpinning that I feel Jones’ passionately conspiratorialist followers desperately need, if they ever aim to properly judge the world’s complex combinations of structure and agency.
  • ut religion, Freemasonry, Rotary, Jews, etc., can be subsumed into the social category of ‘intellectuals’, whose function, on an international scale, is that of mediating the extremes, of ‘socializing’ the technical discoveries which provide the impetus for all activities of leadership, of devising compromises between, and ways out of, extreme solutions.”
  • But they were nervous, too, of a coming political storm, remarked van der Pijl. Representing both BP and Goldman Sachs in 2007, Peter Sutherland (former WTO director) “was quoted as saying that it had been a mistake to have referenda on the EU constitution. ‘You knew there was a rise in nationalism; you should have let your parliaments ratify the treaty, and it should be done with.’ Kissinger said words to the same effect concerning unification of the Americas, stressing the need to mobilise the enlightened media behind its propagation.”
  • So there is no doubt that world banker domination – which should have been reduced by the 2008-09 financial melt – will continue. Only the occasional sovereign default – Argentina (2002), Ecuador (2008), Iceland (2008) and maybe Southern Europe this year – or imposition of exchange controls (as rediscovered by Malaysia in 1998 or Venezuela in 2003) reduces the banksters’ grip.
  • The strongest political effort by these libertarian anti-Bilderberg protesters is to attempt the election of Texan member of Congress, Ron Paul, as president, and with 20 percent popularity, he remains Mitt Romney’s only irritant within the Republican Party as the November showdown with Obama now looms.
Arabica Robusta

How the West Manufactures "Opposition Movements" - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...ufactures-opposition-movements

social movements intervention human rights development corporate industry us

shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Government buildings are being trashed, ransacked. It is happening in Kiev and Bangkok, and in both cities, the governments appear to be toothless, too scared to intervene.
  • The rhetoric varies, but in essence, the ‘protesters’ are demanding the dismemberment of the fragile Thai democracy. Most of them are paid by the upper-middle and upper classes.
  • the government does not dare to send in tanks or the police to clear the streets. It should. But it is too scared of the army and the monarchy – two pillars of this outrageous hybrid of savage capitalism and feudalism – comparable only to even worse regional nightmares, such as Indonesia and the Philippines.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • The Prime Minister’s older brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, while he was PM himself, attempted to bring in a modern capitalist system to this submissive and deeply scared nation. And not only that: he housed the poor, introduced an excellent free universal medical care system (much more advanced than anything ever proposed in the United States), free and very advanced primary and secondary education, and other concepts deemed dangerous to the world order, and to the local feudal elites, as well as the army. Thai elites, whose love of being obeyed more than wealth, admired and feared, reacted almost immediately. The PM was exiled, barred from returning home to his country, and smeared.
  • ‘Protestors’ blocked several central arteries of Bangkok, declaring that “Thailand is not ready for democracy”, and that “if elections should determine the country’s future, pro-Shinawatra forces would keep winning”. That, of course, would be unacceptable to the elites and to many Western countries that have, for decades, benefited from the Thai feudal system.
  • Those elected democratically, those progressive in their core, these governments all over the world have been under severe attacks by some armed thugs, bandits, and anti-social elements, even by outright terrorists.
  • Hatay was overran by Saudi and Qatari jihadi cadres, pampered by the US, EU and Turkish logistics, support, weaponry and cash. The terror these people have been spreading in this historically peaceful, multi-cultural and tolerant part of the world, could hardly be described in words.
  • the local elites, right now in January 2014, are doing whatever they can, to prevent the re election of Ms Dilma Roussef… You are an experienced Latin America´s observer, you know very well…
  • I witnessed President Morsi of Egypt (I was critical of his rule at first, as I was critical of the government of Mr. Shinawatra, before real horror swept both Egypt and Thailand), being overthrown by the military, which, while in its zealous over-drive, managed in the process to murder several thousands of mainly poor Egyptian people.
  • The logic and tactics in Egypt were predictable: although still capitalist and to a certain extent submissive to IMF and the West, President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, were a bit too unenthusiastic about collaborating with the West. They never really said ‘no’, but that had not appeared to be enough for the Euro-North American regime, which, these days, demands total, unconditional obedience as well as the kissing of hands and other bodily parts.
  • All this is nothing new, of course. But in the past, things were done a little bit more covertly. These days it is all out in the open. Maybe it is done on purpose, so nobody will dare to rebel, or even to dream. And so, the revolution in Egypt has been derailed, destroyed, and cruelly choked to death. There is really nothing left of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, just a clear warning: “never try again, or else”.
  • Now in Egypt, Mubarak’s clique is rapidly coming back to power. He was a well-trusted ‘devil’, and the West quickly realized that to let him fall would be a serious strategic blunder; and so it was decided to bring him back; either personally, or at least his legacy, at the coast of thousands of (insignificant) Egyptian lives, and against the will of almost the entire nation.
  • Ukraine is not a fresh victim of destabilization tactics of the European Union, which is so sickly greedy that it appears it, cannot contain itself anymore. It salivates, intensively, imagining the huge natural resources that Ukraine possesses. It is shaking with desire dreaming of a cheap and highly educated labor force.
  • Of course the EU cannot do in Ukraine, what it freely does in many places like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It cannot just come and pay some proxy countries, as it pays Rwanda and Uganda (that are already responsible for the loss of over ten million Congolese lives in less than 2 decades), to plunder Ukraine and kill almost all those people that are resisting.
  • More than a month ago, a bizarre deal was proposed, where European companies would be allowed to enter and clean Ukraine of its natural resources, but the people of Ukraine would not be allowed to even come and work in the EU. The government, logically and sensibly, rejected the deal. And then, suddenly, Thai-style or Egyptian-style thugs appeared all over the streets of Kiev, armed with sticks and even weapons, and went onto trashing the capital and demanding the democratically elected government to resign.
  • In Africa, just to mention a few cases, tiny Seychelles, a country with the highest HDI (Human Development Index by UNDP) has for years been bombarded with criticism and destabilization attempts.
  • “We are trying to be inclusive, democratic and fair”, the Eritrean Director of Education recently told me, in Kenya. “But the more we do, the more we care about our people, the more infuriated Western countries appear to be.”
  • Bolivians almost lost their ‘white’ and-right wing province of Santa Cruz, as the US supported, many say financed the ‘independence movement’ there, obviously punishing the extremely popular government of Evo Morales for being so socialist, so indigenous and so beloved. Brazil, in one great show of solidarity and internationalism, threatened to invade and rescue its neighbor, by preserving its integrity. Therefore, only the weight of this peaceful and highly respectable giant saved Bolivia from certain destruction. But now even Brazil is under attack of the ‘manufacturers of opposition’!
  • What the West is now doing to the world; igniting conflicts, supporting banditry and terror, sacrificing millions of people for its own commercial interests, is nothing new under the sun.
Arabica Robusta

What the Wikileaks Cables Say about Leopoldo López - 0 views

www.cepr.net/...the-americas-blog

social movements intervention human rights development corporate industry venezuela hugo chávez

shared by Arabica Robusta on 23 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Many of the cables focus on internal disputes within the opposition, with Lopez often in conflict with others both within his party and others in the opposition. Given this history, perhaps it isn’t surprising that the current protests that he has been leading, calling for “la salida” – the exit – of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro have also caused internal divisions within the opposition.
  • This week, Smilde added in a quote to USA Today, "Before this happened, Lopez was playing second fiddle to Capriles… I think his goal is to try and leapfrog over Capriles. The student protests have put him in the spotlight."
  • The U.S. government has been funding the Venezuelan opposition for at least 12 years, including, as the State Department has acknowledged, some of the people and organizations involved in the 2002 military coup. Their goal has always been to get rid of the Chávez government and replace it with something more to their liking. However, their funding is probably not their most important contribution in Venezuela, since the Venezuelan opposition has most of the wealth and income of the country. A more important role is the outside pressure for unity, which, as these cables and the history of the past 15 years show, has been a serious problem for the Venezuelan opposition. The cables also show that this is a serious concern for the U.S. government.
Arabica Robusta

Sick and tired: Sri Lankan domestic workers fight back against violence | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...rs-fight-back-against-violence

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • As The International Labour Organisation has recognised ‘domestic workers, whether working in their home countries or abroad, are vulnerable to many forms of abuse, harassment and violence, in part because of the intimacy and isolation of the workplace’. 
  • What is likely to make a difference this time is that the allegations of violence against Abrew have been taken up by the Domestic Workers Union (DWU). The union has been able to mobilise support from fourteen other civil society organisations and trade unions, including the International Domestic Workers Federation and the Women’s Political Academy. 
  • The feminization of housework means that domestic work is considered low skilled, not ‘real work’. It is subject to the idiosyncratic standards and whims of each household, where varying degrees of docility and acquiesce are encouraged. I have seen domestic workers in Sri Lankan homes managed through the smallest of gestures – the nod of a head, a glance, the movement of fingertips. 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Using figures from the International Labour Organisation, Verité Research has highlighted a worldwide increase in demand for domestic workers. Verité  estimates that one in every thirteen women in the labour force will be a domestic worker. To use statistically crude imagery, on a packed London double decker bus, which at full capacity takes 84 people, you would be rubbing shoulders with at least six women domestic workers.
  • The power to capture and consume the time of others is what maintains and fixes modern class differences and the accumulation of status, the sociologist Bev Skeggs has argued recently.
  • Wetherell observe, “wherever the multiple between the wages of the rich and the poor grows, so does the number of servants.”
  • In her rousing Birkbeck Annual Law Lecture in 2013, the scholar Angela Davis suggested that in the twentieth century, the situation of black women domestic workers in North America approximated that found in slavery.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Championing the transformation of African society - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...67808

pambazuka africa imperialism horacecampbell social movements intervention human rights corporate development industry

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • The majority of the educated Africans who called themselves ‘evolved’, ‘civilised’, or ‘assimilated’ are the vectors of alienation and intellectual subservience to imperial forces.
  • It is not by accident that xenophobia and negative ideas about ethnicity, religion, and regionalism have been the tools to entrap the people in supporting their own oppression. The supreme example of this has been in the struggle for liberation in South Africa, where the workers are instigated to turn against their brothers and sisters from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Somalia, Nigeria, Mozambique and other parts of Africa.
  • When in 1999 African women issued the Zanzibar Declaration for a Culture of Peace, it was a signal that the grassroots Pan-African women were taking the lead in the struggle for the peaceful transformation of Africa. It is not by accident that Pambazuka came out of the same intellectual and ideological infrastructure that produced the Zanzibar declaration
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The elementary requirement for the strengthening of these social movements are already on the ground, whether in the Bunge la Wananchi in Kenya, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa, Sudanese Women's Voice for Peace (SWVP), or Enough is Enough in Nigeria, and the anti-colonial forces in the Western Sahara.
  • The same colonial and slave masters who dehumanised African peoples understood that dehumanisation require an ideological component to supplement naked force.
  • Martin Luther King Jr reminded us that the worst thing to do is to sleep through a revolution.
  • We are reminded in the Pan-African struggles of numerous examples of those who espoused Pan-African ideas and yet exploited their brothers and sisters, whether in the USA, the Caribbean, South America, or Africa.
  • We see these class hierarchies today when (mis)leaders like Robert Mugabe and Yoweri Museveni say that African unity requires a strong middle class. This class has simply been the instrument for plunder of Africa. In Liberia, former slaves went back and considered themselves better than other Africans while speaking of African independence and unity. Today in the Sudan and many parts of Africa, the hierarchy is expressed in class, religion and gender terms. Pambazuka will have to refine its tools to deal with the coming onslaught of those who want wars between ‘Arabs’ and Africans in Africa.
  • Pambazuka must continue to break from the NGO orbit and continue to champion transformation of African societies.
  • If Pambazuka has been a catalyst in a community of activists, it is also true that the full potential is yet to be realised.
  • Arabica Robusta on 06 Nov 10
     
    The majority of the educated Africans who called themselves 'evolved', 'civilised', or 'assimilated' are the vectors of alienation and intellectual subservience to imperial forces. This alienation robs them of their ability to grasp the full impact of their complicity in the dehumanisation of Africans.
Arabica Robusta

Keane Bhatt, "Noam Chomsky on Hopes and Prospects for Activism: 'We Can Achieve a Lot'" - 0 views

mrzine.monthlyreview.org/...bhatt221110.html

politics activism chomsky social movements

shared by Arabica Robusta on 27 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • I think he would take it for granted that elites are basically Marxist -- they believe in class analysis, they believe in class struggle, and in a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time.  And they understand.  They're instinctive Marxists; they don't have to read it.
  • In fact, Malaysia also came out of the Asian crisis.  It was imposing capital controls.  Now the economists were all saying it's a disaster.  But they did quite well.  Same with Argentina, the former poster child for the IMF, leading to a serious crisis.  It then disregarded all the warnings and doctrines and the economy did very well, contrary to predictions.
  • using the multidimensional poverty index, there were 645 million poor, or 55 percent of India's population -- more than in the poorest 26 African countries combined. 
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • there is sometimes dramatic conflict between the developmentalists, like left president Correa, and the indigenous communities affected by mining and dams.  Also, Evo Morales, despite being hugely popular, recently had to deal with a very big general strike in Potosí.  What do you make of these dynamics?  What are the hopes and prospects in Latin America regarding raising living standards, the paths of industrialization, environmental considerations, the role of social movements, and avoiding state coercion?
  • I don't know of any simple general answer to your question of how this will all turn out.  The problems are often not simple.  A great deal is at stake, not just for the people of the countries.  Resource extraction impacts a global environment that is increasingly at severe risk.
  • You said, "It's quite striking that we and other western countries can't reach, can't even approach, can't even dream about the level of democracy they had in Haiti.  That's pretty shocking.  Here's one of the poorest countries in the world.  The population that organized to win that election is among the most repressed and impoverished in the world; they managed to organize enough to enter the electoral arena without any resources and elect their own candidate."  Praising Bolivia at the same time, you asked, "Is it believable that we can't do the same? . . . We can take lessons from them.  Anything they've done we can do a thousand times more easily."
  • Arabica Robusta on 27 Nov 10
     
    The founding fathers were very concerned about the danger of democracy and spoke quite openly about the need to construct the democratic institutions so that threat would be contained.  That's why the Senate has so much more power than the House, to mention just one example.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Resistance beyond borders: Irish lessons and international workers' solidarity - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...69291

economic crisis 2008 ireland austerity structural adjustment pambazuka

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • The internalisation of whiteness by the Irish workers broke the solidarity in the ranks of the working people. Consequently, sections of the Irish workers became part of the most rabid racists in some parts of the USA. But the realities of the moment have shown that capitalists’ oppression against the working class people knows no borders. There are already projections that the financial crisis will induce a new mass emigration from Ireland. Progressives in Ireland must intensify the ideological and political work inside Ireland to educate these potential émigrés against joining the wave of counter-revolution and racism that is now sweeping North America. It is in this context that we call for an international resistance that transcends national borders and racial categorisation. It is such resistance that is needed to save our common humanity from dehumanisation and plunder by the capitalist class, whose drive for exponential profits is pathological.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 05 Dec 10
       
      Fight the "whiteness" of Irish workers, in the effort to build an international resistance.
  • These austerity measures and the consequent resistance bring home to the Western workers what the African peoples have been enduring for more than 30 years of neoliberal plunder. It was the African workers that have been at the forefront of the delegitimisation of the IMF structural adjustment programmes. In Africa, the intellectuals have exposed the capitalist interests that dismantle popular social programmes of access to health and education and strip wealth from workers, placing profits before and above human beings.
  • In Ireland itself, international capitalists such as Peter Sutherland established intellectual institutes within Trinity College Dublin to divert attention from the kind of research that could expose the speculative bubbles that were being heralded as the success story of Ireland. Mainstream economists accepted the propaganda about unbridled capitalist globalisation while proclaiming Ireland as the ‘Celtic Tiger’. Ireland was presented in textbooks all over the world as the example of the benefits of foreign direct investments and capitalist globalisation.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In Europe, students have joined the rank of demonstrators against the attempt to mortgage their future. Worker–student alliances in France and in England are intensifying the struggle against the capitalists. In particular, British students exposed the activities of the Vodafone companies that avoided paying billions of dollars in taxes. The students have been at the forefront of using new tools of education to bypass the mainstream media to alert workers
  • Even a capitalist such as Warren Buffet has called on other capitalists to pay their fair share of taxes. Buffet said that the US government should tax the rich more, saying ‘people at the high end, people like myself should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.’
  • The crisis of capitalism is not simply a question of taxes. Restructuring taxation is only one manifestation of the systematic change to the economic, political and ideological structures that came into being as a result of financialisation. This financialisation hollowed out the real production economy in the US and elsewhere. And in Ireland, the bankers from Frankfurt, London and New York descended on the Irish workers to sweep out the real economy that had been built by the Irish working people.
  • Africans must pay close attention to the capitalist events surrounding the economic depression because the same IMF and World Bank are going into African societies promoting fianancialisation and the destruction of trade unions. This is especially the case in countries such as South Africa, Ghana, Angola, Nigeria and Kenya, where the efforts are geared towards scooping up surpluses in the real economy in order to consolidate the neoliberal stranglehold. The same alliance between African workers and African intellectuals which delegitimised the IMF must be strengthened to undermine the alliance between African capitalists and Western capitalists who are bent on introducing the speculative economy. All over Africa, there have been bank bailouts to save capitalists in the face of reductions in spending on health, education and other social services.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Development aid: Enemy of emancipation? - 1 views

www.pambazuka.org/...70978

africa news ngos pambazuka crisis process social movements development industry civil society international

shared by Arabica Robusta on 20 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • In Africa there have historically been two types of civil society, those that have collaborated with the colonial power and those which have opposed it.
  • Are the big NGOs (non-governmental organisations) harmful towards Africa? FIROZE MANJI: Let’s not talk about their motivations, which are often good. The question is not about evaluating their intentions, but rather the actual consequences of their actions. In a political context where people are oppressed, a humanitarian organisation does nothing but soften the situation, rather than addressing the problem.
  • I have become anti-development. This wasn’t the case before. Let’s have an analogy: did those enslaved need to develop themselves, or to be free? I think that we need emancipation, not development.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • These last 20 years we have faced a major change: the financialisation of capitalism. Now, nobody can do anything without capital. Finance controls each and every sector of society.
  • Immediately after Kenya’s independence (1963), a great many important liberation figures were imprisoned, exiled or killed, such as Patrice Lumumba in Congo and Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso. Each time a leader had the courage to rebel, Europe and the United States forced them to back down. We then came to know an empty period until the mid-1990s, when people began to resist and organise themselves again. Today in Kenya, spaces for discussion and debate are not lacking. It’s vibrant, alive and a general trend, including in Europe.
  • Look at Tunisia: you hear that the revolution was caused by Twitter – this can’t be serious! Pens were also used as a means of information and mobilisation. Does this mean that pens caused the revolution? This illustrates a tendency towards technological determinism, towards hi-tech fetishism. We imagine that mobile phones, SMS (short message service), Twitter and Facebook have a power. This type of discussion tends to underestimate the role of those who use them.
  • In Tunisia, protesting in the road called for a lot of courage. A protestor who embraces a soldier, as is seen in a photo, is not produced by technology. It’s thought that this can resolve everything, but a third of Africans have one and there hasn’t been revolution everywhere.
  • Take for example agriculture: the bulk of what’s produced in Africa goes to feed Europe, multinationals and supermarkets. In Kenya we produce millions of flowers. Every day, they leave for Amsterdam. The amount of water used and the chemical products involved destroy our environment. While this goes on, populations have difficulty gaining access to water and food. The countryside ought to be used to produce food!
  • Agricultural production needs to be democratised.
  • I think that Latin America is a dozen years ahead of us. Structural adjustment policies began there two decades ago. I think that in Africa a popular movement will rise up from this from 2020. Chávez is not an exception; he is the product of his history, of a movement for emancipation, like Lula. The question is, how can we ourselves politicise this process? It’s not easy; there’s no technical solution. Workers and farmers need to become organised. This takes time. The positive thing is that this point is now discussed; this wasn’t the case 10 years ago.
Arabica Robusta

Socialism's Future Can't Be Its Failures - 0 views

www.leftvoice.org/s-Future-Can-t-Be-Its-Failures

socialism us election

shared by Arabica Robusta on 08 Jul 17 - No Cached
  • Without the tide of European revolution to buoy it, the new socialist government in Russia was attacked from all sides by the great capitalist powers. The liberatory promise of the Russian Revolution was not destroyed by a lack of democracy, an attempt to turn the world upside down, or even by Stalin. It was destroyed by the guns, bayonets and pogroms of the “White Army” funded and supported by every major capitalist power in the world. While the Bolshevik government survived, the revolution was smashed to bits, replaced by an empty bureaucracy ruling over the ruins of a working class.
  • The lesson of the failure of the Russian Revolution is not that it placed insufficient emphasis on democracy. It was doomed by the fear of social democratic parties to challenge capital and their abandonment of internationalism.
  • Like Sunkara, I am a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and (possibly unlike Sunkara) I believe there is a dialectical relationship between building working class power within the current system and building the potential for socialist revolution. The lesson of the defeat of the Russian Revolution is that the cost of our timidity is far worse than the cost of our boldness. To pretend otherwise is to doom the prospects of liberation and invite the terror and death of the 20th century once more.
Arabica Robusta

After Brutal Repression, the Teachers' Struggle in Argentina Continues - 0 views

www.leftvoice.org/truggle-in-Argentina-Continues

social movements latin america argentina

shared by Arabica Robusta on 21 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Not only has the government refused to make the teachers an acceptable offer, it has also employed a wide range of tactics aimed at breaking the struggle, including the launch of a campaign to recruit “volunteer” strikebreakers, making deductions from striking teachers’ salaries, recruiting state employees to prepare black lists of teachers who took part in the strikes, and planting police officers in schools and teachers’ assemblies.
  • The union federations’ response to the government’s stance has fallen short of many teachers’ expectations. Throughout the struggle, decisions regarding the actions to be carried out by the CTERA (Argentine Confederation of Education Workers) and the Suteba (United Education Workers’ Union of Buenos Aires) have been made behind the backs of the unions’ bases, without calling a single teachers’ assembly.
  • Both sides in the conflict are well aware that it is not only the teachers’ salaries that are at stake in this scenario. The outcome of the struggle will determine the prospects for future collective bargaining agreements in both the public and private sectors.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But in order to succeed, the teachers will need the support of the country’s entire working class. The high levels of participation in the general strike called by the CGT (General Workers’ Federation) on April 6, as a result of massive pressure from its base, showed not only the population’s dissatisfaction with the course of the economy, but also its willingness to fight the government’s austerity plans.
‹ Previous 21 - 33 of 33
Showing 20▼ items per page