Lenosphere Round Up 7/10-7/17

John Mullen (France) interviewed feminist and Marxist Lindsay German of the SWP:

Des camarades des Marxistes Unitaires, et de Socialisme International sont allés à Londres pour l’université d’été du Socialist Workers Party. Ils en ont profité pour interviewer Lindsay German, camarade du SWP, et une des dirigeantes principales de la large alliance antiguerre qui a été construite au Royaume Uni. Voici l’interview :

Nous avons interviewé Lindsey GERMAN, coordonnatrice nationale de la Stop the War Coalition, féministe et socialiste révolutionnaire et auteur de plusieurs livres dont Material Girls : Women, Men and Work (2007) et Sex, Class and Socialism (1998).

Tolaab Mokwama (Egypt) blogs:

ارفع صوتك
ياللي حابس بين ضلوعك
قهرك ونار خوفك وجوعك
ياللي غرقان بين دموعك
كل ده..وكاتم في صوتك
ارفع..ارفع
ارفع صـوتك

Al-Negem Al-Ahmar (Egypt) posts some music.

Pauly (U.S.) blogs:

In Glenn Beck’s column on CNN today he writes about “What’s Right with America.” I’m not sure if he forgot to submit this in time for the Fourth or what, but whatever the case may be he lists a few things:

Left Punch (Norway) blogs on the reasons why Norway should not be in Afganistan:

Det finnes ingen rettferdig grunn til at Norge skal krige i Afghanstan. Ingen. Det finnes heller ingen sterk opionion som støtter krigen, heller tvert imot. Så godt som rundt halve befolkningen har ved hver eneste meningsmåling vært imot Norges deltakelse, selv om politikerne har gjort alt for å kamuflere sitt væpna angrep og brudd på folkeretten, ved å hevde at edle motiver står bak. Ja, de skjøtter ingen ting denne gjengen, i sitt forsøk på å rettferdiggjøre sin krig: “kvinnefrigjøring” og “kamp mot fundamentalisme”; forsvarskrig(forsvar for USA mot Afghanistan!) og stabilisering……

CF (France) blogs on Lindsay German’s new article on refuting bourgouis feminist theory:

Lindsey German est une féministe qui défend sans concessions les idées du marxisme révolutionnaire. Elle a écrit notamment pour réfuter la théorie de la patriarchie selon laquelle l’oppression de la femme existe indépendamment de l’exploitation de classe. Pour créer une société où l’oppression basée sur le genre n’existe pas, il faut abolir l’exploitation basée sur la classe.

Lenin (U.K.) blogs:

The history of anti-imperialist insurgency is predictably littered with demonic imagery. The foes of empire are invariably barbarised, and of course this is as true of the Iraqi resistance as it once was of the Mau Mau. But the Mau Mau were considered uniquely evil, unlike other enemies of the British Empire such as the Communists in Malaysia, even though the suppression of the latter was almost as brutal. The Mau Mau was a movement that the British could only consider a recrudescence of African savagery and tribalism. Louis Leakey’s 1954 book, Defeating Mau Mau, described the movement as an essentially religious one, a debased version of Christianity, that had attempted to usurp legitimate grievances for its own unspecified (but nefarious) ends. Those grievances, for Leakey, did not call into question the supposition that “European civilization” or “the white man was superior”, but rather confirmed it. The grievances had only arisen as a result of the civilizing impact of whitey, so the argument went. The settler leaders, who relied on the labour of the Kikuyu on the ‘White Highlands’, were certainly convinced of their innate superiority, and were enraged by the resistance to their dominance.

Keith Watermelon (U.K.) blogs:

To be serious for a moment though, we’re facing quite possibly the deepest economic crisis the world has seen since the 1930s. Rising inflation (in reality 10-15% this year) and the credit crucnch means that many people are facing the stark choice between paying their fuel bills and buying food. And what’s our government got to say by way of a solution - waste less food. Who knows what further pearls of wisdom could come next from the government that, let’s be clear, is responsible for the economy being fucked?

Hossam (Egypt) blogs:

It was exciting to learn from the Greek comrades during Marxism 2008 about the strike wave that is engulfing their country at the moment, and exchange stories and experiences about what’s going on in Egypt and Greece in terms of the industrial action… The workers, students and civil servants on both sides of the Mediterranean are raising hell… Below are excerpts from an ISJ interview with Comrade Panas Garganas, the editor of the Greek newspaper Workers Solidarity…

Snowball (U.K.) quotes Mark Steel on Barak Obama:

There’s no way of saying this without sounding a bit pretentious, but I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago. And the most instructive person I met may have been a frail old black woman in a newsagents, who picked up a newspaper with a photo of Barack Obama on it, and thrust it under my nose.

“See him,” she said, “He’s in town today – Barack Obama, in town today.” And she had such a gleam of pride I wondered whether he was her son. When you’re used to British politicians this behaviour seems staggering. Supposing you were the most imaginative person in the world, creator of award-winning science fiction full of planets run by giant centipedes and made out of beetroot, you still wouldn’t be able to imagine anyone gleefully grabbing a stranger and saying “She’s in town today – Hazel Blears,” even if she was their daughter.

Lebanese Socialist (Lebanon) blogs:

The biggest winner by far is Nasrallah. The man has surrounded himself with something of a superhuman aura in the eyes of millions in the Arab world. For the past eight years he has delivered nothing but success to his constituency.

Now he boasts of a long record: getting the Israelis to leave South Lebanon in 2000, the prisoner exchange of 2004, the Israeli defeat of 2006, and more recently the overpowering of his opponents in Lebanese domestic politics in May.

Dave (The Void) (U.K.) blogs:

Marx was an atheist, yes, and believed that in a rational, human society, most people would ultimately turn away from religion of their own free will.  But to Marx, the enemy was not religion itself, but a world which makes religion necessary.  This is precisely the opposite of the Richard Dawkinsian obsession with blaming all the world’s real, material problems on the irrational ideas in some people’s heads.

thr (Austrailia) blogs:

The Age, Melbourne’s leading broadsheet newspaper, has an undeserved reputation for leaning to the left. In reality, the paper adopts a series of often meaningless causes in a tokenistic fashion (such as its support for ‘Earth Day’). It is harder to find articles on class struggle, or imperialism, or with an anti-corporate message, or anything else that is recognisably ‘left’. On the contrary - if we examine the glossier sections of the paper (particularly the lift-outs and magazines) - the paper is filled with expensive consumer items (and not merely as ads) presumably pitched to well-heeled, middle-aged bourgeois types who are happy to regard themselves as ‘progressive’.

Speaking of which, his new reading group blog is up and it is covering Mao’s paper “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”:

The text in question is a speech delivered by Mao (which can be found here). Jack Stephens, author of The Mustard Seed blog, has kindly provided an introduction:

The speech “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” was given in Feb. of 1957 to the 11th Session of the Supreme State Conference which was held in Peking. The main purpose of the speech was in response to the Hungarian Uprising the year earlier and why the uprising happened and how one could be avoided in China. While Mao was obviously misguided in his belief that the uprising (done by Communist party cadres and revolutionaries against Stalinism) there were some key points in Mao’s speech that can be looked at today.

Mustafa (Egypt) blogs on the teachers demand for better pay and rights:

اقام الموظفين الاداريين بوزارة التربية والتعليم امس مؤتمرا صحفيا فى مركز هشان مبارك للاعلان عن مطالبهم فى مساواتهم بكادر المعلمين ، وياتى المؤتمر بعد العديد من الوقفات الاحتجاية التى اقامتها رابطة لجنة الدفاع عن الاداريين وهى اللجنة التى تطالب بحقوق جميع العاملين بوزارة التربية والتعليم فى مصر. واوضح الاستاذ فوزى عبد الفتاح رئيس الرابطة عن ان العملية التعليمية لا يقوم بها المدرس بمفردة ولكن هناك كتيبة من الموظفين الاداريين التى تشرف وتتابع الطلاب ولذلك فمن حقنا المساواة مع المعلمين فى الكادر خاصة لان ارتفاع الاسعار يتزامن مع تدنى اجورنا الهزيلة التى لا تكفينا للمعيشة . وكنا قد طالبنا اكثر من مرة الوزارة تعديل وضعنا ولكنهم قالوا انتظروا صدور قانون الوظيفة العامة الذى سيحسن احوالكم وانتظرنا ولم يحدث شيئا . وبعد معاناة طويلة مع وزير التربية والتعلم وافق على منحنا كادرا موازيا للمعلمين ولكن للاسف وزير مالية رفض اعتماد الاموال بحجة اننا نأخذ مكافأة امتحانات! مع العلم ان مكافأة الامتحانت هى فى الواقع اجر مقابل عمل وليست مكافأة كما يوحى اسمها ولا نعرف لماذا هذا التعنت معنا .