Lenosphere Round Up 7/17-7/24

Pauly (U.S.) blogs:

Barack Obama’s calls for Blacks to focus on “personal responsibility” ought to be the subject of a genuine debate, not a media-driven uproar about the caught-on-tape words of Rev. Jesse Jackson.

IN SEVERAL high-profile speeches, Barack Obama has gone out of his way to chastise Black fathers in particular and call for Black people in general to focus on personal responsibility.

Lebanese Socialist (Lebanon) blogs:

Veteran Lebanon reporter Nicholas Blanford sheds some light on potential trouble for Hizbollah on the morning after the night before:

Hezbollah’s leaders have long championed intra-Muslim unity, believing that the schism between Shiites and Sunnis only benefits the enemies of Islam.

Yet, since May, Hezbollah has been slow to reconcile with moderate Sunni leaders, who were left looking weak and helpless before the Shiite party’s military machine.

Angry, humiliated, and frightened by the May clashes, Sunnis are clamoring for weapons and training, a step that the moderate Sunni leadership is unwilling or unable to take.

Everyone congratulate Richard Seymour (U.K.)! He graduated with his BA in Politics, Philosophy, and History with first class honors!  He also blogs on the arrest of war criminal Karadzic:

I raise all this not because Karadzic is entitled to any defense from me (I am sure he is more than adequately protected by his amulets). So much is obvious. And I don’t raise it because even my reasonably well-grounded suspicions about his culpability are not enough to persuade me that the facts should be settled by a lawless court which refuses to investigate the crimes of its sponsors. I raise it because, well, here we are in the middle of an epic and ongoing war crime with death rates, torture chambers, and mass rapes that are certainly much worse in their totality than anything that happened in Bosnia. All of this is the direct responsibility of the American state, which unarguably launched a war of aggression without any provocation whatsoever. And, somehow, the volume is decidedly muffled. While there are great independent journalists exposing much that is going on, the field is not exactly crowded. The liberal journalists and opinionators who were so vocal in advocating for Izetbegovic, so eager to bear witness, are hardly visible.

CF (France) links us to an article on fighting racial discrimination in France:

Dans cet article Sylvain Pattieu argumente pour une lutte spécifique contre la discrimination raciale. Cette dimension de l’oppression doit être prise en compte notamment par le Nouveau parti anticapitaliste que la LCR et en train demettre en place, avec d’autres. Cela me paraît d’ailleurs tellement évident que je m’étonne un peu qu’il ait été nécessaire de le préciser de cette façon-là.

Mustafa Mahmoud (Egypt) blogs on the Communist Manifesto on its 160th anniversary:

موقف الشيوعيين من البروليتاريا ؟

فاذا كان دور البروليتاريا هو الاطاحة بالبرجوازية فما علاقة الشيوعيين بالعمال ؟
يقول ماركس :
إن الشيوعيين لا يتميزون عن الأحزاب البروليتارية الأخرى إلاّ في أنّهم: من ناحية، يُبرزون ويُغلِّبون المصالح المشتركة في الصراعات القومية المختلف للبروليتاريين، بصرف النظر عن تابعية عموم البروليتاريا، ومن ناحية أخرى، يمثِّلون دائما مصلحة مُجمل الحركة في مختلف أطوار التطور، التي يمر بها الصراع بين البروليتاريا والبرجوازية.
إذن الشيوعيون عمليّا هم الفريق الأكثر حزما من الأحزاب العمالية في جميع البلدان، والدافع دوما إلى الأمام، ونظريا هم متميزون عن سائر جُموع البروليتاريا، بالتبصّر في وضع الحركة البروليتارية، وفي مسيرتها ونتائجها العامّة.
والهدف الأول للشيوعيين هو الهدف نفسه لكل الأحزاب البروليتارية الأخرى: تشكّل البروليتاريا في طبقة، إسقاط هيمنة البرجوازية، واستيلاء البروليتاريا عن السّلطة السياسية.

Hossam (Egypt) links us to an article:

The trial of 48 men and one woman accused of a range of criminal offences allegedly committed during the April 6 clashes will begin on Aug. 9, their lawyers told Daily News Egypt.
The group — five of whom are at large — will be tried in an exceptional court on what lawyers allege are spurious, trumped-up charges including “criminal damage to public and private property, assault of a public official, unlawful assembly of more than five people and illegal possession of weapons.”
The announcement by workers in the Ghazl El-Mahalla Spinning Mill that they would go on strike on April 6 had prompted calls by activists and political opposition groups for a nationwide general strike on the same day.

Sean (Brazil) blogs:

Across the globe, no era in the 20th century has been as celebrated, contested, and scrutinized as the 1960s. And as we are frequently reminded – in a parade of books, articles, films, television programsand exhibitions – the Sixties continue to illuminate our present era. Now, forty years after the many of the main events of 1960s, Routledge is delighted to announce the publication of a new, peer-reviewed journal devoted to grappling with the era’s complicated legacy. Featuring cross-disciplinary and cutting-edge scholarship from academics and public intellectuals, The Sixties is the only academic journaldevoted to this extraordinary era. In addition to research essays and book reviews, The Sixties publishes exhibition reviews, conversations,interviews and graphics.

Snowball (U.K.) blogs:

The news that Gordon Brown is considering splashing out, not of course on public sector workers pay or on pensions, but on a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher of all things has prompted the bourgeois media to engage in another bout of beloved nostalgia towards the former Tory Prime Minister and her reign in power. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian for example praised Thatcher as a ‘revolutionary’. Given this, I thought it timely to remind ourselves of the reality of what Thatcher ‘achieved’ – which was of course if anything closer to a counter-revolution in Britain than a ‘revolution’, by reposting extracts from an article written by the late revolutionary journalist Paul Foot from Socialist Worker in February 1985, entitled succinctly ‘Thatcher: class warrior’

Dave (The Void) (U.K.) blogs about a plaque in Stalybridge:

It says:

The first general strike (1842) originated in this area. It began as a movement of resistance to the imposition of wage cuts in the mills and was also known as the ‘Plug Riots’. It spread to involve nearly half a million workers throughout Britain and represented the biggest single exercise of working class strength in nineteenth century Britain.

DJN (Canada) reviews The Dark Knight:

The two-and-a-half hours of The Dark Knight does not feel that long. It is a definite thriller which, compared to Batman Begins, is quite light on slow-paced, pondering moments. But you wouldn’t get this impression from reading the reviews. Christian Bale’s Batman is supposed to be locked in a crisis, unable to decide whether or not to ditch Batman because of the success of Gotham’s District Attorney, Harvey Dent. The Joker’s philosophical musings on order and chaos are also described as a force to be reckoned with. I was not expecting anything incredibly “deep”, but I was expecting something more than the usual action thriller.

On the contrary, the dilemma faced by Batman is hardly deep and hardly contemplated at all. Batman, Lucius Fox (Freeman) and Alfred (Caine) hardly exchange words, let alone pursue any conversations over the future of Batman, the role of heroes, vigilantism – or the very taboo subject of the causes of crime. The reviewers were clearly blinded by the glaring hype around this film, confusing serious acting and serious lines in an action film with something we’d expect in an explicit social commentary flick. Three years ago, Batman Begins did open up the possibility of creating a more human and three-dimensional Batman. But The Dark Knight is a retreat from this possibility. It is a reversion to the typical, boring Batman – Batman’s lines at the end of the film when confronting the Joker and Two-Face reveal this fact. Christian Bale’s brooding may fool some into thinking this is a new Batman, but others, myself included, are not.

John Mullen (France) gives us an article on the state of education in France:

Enzo se demande pourquoi il est là ?
Pourquoi Saïd a dû partir ?
Pourquoi Cathy et sa mère pleurent la nuit ?
Pourquoi et comment les usines s’en vont en emportant le travail ?
Pourquoi ils sont si nombreux en classe ?
Pourquoi il n’a pas une maîtresse toute l’année ?
Pourquoi il devra prendre le bus ?
Pourquoi il passe ses vacances à faire des stages ?
Pourquoi on le punit ainsi ?
Pourquoi il n’a pas de lunettes ?
Pourquoi il a faim ?

Mohamad (Egypt) blogs:

I’m back again with collection of artistic graphics against system in my 1^st round, the amount of reactions I received from graphic designers who are so exited to the idea & really would love to work on it, encouraged me really to work hard on it to reach success .. which is more spreading, publishing to the designs & soon there will be a workshop for graphic designers who would love to participate with us (will announce later about the workshop in details when it will be ready to be started)..

Now with the new designs I came out with in my 1^st round …

Mashahed (Egypt) blogs:

لقرءة تقرير كريم البحيري اضغط هنا

Roobin (U.K.) blogs on Brown’s recent position on Iraq:

The anti-Bush backlash of 2005 will finally take some political shape (not the one we’d like perhaps but…) when Obama or McCain take office next January. Obama has promised to be different, McCain will probably have to show he’s different to Bush with regards to foreign policy. The the PNAC strategy has not swept all before it, everyone knows it, everyone expects some kind of ‘change’.

Gordon Brown is just moving with that change. The war and occupation in Iraq has long been unpopular and discredited. However, the British government chose to go with 50 years of tradition, rather than the democratically expressed will of the people.

Socialist Students of Cairo University blog on the crippling privatization hitting the country:

بعد تولى رجال الأعمال جميع الوزارات الخدمية , فهم الجميع الرسالة : قطار الخصخصة يندفع الآن بأقصى طاقته ليحصد كل ما تبقى .. الرأسماليون الجدد اكتشفوا أن البيروقراطيين القدامى أمثال الجنزورى و عاطف عبيد و رجالهما –رغم ولائهم المطلق- و خدماتهم التى لا تحصى , و فسادهم الذى صار يطبق على أنفاس الجميع , غير مؤهلين و لا قادرين على إتمام المهمة .. اكتشف الرأسماليون الجدد ان عليهم أخذ زمام المور بأيديهم , و إعادة ترتيب توازنات القوى بما لا يسمح بأى خلل أو تردد فى انتهاج السياسات المعبرة عن مصالحهم و الإندفاع بقطار الخصخصة الى محطاته النهائية : البنوك , الصناعات الهندسية , المواصلات العامة , و السكك الحديدية , و المياه , و الطاقة , و بالطبع الخدمات الصحية التى يأتى على رأسها قطاع التأمين الصحى .

Cliffite (U.K.) blogs:

GENC-SEN, Turkey’s first and only students’ union was founded in December 2007 to defend students and fight for their demands on a national level. Starting as a small concern GENC-SEN has grown to over 1500 members and 27 university and college branches with backing from a national trade union federation. GENC- SEN branches have run a range of progressive campaigns that would be familiar to many student activists and officers in Britain.

However since its foundation their branches were targeted by the government one by one. Branch meetings were unlawfully barred posters and leaflets confiscated. Some state officials have arbitrarily declared some branches “illegal”. Now such attacks have become nation with the Governorship of Istanbul on behalf of the ministry of the interior taking a court case against the union. They are claiming that the “Trade Union Act no.2821 does not provide for the freedom of association for students.” The case has been pushed back to the 27th of July and may continue for some time.

Tolaab (Egpyt) blogs in solidarity with the sacked Egyptian labor activists:

لا لفصل وتشريد العمال …
عريضة حق العودة

مع تصاعد حركة الاحتجاج في أوساط العمال والموظفين والمهنيين طوال عام 2007 /2008 فان سلطة رجال الأعمال بدأت مؤخرا في شن حملة شرسة في مواجهة اضرابات واحتجاجات العمال

بدأت الدولة باعتقال عمال المحلة .. ثم تواصلت بسياسة فصل العمال من مصانعهم فخلال الفترة الماضية تم فصل وتشريد أكثر من 52 عامل من 10 مواقع ومازالت الحملة البربرية مستمرة

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