The West and Intervention

I read an interesting (but ultimately trivial) opinion piece in today’s Finnancial Times by Chrystia Freeland titled “The new age of authoritarianism.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with the piece as long as people realize that it’s essentially given from the bourgeois viewpoint that the West inherently looks after the good of the world and that free market globalization is something that (while it gives huge profits to Western corporations) is ultimately good for the rest of humanity.

This quote more than sums up her take on the last 20 odd years or so:

the implosion of Soviet communism inspired hundreds of millions of others around the world to embrace freer markets and demand more responsive governments. The great global economic boom of the past 20 years, which has brought more people out of poverty more quickly than at any other time in human history, would not have been possible had the Soviet way of ordering the world not been discredited first.

I’m not going to argue with this point (you all can read my other blog posts to see what I think), it’s just to illustrate her point-of-view.

Most of what we have been reading in the news about the authoritarian regimes of Russia, China, Iran, etc. have been whole heartidly from the view points of those who espouse a liberal bourgeois capitalist mindset (whether they bee slightly left, right, or center) while there has been very little room for the opinions of radical labor organizers, anti-capitalists/globalization organizers, home grown Third World activists, etc.  This essentially gives the reader of mainstream news a very narrow outlook on global affairs and ultimatly stiffle critical thinking as there is much more out there than the capitalist bourgeois mind set and there are more ways to analyze the situation of global affairs (especially when it comes to the South Ossetia conflict).

This piece by Freeland is a perfect example of this mindset that dominates the mainstream media (print and TV).

In it she essentially parrots the views of those who came before in saying that the end of a Soviet dominated Third World brought freedoms to untold millions (I’m no fan of the capitalist degenerated state that was the Soviet Union mind you) and that poverty has been reduced world wide.  She goes along the classical neo-liberal (as supposed to realist) line of authoritarian China and Russia and their imperial endvours around the world and how the West should stand up to them, etc. but does not turn her analysis on the West itself.

One thing I find liberating about Marxian/Marxist political thought (as supposed to Smithan and Ricardian or neo-classical lines of thought) is its grounding in class analysis and how the capitalist class essentially shapes the economy and the world.  With this line of thought we don’t need to look at the world in a Black and White Western imperial adventures = good and non-Western imperial adventures = bad.  We can look at the world in a different light to broaden our analysis.

In Solidarity With the Mahalla 49

Please spread the word.  The “Mahalla 49″ are innocent civilians rounded up by the Egyptian police during a protest of April of this year.  For more click here:

1-Circulate information about the trial and expose the Mubarak’s dictatorship among your network of contacts, peers, and even family members…
2-Collect signatures on the following petition, especially from trade unions and rights groups
3-Mobilize protests in front of the Egyptian embassies and consulates in your country. When you do that, please just snap a photo of the protest, and email it to me: egyptian[dot]bolshevik[at]gmail[dot]come

Intervention in Zimbabwe: Humanitarian and Otherwise

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Pauly blogs a rebuke to the BBC’s Sir Ronald Sanders argument for intervention in Zimbabwe:

Take Sanders’ own Great Britain, for example. As James Fiorentino points out in Socialist Worker, British banks have been investing heavily in Zimbabwe, extending credit to members of Mugabe’s inner circle. Additionally, the British mining company Rio Tinto has been heavily involved in the diamond industry in Zimbabwe. Far from asking his government to intervene, Sanders should demand that his countrymen get the hell out.

Protests Against Lee Myung-bak

The Associated Press reports:

In weeks of street rallies by angry critics of Lee, what had been seen as the former businessman’s strengths have instead been blasted as weaknesses. Nicknamed “The Bulldozer” for decisively pushing through projects as a Hyundai construction CEO and Seoul mayor, Lee has instead been labeled by protesters as a “dictator” who fails to heed public opinion and panders to American interests.

His December election win ended a decade of liberal rule and was seen as bringing more professionalism to the presidency, and also healing strained ties with the United States. But a string of Cabinet appointments in which nominees were forced to resign amid allegations of real estate speculation and other irregularities even before he took office in February made for a political honeymoon that went by with blinding speed even for South Korea, a country where rushing is a way of life.

Image From:

China Daily

Die Linkspartei Under Attack From Media

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Mick Hall writes:

The growth in working class support for Germany’s Die Linkspartei, [The Left Party] as expressed in recent regional election results and national opinion polls has clearly rattled Capital and its gofers in the Bundestag and media. This time in an attempt to halt the party’s rising popularity, reactionary forces have been rifling through the dustbin of history and dug up an old story about Gregor Gysi, one of the Left Party most charismatic leaders, who at one time was a member of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party. [SED]

“What you look like with an AK bullet hole across your back!”

I’m in the music mood today. I originally blogged on this song a while back; here it is in its entirety.

Crisis in Lebanon!

I know, I know, the headline is very CNN-esq, but work with me here people, I just got off a nine hour shift of loading heavy equipment into giant trucks and I’m tired.

So during my half-hour break at work this morning at 3:30 am I decide to go to Starbucks (the only place open 24 hours that’s near by) and I pick up the New York Times and see this as their front page picture:

Ummmm….Holy FUCK!

What the fuck happened? I started thinking to myself. Wasn’t there just a general strike yesterday? HOW DID THIS COME ABOUT???!!!

Which also made me think of Sursock, Farfahinne and MarxistFromLebanon. Quickly though, some reports from mainstream news organizations.

From the Times article:

Fierce clashes escalated in Beirut on Thursday between Sunni supporters of the government and loyalists of Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, after Hezbollah’s leader said the government had declared war by threatening to shut down the group’s private telephone network

Minutes after Mr. Nasrallah’s speech, armed men in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods on the west side of Beirut engaged in heavy fighting using automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The army raced in armored personal carriers from one neighborhood to another, with soldiers shooting in the air to try to stop the fighting.

By late Thursday masked gunmen were roaming the streets with walkie-talkies. Some were seen shooting out streetlights to keep rooftop snipers from directing their fire at targets.

Many residents along Corniche Mazraa, a major highway that has become a demarcation line between the factions, were seen leaving their houses for safer areas. Others lined up in supermarkets, stocking up on food supplies.

The Guardian (U.K.) has a short video on the situation and this article:

Hizbullah gunmen today took control of west Beirut in street battles that left 11 people dead and forced government supporters into hiding

The Daily Star (Lebanon) reports:

Hizbullah secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said during a press conference Thursday that Lebanon has entered a new phase of its political crisis and warned that a government crackdown on his party was tantamount to a “declaration of war.” Nasrallah stressed that Hizbullah was ready to return to dialogue, linking talks to a government back-track regarding measures taken Tuesday.

…

“The communications network is a significant part of the weapons of the resistance,” Nasrallah declared. “I had said that we will cut the hand that targets the weapons of the resistance … Today is the day to fulfill this decision.”

The cleric also stressed that Hizbullah is ready to use its weapons to defend itself should the government “cartel” seek to impinge upon the rights of the resistance.

“We have the right to confront he who starts a war with us by defending our rights and our weapons. We have yet to use our weapons inside the country but will do so to protect our arsenal,” he added.

“The [government] decision is tantamount to a declaration of war. This [signals] the start of a war … on behalf of the United States and Israel,” Nasrallah said during the conference, which was held via video link.

Nasrallah also escalated his rhetoric against a key March 14 stalwart Progressive Socialist Party leader and MP Walid Jumblatt, with whom the opposition has been trading jabs over the airport controversy and the communications debate.

Now, onto the ground.

MarxistFromLebanon was reporting

Well, after General Secretary of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah spoke, heavy shooting began between AMAL/Hezbollah and Future Movement extensively. Shooting took place everywhere, in my street alone guns were shot. The neighboring street, 4 masked gunners came out and are still there. A lot of my friends reported that snipers stood up on their rooftops. Rockets were reported, and everywhere these parties are presents, a gigantic shoot-out.

It seems interesting that so far there have only been 11 reported deaths, especially reading MFL’s first hand accounts of shooting going off everywhere. Is the media getting it wrong?

MFL continues:

This is a full scale war in Beirut. What we are witnessing now is the rising borders of the militia cantons. Those who successfully maintain control over their streets, then they draw their new “national borders of their mini-republics”. Now of course, with the presence of the cantons, it will be like a big chess board whereby one color signifies the government and the other would be the opposition. Reports of different opposing media accuse the other parties of performing “Sectarian Cleansing” whereby each majority would kick the minority. The site of refugees in Ras el Naba’a and Corniche el Mazra’a was repulsive, all political parties should pay them compensation. Now what to expect from militias when their universities students are using ak-47s?

Fafahinne writes (in Arabic, excuse the crappy translation)

1) What is most shocking in his [Nasrallah's] statements is his call for compromise and dialogue with all of the parties and with Condoleezza Rice. I felt his speech, despite the escalation phenomenon: the “spare hand that extends to the arms of the resistance,” an indirect call to return to the table of dialogue with these parties. This is what we have to take a decisive stand on: no dialogue with a puppet government … yes to the toppling Siniora.

…

2) In his speech he didn’t even mention the sensitive issue of the difficult economic situation and he also omitted the topic of the raising of the minimum wage, which was called for by the General Labor Union…And, hence, limited the conflict with the question of disarmament and bumped out the economic situation and economic policy of Altaher Sinoiora’s government.

أكثر ما يصدمني في تصريحه هو إتهامه بالعمالة لأطراف الحكومة “موظفي كونداليزا رايس” من جهة ودعوته للمساومة والحوار مع هذه الأطراف من جهة أخرى. فلمست بخطابه، على الرغم من ظاهره التصعيدي : “سنقطع اليد التي تمتد الى سلاح المقاومة”، دعوة غير مباشرة إلى العودة الى طاولة الحوار مع هذه الأطراف. وهذا ما علينا ان نأخذ منه موقفا حاسمًا: لا حوار مع حكومة عميلة…نعم لإسقاط حكومة السنيورة

…

في كلمته لم يذكر حتى الوضع الإقتصادي الصعب الذي يفتك بالفئات الأكثر حساسية وأغفل أيضا موضوع رفع الحد الأدنى للأجور الذي دعا الإتحاد العمالي العام ودعت “المعارضة” لإضراب من أجله يوم البارحة. وبالتالي فهو حصر الصراع مع السلطة في مسألة السلاح وأخرج الوضع الإقتصادي وسياسة التعهير

الإقتصادية التي تنتهجها حكومة السنيورة من الصراع

Sursock blogs:

The word on everyones lips is “fitna” — a schism between Sunni and Shia Muslims. At the moment this struggle is political — between the US backed government and opposition, who are supporters of the resistance.

Opposition gunmen, many of them masked, are roaming around the Hamra area of west Beirut.

****

A friend in Ain el Mreisseh (near to the old hotel district) said that Amal fighters from the opposition took over her neighbourhood “pretty quickly this afternoon”.

…

Thursday turned into a bad day for the government. The opposition forces overan Future TV and Al-Mustaqbal offices in west Beirut. Both are the media mouthpieces of Saad Hariri.

It seems that the pro government fighters (private security forces) walked away from the battle.

Rumours that Walid Jumblat, a key government ally, abandoned his house in the upmarket quarter of Clemenceau proved unfounded. But the threat against his residence seems to have triggered clashes just south of the capital.

I will update you guys more on the situation going on over there some time tomorrow. I’ll try to find more blogs fro m Lebanon (I know of a few more) plus some more news when it happens. Please check out Farfahinne’ Twitter for more updates and all those blogs and newspapers I mentioned, and of course Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera English. Special thanks to Moussa Bashir from Global Voices.

My Country

A short Al Jazeera English report on my home country of Guatemala via Hossam.

“Globalize” resistance and protest

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Carol P. Araullo, the chairperson of BAYAN, a large umbrella front of progressive and left-wing organizations in the Philippines, blogs on the food crisis and the culpability of President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines:

But this time around, we can readily agree that the rice/food crisis is happening worldwide and its immediate causes and historical roots cannot be strictly confined to the specific policies and concrete situations obtaining in particular countries. Indeed, the international agribusiness cartels such as the small clique of corporations that control the world’s fertilizer and pesticide market, the largest seed companies (e.g. Monsanto), the largest grain traders (e.g. Cargill) and the world’s big food processors (e.g. Nestle), their local business partners in third world countries and the homegrown trading cartels (e.g. in rice) have made a killing in the midst of growing hunger, food riots and panic buying by governments and households.

Having said that, we reiterate that the Arroyo regime is not blameless, in fact it must own up to and be held accountable for the neoliberal policies and programs it has perpetuated and even accelerated in implementation that today aggravates the rice crisis.

“This is a perfect storm…”

Just read an interesting article in the New York Times about the worldwide food price crisis:

That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments

…

“It’s a big deal and it’s obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there’s more political fallout to come.”

With the spreading of capital across the globe and the integration of economic zones the world is increasingly becoming (as many commentators have pointed out) more vulnerable to the fluctuations of the market like never before. Most of the time, at least for those in the West, the contradictions are not as great as to make this idea a reality for many. However, when the contradictions become greater, when inequality and vast wealth become more and more pronounced, the reality of this idea gets hammered home to many who had not realized this before.

The reasons for integrating world markets are obvious, as Lenin states:

The export of capital influences and greatly accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported. While, therefore, the export of capital may tend to a certain extent to arrest development in the capital-exporting countries, it can only do so by expanding and deepening the further development of capitalism throughout the world.

My (blog) friend Bhupinder pointed out in an essay I wrote for Blogbharti:

It is indeed ironical that while it was the working class movements that recognized internationalism long before in the 19th century, it has taken a back seat when precisely technological advancements have internationalism more viable. Instead, we have its inversion- a corporate/ capitalist led- globalization.

Yet, even with capital expanding its life-sucking tentacles to other parts of the globe previously unreached there can be a drawback to this globalization. It makes it easier for the working class and proletariat of the world to communicate to each other and voice their concerns amongst themselves; while the realm of the Internet is still a bastion of bourgeois thought and for the bourgeois class, it won’t be that way for long (or, at least I hope it won’t).

Because most of the economic zones are fully or partially integrated a crisis in one region can spark a crisis in another region. With world food prices rising you have global unrest the likes of which, according to UN economic and special adviser to the UN general-secretary Jeffery D. Sachs, we have not seen in more than 30 years. We have working class proletariat, lumpenproletariat, and even the petty bourgeoisie revolting in countries spanning every continent. Not only are they revolting, but it is being acknowledged that many post-colonialist (yet still colonized) countries in the developing world are in danger of falling.

With all of this we have a great possibility (in the future) of more concerted and organized effort of working class peoples across the globe to do something about this system of globalized capital (if the Western workers would actually care enough to act; even then, there is still a lot of discontent about U.S. policies of globalization amongst the U.S. working class). So it turns out this globalization can be a double edged sword of the ruling elite do not know how to swing it right as they tend to blind themselves of the bigger picture from time to time while trying to garner up vast amounts of capital in the quickest amount of time and regardless of the cost to others.

Image From:
The New York Times

Hero from Egypt

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Roobing blogs:

If your hero is Justin Timberlake or Santa Claus, Madonna or the Tooth Fairy… or any such legend or fluff merchant you’re wrong. Your hero is actually Hossam el-Hamalawy, currently reporting the uprising in Egypt, led by the textile workers of Mahalla.

Hossam reports:

The Textile Workers’ League activists Kamal el-Fayoumi and Kareem el-Beheiri, as well as a number of the Mahalla detainees, are currently undergoing interrogation at the Tanta Prosecutor’s Office. I have a report from an activist, which I couldn’t confirm yet, that Kareem was subject to severe beatings in police custody. The activist I spoke with said he heard this from one of the recently released detainees. We should know soon whether Kareem and the others were abused in custody or not when the lawyers who are attending the interrogation come out…

…

For continuous updates on the detainees, please follow Tadamon, April 6th Strike, Abna2Masr and the HMLC blogs, especially as reports are coming out that those ordered by the prosecutor to be released in Alexandria and Mansoura, remain in police custody… Shehab Ismail also called me from NYC yesterday to say his sister Sarah who had been detained earlier in Cairo was still in police custody despite a release order…

McWane, Capitalism, and Safety

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

I just finished watching a PBS Frontline special on McWane, called “A Dangerous Busniess: Revisited.”  In the documentary Frontline found the McWane willfully violated OSHA safety regulations in order to turn a profit.  The workers of McWane didn’t matter, all that mattered was recruiting new meat in order to operate the machinery in order to create more steel pipes in order to create more profit in order to enrich the philanthropic McWane family of Birmingham, AL.

Much of the documentation of McWane was from 1995 to around 2003 in where nine workers died and possibly hundreds were injured, many of them seriously, due to the profit driven nature of McWane management…(Read More)

Putin’s Model of Disaster

With elections today; Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss write in the Jan./Feb. issue of Foreign Affairs:

The conventional explanation for Vladimir Putin’s popularity is straightforward. In the 1990s, under post-Soviet Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, the state did not govern, the economy shrank, and the population suffered. Since 2000, under Putin, order has returned, the economy has flourished, and the average Russian is living better than ever before. As political freedom has decreased, economic growth has increased. Putin may have rolled back democratic gains, the story goes, but these were necessary sacrifices on the altar of stability and growth.

This narrative has a powerful simplicity, and most Russians seem to buy it. Putin’s approval rating hovers near 80 percent, and nearly a third of Russians would like to see him become president for life. Putin, emboldened by such adoration, has signaled that he will stay actively involved in ruling Russia in some capacity after stepping down as president this year, perhaps as prime minister to a weak president or even as president once again later on. Authoritarians elsewhere, meanwhile, have held up Putin’s popularity and accomplishments in Russia as proof that autocracy has a future — that, contrary to the end-of-history claims about liberal democracy’s inevitable triumph, Putin, like China’s Deng Xiaoping did, has forged a model of successful market authoritarianism that can be imitated around the world.

This conventional narrative is wrong, based almost entirely on a spurious correlation between autocracy and growth. The emergence of Russian democracy in the 1990s did indeed coincide with state breakdown and economic decline, but it did not cause either. The reemergence of Russian autocracy under Putin, conversely, has coincided with economic growth but not caused it (high oil prices and recovery from the transition away from communism deserve most of the credit). There is also very little evidence to suggest that Putin’s autocratic turn over the last several years has led to more effective governance than the fractious democracy of the 1990s. In fact, the reverse is much closer to the truth: to the extent that Putin’s centralization of power has had an influence on governance and economic growth at all, the effects have been negative. Whatever the apparent gains of Russia under Putin, the gains would have been greater if democracy had survived.

Image From:
Bob McCarty Writes 

“We Must Eat Dust”

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

When it comes to labor history and race relations many unions were active agents in oppressing people of color during the Jim Crow era and even now. The Teamsters is one example. Looking at the demographics of my work it’s made up of primarily people of color. I’d say around 60% or so, mainly Black and Latino with a sizable Asian population. However the locals in my area, especially my local, has mostly white males at the helm of leadership; however, in my local the majority of the nine shop stewards (seven of them) are people of color (but no women unfortunately). The ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) was one of the few exceptions in this, and has always had a militant and socialist/communist history behind it. ILWU Local 7, for example, was dominated by Pilipinos in the canneries and shipyards and took a militant stance against the government during the McCarthy Red Scare era…(Read More)

Don’t Trust Dem Corporations

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

Another reason to go vegan (which I’m not and maybe I should). From the New York Times:

The Department of Agriculture on Sunday announced by far the largest recall of beef in history, calling for the return of 143 million pounds of ground beef from a California slaughterhouse that supplies school lunch programs.

The acknowledgment came after the Humane Society of the United States distributed an undercover video on Jan. 30 that showed workers kicking sick cows and using forklifts and electric shocks to force them to walk.

The video raised questions about the safety of the meat because cows that cannot walk, called downer cows, pose an added risk of mad cow disease. The federal government has banned downer cows from the food supply.