[A-List] Fwd: Digest for sid-l at googlegroups.com - 8 Messages in 8 Topics

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

Haiti is an article that really sees what is planned for the third
world economies, all of them.  America even is getting closer to that
position than anyone is ready to believe.   There were thirty million
in 2007 without enough food.  I would guess the below the poverty
level amount of U.S. citizens is at 50 million, at least, not the 43
million stated.     Suzanne


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:  <sid-l+noreply at googlegroups.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 10:21 AM
Subject: Digest for sid-l at googlegroups.com - 8 Messages in 8 Topics
To: Digest Recipients <sid-l+digest at googlegroups.com>


  Today's Topic Summary

Group: http://groups.google.com/group/sid-l/topics

Let’s Have a Real Protest, Not a Democratic Pep Rally, on October 2nd
| Black Agenda Report [1 Update]
Wasteland: Europe stalked by spectre of mass unemployment [1 Update]
(Haiti) Suffocating the poor: a modern parable [1 Update]
Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation [1 Update]
Reclaiming the Dream and Brand Obama [1 Update]
Explaining the crisis -- Interview with David Harvey [1 Update]
Announcing the formation of the Friends of Israel Initiative, "a new
project in defense of Israel’s right to exist." [1 Update]
Prominent US scholar Ann Stoler endorses BDS! [1 Update]

 Topic: Let’s Have a Real Protest, Not a Democratic Pep Rally, on
October 2nd | Black Agenda Report

Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com> Sep 17 03:02PM -0700 ^

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/let%E2%80%99s-have-real-protest-not-democratic-pep-rally-october-2nd
*
Black Agenda
Report
09/15/2010
* *Let’s Have a Real Protest, Not a Democratic Pep Rally, on October 2nd* *
*
*Glen Ford*

<http://blackagendareport.com/?q=print/content/let%E2%80%99s-have-real-protest-not-democratic-pep-rally-october-2nd>

*by BAR executive editor Glen Ford*

*“A Washington rally for jobs, justice and peace that makes no specific
demands on President Obama would amount to a capitulation to the status quo
on all counts.” The October 2 “One Nation” rally, initiated by the NAACP and
organized labor, is a huge work in progress, drawing numbers from “nearly
the entire spectrum of labor, social justice and peace formations in the
United States.” Some will come to protest massive unemployment, war,
bailouts and other injustices, and call out the perpetrators by name. Others
want only to join in a campaign rally for Democrats.*

*Let’s Have a Real Protest, Not a Democratic Pep Rally, on October 2nd*

*by BAR executive editor Glen Ford*

“*The character and importance of the ‘One Nation’ rally will be determined
by the demands that are made on Power, most especially on the White House.”*

The October 2 rally in Washington to demand jobs and “stop moving money out
of education and into wars and prisons," in the words of NAACP president Ben
Jealous, promises to be huge. SEIU Local 1199, a co-initiator of the event
along with the NAACP, has booked 500 busses from New York City, alone, and
thousands more will be rolling into the nation’s capital from around the
country. Participating organizations include nearly the entire spectrum of
labor, social justice and peace formations in the United States.

But big does not necessarily mean historic, or even useful. The character
and importance of the “One Nation” rally will be determined by the demands
that are made on Power, most especially on the White House, where one man
wields the power of an entire branch of government, is the leader of the
majority party in both Houses of Congress, and commands national and global
attention by virtue of the presidential “bully pulpit.” A Washington rally
for jobs, justice and peace that makes no specific demands on President
Obama would amount to a capitulation to the status quo on all counts, no
matter if half a million attended. And if the event is allowed to become
wholly a pep rally for Obama and Democrats, then that will tell the world
that real movements for laboring people, social justice and peace do not
currently exist in the United States – just a bunch of Democratic Party
groupies with delusions of relevance to the burning issues of the day.

“*Tremendous pressures that have been brought to bear by the administration
to avoid embarrassing the president and his party on the eve of
congressional elections.”*

That’s why, mindful of the tremendous pressures that have been brought to
bear by the administration to avoid embarrassing the president and his party
on the eve of congressional elections, strong majorities of the *United
National Anti-War
Conference<http://www.nationalpeaceconference.org/Home_Page.html>
* (UNAC), held in Albany, New York, in late July, endorsed a series of
demands to be put forward at the October 2 rally, and beyond. These demands
will be reflected in the placards carried by thousands of demonstrators
concentrated in the UNAC contingent at the “One Nation” rally:

* $Trillions for jobs and education, not wars and bank bailouts.

* Bring the troops, mercenaries and war dollars home from Iraq, Afghanistan
and Pakistan, now!

* Stop government attacks on unions, Muslims, immigrants and people of
color. Civil liberties for all.

* End U.S aid to Israel. Billions for jobs, not occupation. End the siege of
Gaza. Free Palestine!

The *Black is Back Coalition <http://www.blackisbackcoalition.org/>* for
Social Justice, Peace and Reparations is in agreement with the four demands,
and will rally alongside the UNAC contingent on the Washington Mall. Black
is Back will also demand an end to the ongoing wars waged against Black
people here at home, through mass Black incarceration, police terror and
constant economic aggression against Black communities.

“*Any peace movement worthy of the name must demand withdrawal NOW.”*

There is no point in going to a demonstration for jobs, social justice and
peace if you are not going to make substantive demands. It is the Obama
administration that is waging wars of aggression in Asia and Africa; the
Congress – including, most of the time, most Democrats –funds these wars.
President Obama always claims to be in the process of ending his wars, even
as he escalates, just as did George Bush. Any peace movement worthy of the
name must demand withdrawal NOW.

The NAACP and labor say they want to see money moved “from war to jobs and
education.” That’s what we used to call a “peace dividend.” But there is no
hint of peace in Obama’s rhetoric of open-ended warfare to infinity, and no
evidence of any military scale-back that could yield a peace dividend. The
dividend can only come with the end of imperial warfare.

By far the biggest share of the bank bailouts that ultimately netted Wall
Street $12 to $14 trillion of the people’s money were finagled by the
Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, both directly or indirectly
accountable to Barack Obama. If you have any complaints about the bailouts,
lay them at Obama’s doorstep, where they belong*.* Demand he stop the wealth
transfers to Wall Street, NOW!

“*If you have any complaints about the bailouts, lay them at Obama’s
doorstep, where they belong.”*

It is the *government* under President Obama that entraps and frames Muslims
(largely African Americans) on terror charges, harries and deports more
undocumented immigrants than did the Bush regime, fails to defend working
people’s rights to organize, and maintains what is arguably the most
thoroughly racist criminal justice system on the face of the planet. Obama
is the executive in charge. Demand in plain language that he use all his
powers to end the injustices.

The plank on Israel was the most hotly contested of the Albany conference,
and caused a small minority of attendees and participating organizations to
leave the United National Anti-War Committee. Too damn bad. It is long past
time that the American anti-war movement make a decisive break with Israel,
as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) did way back in
1967. An anti-war movement that seeks to rein in its own government’s
aggressions in the world but fails to condemn apartheid Israel’s ceaseless
violations of international law and crimes against humanity since the birth
of the state, has no credibility.

The Obama administration’s water carriers within the October 2 rally’s
sponsoring organizations will doubtless seek to transform the occasion into
a campaign event for the Democrats. It is up to the crowd to demonstrate
righteous discontent with the powers-that-be, and call the malefactors out
by name. If that’s your preference, hang with UNAC and Black is Back. You’ll
identify them by their clear and insistent demands – which is how it should
b



 Topic: Wasteland: Europe stalked by spectre of mass unemployment

Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com> Sep 17 02:30PM -0700 ^

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/wasteland-europe-stalked-by-spectre-of-mass-unemployment-2080499.html

*The Independent
16 September 2010*
Wasteland: Europe stalked by spectre of mass unemployment

*Rise in UK claimants prompts calls for rethink in austerity plans*

By Alistair Dawber
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/wasteland-europe-stalked-by-spectre-of-mass-unemployment-2080499.html?action=Popup>

- [image: Photos] CLICK TO ENLARGE
GRAPHIC<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/wasteland-europe-stalked-by-spectre-of-mass-unemployment-2080499.html?action=Popup>

The UK's fragile economic recovery was exposed yesterday by disappointing
employment figures and an unexpected rise in the number of people claiming
unemployment benefits.

The claimant count, which measures the number of people claiming jobseekers'
allowance, increased by 2,300 in August, the first rise since December last
year, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics.
The jump confounded City forecasts, which had pointed to further declines –
and will alarm policy makers, coming as it does in the wake of this week's
IMF warning that Europe risks becoming an employment "wasteland" in which
joblessness threatens entire societies.

Overall, unemployment in the UK fell by 8,000 in the three months to July on
the preferred International Labour Organisation (ILO) calculation.
Joblessness in the UK now stands at 2.47 million, or 7.8 per cent.

But even the ILO data will do little to take the pressure off Chancellor
George Osborne ahead of next month's Comprehensive Spending Review. Heavy
spending cuts are certain to be announced, leading to the loss of thousands
– probably tens of thousands – of public-sector jobs.

"The labour market data are both disappointing and worrying overall,
fuelling fears that the improvement in the labour market is coming to an end
as companies' fears mount over the strength and sustainability of the
upturn. This is even before public-sector job cutting really gets underway,"
said Howard Archer, a chief economist at IHS Global Insight.

"Major job losses are on the way in the public sector as the Government
slashes spending, and we doubt that the private sector will be able fully to
compensate for this. Indeed, we suspect that firms will become increasingly
cautious in their employment plans, reflecting their concerns that the
intensified fiscal squeeze will hold back growth."

Officials will take solace from higher employment levels, with 286,000
people finding work in the quarter to July, the biggest increase since
records began in 1971. But the jump was a result of an increase in temporary
vacancies and part-time roles. More than 100,000 new jobs went to former
students.

Yesterday's UK figures are also likely to ratchet up the tension between the
unions and the Government. At their annual conference in Manchester this
week, union leaders promised to fight future public-sector jobs cuts with
co-ordinated industrial action. Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary,
said: "The worry must be that we are at a turning point as spending cuts hit
business and consumer confidence. What is clear is that the economy is still
extremely fragile. With more than one in six young people without work, the
best the Government can expect is a largely jobless recovery."

The figures yesterday followed a contrite response to the financial crisis
from the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, who told the TUC
conference the "cost of this crisis will be with us for a generation".

Mr King will have been acutely aware of the fact that, earlier this week,
the IMF said that creeping unemployment across the world could be costlier
than restarting national stimulus packages, and that rich nations should
again consider reflating their economies to avoid a jobs meltdown.

At an IMF conference in Oslo on Monday, the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis
Rodriguez Zapatero, who is grappling with 20 per cent unemployment in his
country, said high unemployment may trigger a "crisis of confidence" in
Europe, adding that sustained periods of severe joblessness were as likely
to worry markets as much as high public-sector deficits.

The European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, Laszlo Andor,
added that 2010 had so far been an "annus horribilis" for unemployment,
warning that, "if we fail to act, 2011 may still turn out to be the annus
horribilis for social cohesion". Pessimists fear that the UK could not
escape untouched by such a crisis.

Yet the country is in a stronger position than many others in Europe.
Countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal have seen joblessness rocket to
more than 10 per cent as their governments have been bounced into a series
of tough austerity measures, cutting public-sector debt in an effort to
persuade the markets that they will not default on their sovereign bonds.

Greek unemployment fell to 11.6 per cent in June from 12 per cent in May,
statistics released last week revealed, but the level has jumped from 8.6
per cent in June last year. The increase is a result of cuts designed to
trim Greece's burgeoning budget deficit, which stands at 13.6 per cent of
GDP.

Meanwhile, the blight of joblessness stretches right across Europe, from
Portugal, where unemployment stands at 10.8 per cent, to Lithuania (17.3 per
cent) and Latvia (20.1 per cent). Such statistics can hardly fail to have an
impact on the British economy, and a number of economists expect the UK's
advantage to be eroded as the Chancellor's cuts are implemented.

"A number of eurozone countries have already started implementing cuts as
part of their austerity measures," said Vicky Redwood of Capital Economics.
"This process has not yet really started in the UK."

According to Mr King: "The current plan is to reduce the deficit steadily
over five years – a more gradual fiscal tightening than in some other
countries." Economists believe, however, that the British cuts will
inevitably lead to higher unemployment. Hetal Mehta, a UK economist at Daiwa
Securities, said: "We are forecasting that [British] unemployment will
continue to rise and that it will almost certainly be higher than the
current level by the end of next year. The private sector will pick up some
of the slack, but the overall effect on unemployment figures will be
limited."

Andrew Goodwin, senior economic adviser to accountancy group Ernst & Young's
ITEM Club, agreed, describing the outlook for the labour market as, "pretty
bleak".

Government departments are scrambling to avoid the worst of the job cuts,
with ministers already ordering leading public-sector workers to draw up
plans for managing with fewer staff. Meanwhile, the outlook for employment
across Europe remains bleak. Capital Economics expects the jobless total to
rise both in this country and in the eurozone over the next three years.

Worryingly, however, the pace of job losses is expected to be faster in
Britain. The group reckons that unemployment in Europe will peak at 10.5 per
cent, only a small increase on the current levels, while the level at home
will rise to 10 per cent. The firm expects 16 million people to be without a
job in the eurozone alone by 2013. Meanwhile, the total for all 27 EU
nations has already passed 23 million, according to the OECD – up nearly 36
per cent since 2007. The challenge of reversing this trend could stretch
Europe to its limits.



 Topic: (Haiti) Suffocating the poor: a modern parable

Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com> Sep 17 02:20PM -0700 ^

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-suffocating-the-poor-a-modern-parable-2081411.html

The
Independent
September 17, 2010
Suffocating the poor: a modern parable
They democratically elected a president to stand up to the rich and
multinational corporations - so our governments have him kidnapped By Johann
Hari

Today, I want to tell you the story of how our governments have been
torturing and tormenting an island in the Caribbean - but it is a much
bigger story than that. It's a parable explaining one of the main reasons
how and why, across the world, the poor are kept poor, so the rich can be
kept rich. If you grasp this situation, you will see some of the ugliest
forces in the world laid out before you - so we can figure out how to stop
them.

The rubble-strewn island of Haiti is now in the middle of an election
campaign that will climax this November. So far, the world has noticed it
solely because the Haitian-American musician Wyclef Jean wanted to run for
President, only to be blocked because he hasn't lived in the country since
he was a kid. But there is a much bigger hole in the election: the most
popular politician in Haiti by far, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He's not there
because, after winning a landslide election, he followed the will of the
Haitian people who demanded he take on the multinational corporations and
redistribute enough money that their children wouldn't starve - so our
governments had him kidnapped him at gunpoint and refuse to let him back.

But we have to start a little earlier if this is going to make sense. For
over two centuries, Haiti has been effectively controlled from outside. The
French enslaved the entire island in the eighteenth century and worked much
of the population to death, turning it into the sugar and coffee plantation
for the world. By this century, Western governments were arming, funding and
fuelling the psychopathic dictatorship of the Duvalier family - who
slaughtered 50,000 people - supposedly because they were "our friends" in
the fight against communism.

All this left Haiti the most unequal country in the world. A tiny elite
lives in vast villas in the hills, while below and all around them, the
overwhelming majority of the population live in tiny tin shacks with no
water or electricity, crammed six-to-a-room. Just 1 per cent own 50 per cent
of the wealth and 75 per cent of the arable land. Once the Haitian people
were finally able to rise up in 1986 to demand democracy, they obviously
wanted the country's wealth to be shared more fairly. They began to organize
into a political movement called Lavalas - the flood - to demand higher
wages and higher taxes on the rich to build schools and hospitals and
subsidies for the half-starved poor. This panicked the elite.

And nobody panicked them more than a thin, softly-spoken, intellectual
slum-priest named Aristide who found himself at the crest of this wave. He
was born into a bitingly poor family and became a brilliant student. As a
priest he soon became one of the leading exponents of Liberation Theology,
the left-wing Catholicism that says people shouldn't wait passively for
justice in the Kingdom of Heaven, but must demand it here and now. (The
current Pope tried desperately to stamp out this "heresy".) Aristide
explained: "The rich of my country, a tiny percentage, sit at a vast table
overflowing with good food, while the rest of my countrymen are crowded
under that table, hunched in the dirt and starving. One day the people under
the table will rise up in righteousness."

On this platform, he was elected in 1990 in a landslide in the country's
first free and fair election, taking 64 per cent of the vote. He kept his
promise to the Haitian people: he increased the minimum wage from 38 cents a
day to $1, demanding the multinational corporations pay a less insulting
wage. He trebled the number of free secondary schools. He disbanded the
murderous national army that had terrorized the population. Even the
International Monetary Fund had to admit that over the Aristide period and
just after, Haiti's Human Poverty Indicator - a measure of how likely your
kids are to die, starve or go uneducated - dropped dramatically from 46.2
per cent to 31.8 per cent.

But why would foreign governments care about a small country, the poorest in
the Western hemisphere, with only ten million inhabitants? Ira Kurzban, an
American lawyer based in Haiti, explains: "Aristide represented a threat to
[foreign powers] because he spoke for the 85 per cent of his population who
had never been heard. If that can happen in Haiti, it can happen anywhere,
including in countries where the [US and Europe] have huge economic
interests and extract natural resources. They don't want real popular
democracies to spread because they know it will confront US economic
interests." Oxfam called this phenomenon "the threat of a good example."

So after Haiti had experienced seven months of democracy, the US toppled
Aristide. Ordinary Haitians surrounded his home, calling for his return -
and they were fired on so indiscriminately that more ammo had to be sent
from Guantanamo Bay on Cuba. Their bodies were left in the streets to be
eaten by dogs as the advances were repealed one by one.

In 1994, the Clinton administration agreed to return Aristide to power -
provided he castrate his own political program and ignore the demands of his
people. They made him agree to privatize almost everything, freeze wages,
and sack half the civil service. Through gritted teeth, he agreed, and for
the remainder of his time in office tried to smuggle through what little
progress he could. He was re-elected in an even bigger landslide in 2000 -
but even his tiny shuffles towards redistribution were too much. The US and
French governments had Aristide kidnapped at gunpoint and dumped him in the
Central African Republic. They said he was a "dictator", even though the
last Gallup poll in a free Haiti found 60 per cent supported him, compared
to just 3 per cent backing the alternative imposed on the country by the US.

The human rights situation in Haiti then dramatically deteriorated, with a
massive campaign of terror and repression. The Lavalas Party was banned from
running again, with most of the country's democracy activists jailed. There
were huge military assaults on the slums which demanded Aristide's return. A
US Army Psychological Operations official explained the mission was to
ensure Haitians "don't get the idea they can do whatever they want."

The next President, Rene Preval, learned his lesson: he has done everything
he was told to by corporations and governments, privatizing the last
remaining scraps owned by the state, and using tear gas to break up strikes
for higher wages. The Haitian people rejected the whole rigged electoral
process, with turn-out falling to just 11 per cent. Today, Aristide is a
broken man, living in exile in South Africa, studying for a PhD in
linguistics, banned from going home.

This is part of a plain pattern. When poor countries get uppity and tried to
ask for basic justice, our governments have toppled them, from Iran wanting
to control its own oil in 1953 to Honduras wanting its workers to be treated
decently in 2009. You don't have to overthrow many to terrify the rest.

It doesn't have to be this way. This is not the will of the people, in the
US or Europe: on the contrary, ordinary citizens are horrified when the
propaganda is stripped away and they see the truth. It only happens because
a tiny wealthy elite dominates our foreign policy, and uses it to serve
their purposes - low wages and control of other people's economies and
resources. The people of Haiti, who have nothing, were bold and brave enough
to campaign and organize to take power back from their undemocratic elites.
Are we?

j.hari at independent.co.uk [j.hari at independent.co.uk];
twitter.com/johannhari101

*For further reading*

Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment by Peter
Hallward (Verso, 2007)



 Topic: Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation

Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com> Sep 17 02:05PM -0700 ^

Mondoweiss
September 16, 2010

The Search for 1948

Hannah Mermelstein
[image: Shifting Sands
cover]<http://mondoweiss.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8d38ef747c2061bb9c6137961&id=491b763ab6&e=fbc73fa4f0>

*The following is a chapter from the important new book Shifting Sands:
Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation. From the book's
website<http://mondoweiss.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8d38ef747c2061bb9c6137961&id=da2906a1d8&e=fbc73fa4f0>,
"Shifting Sands brings to life the Jewish anti-occupation perspective
through personal stories by activists such as Starhawk, Anna Baltzer, Jen
Marlowe, Alice Rothchild, Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein (of the Gaza
Freedom Flotilla) and others." The book also includes introductory material
from Cindy Sheehan and Amira Hass. Shifting Sands is **available on
Amazon.com.*<http://mondoweiss.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8d38ef747c2061bb9c6137961&id=3d46af4e7a&e=fbc73fa4f0>
**

“Where do you want to go?” asked the taxi driver, expecting to give me a
short ride and collect a few shekels.

“Baqa’a,” I replied, “but it’s a bit of a project.”

The West Jerusalem neighborhood of Baqa’a was only a ten-minute drive from
our location in East Jerusalem. The “project” was that the house I was
looking for had existed 60 years ago, and time travel takes somewhat more
detective work than the simple recitation of an address.

“I’m looking for a house from 1948,” I told the driver, who introduced
himself as Abed. I handed him Munir’s diagram of a house that looked similar
to hundreds of other old homes in the Jerusalem area.

“Is it yours?” he asked.

“No, a friend’s.”

I had recently discovered that my friend Munir, whom I know from Boston and
had always known as Lebanese, had actually been born in Jerusalem. In 1948,
at the age of four, he and his family, along with 800,000 Palestinian
people, were forced out of their home by pre-Israeli forces. The family fled
to Lebanon, where Munir’s father, Najeeb Jirmanus, had lived before moving
to Jerusalem 20 years earlier. Nobody in the family had been back to
Palestine since 1948, so I asked Munir if, on my next trip to Jerusalem, he
would like me to try and find his house. He gathered some information,
including a few nearby landmarks and a diagram of the house, which Abed was
now studying. Abed agreed to help.

I sat quietly, hoping he knew the neighborhoods well enough to help me. I
had planned to seek out an older taxi driver, possibly someone who spoke
English so I could make sure to communicate every detail I knew. Abed was a
young man who spoke very little English, but he seemed interested in and
moved by the project. He immediately began to call all the older people he
knew.

“Do you know where the Jordanian embassy was before 1948?” he would ask,
offering up our major landmark.

“Yes,” one man told him, “but it wasn’t in Baqa’a.”

“No,” said another, “there was barely a Jordan at that time. How could there
be a Jordanian embassy?”

So we began to drive, looking for the other smaller landmarks or for people
who might recognize Munir’s father’s name. Abed would pull over next to
every older person he saw (Palestinian or Israeli), and ask about the Ummah
school, the Jordanian embassy, and the British army women’s headquarters.
Some people were vaguely helpful, some not. A few informed us in a slightly
insulted tone that they were not yet born in 1948.

We left Baqa’a and crossed the street to another, mostly Palestinian
neighborhood. We thought we would have a better chance of finding people who
wanted to and could actually help, having perhaps been in the neighborhood
before 1948. Not two minutes later, we passed an old man and Abed stopped.
We got out of the car, said hello, and explained what we were doing.

“You’re in luck,” said the man, “I know more about these neighborhoods than
anyone else in the area.”

Before I knew it, his wife was serving me coffee in the middle of the
street. The man suggested she and his daughters go ahead without him, as he
would join us in the taxi in exchange for a ride home afterwards.

We drove for half an hour with little success, and then the man suggested we
stop at an old house on the corner. We knocked on the door, and an old
Israeli man answered. He took one look at the three of us and asked, “Are
you looking for someone who used to live here?” He opened the door and let
us in.

“You’re in luck,” he said, “I know more about these neighborhoods than
anyone else in the area.”

So here I was inside a house with Abed the taxi driver and two older men,
one Palestinian and one Israeli, who said they knew everything there was to
know about this part of Jerusalem. They talked for a few minutes and argued
amicably for a few more in a combination of Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The
interaction had an air of pre-Zionism to it that is difficult to explain.
They used language of “Arab” and “Jew” instead of “Palestinian” and
“Israeli,” which many people do, but it seemed more appropriate in this
situation than usual. As though nationalism and the way it has played out
could not taint this simple human search for an old home.
I had started the trip late in the day. By this time it was getting dark,
and I was running late for a meeting. We had gathered some information that
might help us for next time, and I had a few questions to ask Munir. We took
our leave, after writing down the name and phone number of the Israeli man
so we could try again another day.

***

Two weeks later, with semi-clear skies above after a week of nonstop rain, I
made plans to meet Abed in Jerusalem. This time, I was armed with more
precise directions from Munir, including names of other people who lived and
worked in the area and, most importantly, a photograph taken from their
front yard in 1940.

Abed met me and excitedly said he knew where the house was, that he had gone
back there after our last search. I showed him the photograph and we drove
towards the area. We parked and began to walk around, holding up the
photograph to each gate and entrance. We found one house that looked
similar; however, there was a huge construction project under way directly
on top of it. We approached and asked the Palestinian construction workers
what they knew about the house, which wasn’t much. We were stopped on the
way out by an Israeli manager. Abed explained in Hebrew that we were trying
to find a house. The man glanced at the photo and said, “Yes, this looks
like the house.”

Another manager came out and ordered us off the property. “This isn’t the
house,” he said. “There was nothing here before 1948.”

Feeling torn, we stood outside for a few minutes and looked around.

“We need to find an Israeli to help us,” said Abed finally. “They think you
and I are here to claim the house because I’m Arab and you have papers in
your hand. They don’t know we’re only here to look and photograph.”

“We should take the house,” I replied, only half joking.

At this point, we realized this was probably not the house. The gate looked
the same but we couldn’t figure out the angles in the photograph and it just
didn’t seem right. Another older Israeli man on the street asked if he could
help. Abed explained that we were searching for a house, and the man joined
us for the next 20 minutes as we walked around the neighborhood. We kept
finding similar sights, but none of them fit together. Finally he asked,
“Are you sure the house is in the German Colony?”

“No,” I replied, “it’s in Baqa’a.”

Apparently, the older Israeli man who had helped us the first time had
convinced Abed to come to this area and I, unfamiliar with West Jerusalem’s
neighborhoods, had gone along for the ride. Realizing we were in the wrong
neighborhood, we got back into the car and headed to the Israeli man’s
house, where we had paused our search two weeks earlier. He answered the
door and I shared my new information with him. The house we were searching
for was near the Trans-Jordanian consulate, I told him, not the Jordanian
embassy, and there was a road that went down from the main street towards
their house. These two pieces of information were all he needed. He followed
me out to the street, pointed, and said, “Go two more traffic lights. The
Allenby building is probably what you mean, and that’s on your left. There’s
a street that goes down from there on the right.”

We quickly drove those two blocks, turned right, parked, and started walking
down. The streets were different than they were described to me, and the
building supposedly on the corner wasn’t there. But sure enough, after a few
minutes of meandering, I found myself in front of the large building that
was in the background of the photo I was holding. I positioned myself
exactly at the angle that the photo was taken from, and looked around. One
street continued to go down, so I took it. To my right was a synagogue that
I guessed was either Munir’s property or their neighbor’s. I hoped it was
not his, that I would not have to tell him his house had been completely
destroyed and replaced by a synagogue.

We passed the synagogue and stopped in front of the gate to the next house.
This was it. Different from the photo, but with the same dimensions, and
seemingly the right distance from the larger building up the street. We
entered and found ourselves on the stone path described in the e-mail I had
in my hand from Munir’s older brother: “…continue along the stone-paved
path… some 8 meters, you reach the level of the house… Move some 10 more
meters and you will have the six stone steps (to the left) that lead up to
the veranda and you will then be facing the main door, entrance to the
house.”

I was facing the main door, the entrance to the house. I thought about
knocking on the door, but (in case we didn’t get a warm reception here
either) wanted to take in as much as possible first. As I walked around the
perimeter of the house, I wondered which plants and trees had been there
when Munir was a child.

Finally, Abed knocked. No answer. We waited a few minutes and then left.
About five minutes later, I came back alone to take more photos, and the
door to the house was open.

I walked to the entrance, knocked, and said “hello?” A man appeared.

“My name is Hannah, I’m from the United States, and I have a friend who I
think used to live in this house before 1948. Can I come in and look?”

He hesitated, then let me in, introducing himself as Israel. When I asked if
I could photograph inside, he hesitated, but again agreed. I asked how long
he had been living there, and he replied that it had only been a few years.
He said he rented the place from a French Israeli man who has owned it for
about five years. Before that, he said, the building was owned by a Moroccan
Israeli family.

“Since 1948?” I asked.

"Well, the government probably had it first and then gave it to them, but
yes, for a long time.”

I kept photographing, staying quiet as I worried he might change his mind.
As I was putting my gear away and getting ready to leave, Israel turned to
me as though he had something to say.

“The reason I let you in,” he said, “is that one time my sister went back to
Morocco to find our family house. The man currently living there wouldn’t
let her in. She cried and cried, and finally he let her in, but he wouldn’t
let her photograph. This is why I let you in and let you photograph.”

Seeing this as an opening, I asked, “Would you want to return to Morocco?”

“No,” he replied, almost laughing at the suggestion.

“If the situation changed?”

“No, Morocco is for the Moroccans and Israel is for the Israelis.”

“What about the Palestinians?” I replied.

“We were here first,” he said, “thousands of years ago. This is our land; it
says so in the bible.” I had noticed all the Torahs and other religious
texts in the house, so it did not surprise me that he was religious.

“Sixty years ago my friend was living here,” I said.

“History doesn’t start in 1948,” he answered.

I briefly considered sharing with him something my Palestinian friend from
Hebron often says: “It’s written in the Torah that Abraham came here to
Hebron and bought a cave, right? Well, who did he buy that cave from? My
great, great, great… grandfather!” Knowing, though, that this Israeli man’s
argument was not rooted in, or concerned with, reliable historic analysis, I
decided there was no use arguing with religion. We said an awkward goodbye
(saying “thank you” did not seem appropriate in this situation), and I left.

My search for 1948 was almost over. But not quite yet…

***
After receiving the photographs I sent, Munir and his brother were thrilled
to confirm that this was indeed their house and asked if I might be able to
find any legal documentation to corroborate this. Not knowing where to
start, I turned to a Canadian-Israeli friend, who agreed to help track down
whatever she could. She visited the local Registry of Deeds in Jerusalem,
which manages land deeds for the municipality. After being sent from office
to office and compiling information about the current address and plot
number (according to Israeli zoning laws, not the memories of the prior
owners), she finally had the information she needed.

She returned to the Registry of Deeds. The clerk looked at the address and
block number and said they had no record of the property before 1992. When
she protested, he sent her to the microfilm, saying she could search through
it all she wanted. So she did. After almost giving up, she came upon a
document that seemed to be for the right property. The document was from the
British Mandate period, and was thus written in English. She scanned the
paper: 672 square meters, original owners’ names… and then, finally, proof
of sale of the property in whole on January 6, 1932, to one Najeeb Jirmanus.

***
There is something about finding the land registry hidden in the microfilm
of Israel’s archives (after being told in effect that the property did not
exist before 1992) that reminds me that nothing lies too deep under the
surface in this part of the world. Beneath every Israeli road lies the dirt
of an agricultural path from centuries before. Below every kibbutz field lie
the remains of a destroyed Palestinian village. Under all the modern-day
addresses and block numbers in the Registry of Deeds office live the
memories of a people who cannot forget an old front gate, the very number of
steps to their front door, the views from their porch, the place
that—despite Israel’s refusal to implement the right of return for more than
60 years—many still call home.

*Hannah Mermelstein is an activist and aspiring radical librarian based in
Brooklyn, NY. She has lived in Palestine for more than two of the past six
years, and is co-creator of Birthright Unplugged and Re-Plugged, Needle in
the Groove, and Students Boycott Apartheid. In Brooklyn, Hannah works
primarily with the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (NYCBI) and
the Palestine Education Project (PEP). She hopes to use library and archives
skills to continue the search for 1948 and support the right of return for
Palestinian refugees.*



 Topic: Reclaiming the Dream and Brand Obama

Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com> Sep 17 01:52PM -0700 ^

http://www.voxunion.com/?p=2945

Reclaiming the Dream and Brand Obama Posted by Voxunion
Media<http://www.voxunion.com/?author=2>on September 1, 2010


On my way back last week from a visit with family and friends in Panama a
cab driver pulled along side me at the airport. He called out to me as an
American. Once he had my attention he slid his finger across his throat and
said, “America es cancelado.” America is cancelled. I smiled as he drove
off. My wife was furious. For her it was more personal, how dare someone
insult her husband and claim to speak for all her people. For me it was
first a lesson not to ever again so carelessly travel with my old navy sea
bag, no matter how practical that thing is, and more importantly that
hisanger was ultimately righteous. It was a nice sign that even under Brand
Obama people’s sense of sanity is still there. And it was a sign I did not
see enough of back here at this weekend’s Washington, D.C. march to “Reclaim
the Dream <http://www.voxunion.com/?p=2940>.”

*Click here to read/hear/download the entire
commentary!*<http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/reclaiming-dream-and-brand-obama>

*Reclaiming the Dream and Brand Obama*

*A BlackAgenda Radio commentary by BAR columnist Jared Ball*

*“Dr.King’s dream has by now become twisted, distorted and distilled through
brand Obama.”*

On my way back last week from a visit with family and friends in Panama a
cab driver pulled along side me at the airport. He called out to me as an
American. Once he had my attention he slid his finger across his throat and
said, “America es cancelado.” America is cancelled. I smiled as he drove
off. My wife was furious. For her it was more personal, how dare someone
insult her husband and claim to speak for all her people. For me it was
first a lesson not to ever again so carelessly travel with my old navy sea
bag, no matter how practical that thing is, and more importantly that his
anger was ultimately righteous. It was a nice sign that even under Brand
Obama people’s sense of sanity is still there. And it was a sign I did not
see enough of back here at this weekend’s Washington, D.C. march to “Reclaim
the Dream <http://www.voxunion.com/?p=2940>.”

The Panamanian cabbie, at least in my mind, was responding to a centuries
old relationship of U.S. dominance which meant that up to even just ten
years ago no Panamanian could enter a region of their own land renamed the
“Canal Zone.” Certainly everyone there remembers the invasion of 1989 and
the death of the land-reformist president Omar Torrijos, who himself once
said that he ”did not want to go into history” but that he only wanted to
“go into the Canal Zone.” But here, and at this rally, not many seemed to
remember the King they claimed to reclaim nor the policies and behavior of
the current president whose own reclamation they openly also marched. From
the pulpit to the shop floor all were on hand to say somehow that the
policies to which Obama is committed are precisely those for which Martin
Luther King <http://www.voxunion.com/?p=60> lived,fought and was killed.

Dr.King’s dream, which he himself later abandoned as a “nightmare,”has by
now become twisted, distorted and distilled through brand Obama. This is by
acknowledged design, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has
said<http://nymag.com/news/politics/58199/> himself. A
sentiment repeated again this
week<http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/26/eve_enlser_reads_congo_cancer_my>
when
Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett said that Michelle Obama would not be
available to work on the issue of rape in the Congo because it is,”*not* her
brand.” No. Brand Obama cannot appear concerned for anyone with whom he is
so often immediately identified. No Black people, no Africans and nothing
approaching real progressivism.

*“No one I spoke with at the rally said they were there to challenge Obama
to practice the politics of Dr. King.”*

So while King left 1963 only to increase his calls for and action toward an
end to militarization, capitalism and White supremacy, Obama’s brand is able
to assume this political trajectory while actually worsening each of these
“evil triplets” as King called them. Brand Obama has, in the words of one
commentator, confused the fact that when honestly polled his “positions are
inversely proportional to his popularity.” And this is especially so in
Black America. His positions on health care, war, poverty, racism,
incarceration and reparations all run counter to why some said they rallied
this weekend and yet the brand convinces so many of the opposite. From
preachers to union workers to students no one I spoke with at the
rally<http://www.voxunion.com/?p=2940> said
they were there to challenge Obama to practice the politics of Dr.
King<http://www.voxunion.com/?p=60>. None
were there to challenge Obama whose presidency has so far been an absolute
reversal of any of King’s most pronounced political concerns; an end to
poverty, war and capitalism as an unchecked economic system. All were there
to protect Obama against the Tea Party or to support some amorphous and
undefined concept of”justice.” In fact, when asked to define her use of the
term “progress” one participant told me that poverty in 2010 is a “luxury”
compared to 1963.

This march to “reclaim the dream” fell to the powerful brand of Obama. It
was a regressive step back away from the righteous critique of the original
March on Washington offered by Malcolm X. It was a regressive step back
away from the progressive radicalism adopted by King post-1963 including his
own belated arrival to an old struggle to move the fight beyond a sole focus
on domestic civil rights and on to an international struggle for human
rights.

When my comrade said that, “Dr. and Mrs. King would not have been welcome at
either rally” this weekend she hit that proverbial nail on the head. Their
focus on poverty, human rights and peace make them both pariahs in either
camp, because the Black liberal is ultimately no better than a White
reactionary.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Jared Ball. For more visit
BlackAgendaReport.com <http://www.blackagendareport.com./>.

Jared Ball <http://www.voxunion.com/?p=207> *can be reached via email at: *
jared.ball at morgan.edu*.*



 Topic: Explaining the crisis -- Interview with David Harvey

Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com> Sep 17 01:41PM -0700 ^

http://www.isreview.org/issues/73/int-harvey.shtml



*ISR Issue 73, September–October 2010*
------------------------------

*Explaining the crisis*

A interview with DAVID HARVEY

David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at
the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), Director of
The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and author of numerous books. He
has been teaching Karl Marx’s *Capital* for nearly forty years. Hector
Agredano spoke to him in New York about his recent book *The Enigma of
Capital*, the economic crisis, and the response from the left.

*IN THE Enigma of Capital you attack mainstream economists for failing to
anticipate the crisis. Can you talk about why bourgeois economists missed
the coming crisis, which many Marxists predicted? How is Marxism superior to
bourgeois economics in this respect?
*
I THINK the central idea in Marxism is of course one of contradiction, that
the capitalist system is seen in its very foundation as containing a series
of contradictions that clash with each other and therefore produce a society
always founded on tensions of various sorts. For example, the tension
between capital and labor is the obvious one that every Marxist would pay
attention to—the nature of the class struggle. But there are other tensions
too between production and consumption, between use value and exchange
value. All of these tensions are there.

What is a house for? Is it a use value where people can live their lives or
is it an exchange value? What we saw for example in the recent crisis is the
way in which that tension between use value and exchange value of a house
erupts into a macro crisis. So from a Marxist perspective there are always
tensions. The only interesting question therefore from a Marxist perspective
is when those tensions erupt into a major crisis of instability and
therefore have to get resolved by the emergence of a different configuration
of capitalist forces if the crisis is going to be resolved internal to
capitalism.

Now, there is a joke about Marxists, that they have predicted correctly the
last twelve of the last three crises. So you always have to be careful about
saying that a contradiction is going to erupt in a crisis or that there’s
going to be a final crisis. But what Marxian theory tells us is that there
is no such thing as a stable capitalist system. So for instance, when
economists from Ben Bernanke to Paul Krugman start talking about the 1990s
as the period of “great moderation,” or when they start to say that crisis
tendencies have been resolved, from a Marxist perspective you know that is
never going to be the case.

As recently as 2004–2005, even before he became chairman of the United
States Federal Reserve, Bernanke was talking about the tendencies toward
instability as muted and as nothing to worry about. Conventional economists
have an understanding of society that is about what they would regard as a
tendency toward equilibrium, that when the market is operating properly
within the right institutional framework—which includes some degree of
regulation of contracts and private property rights—it should produce a
condition of equilibrium. So conventional economics is always talking about
the tendency toward convergence, toward equilibrium, and that equilibrium is
possible provided the right mix of policies and as long as there isn’t
anything external that disrupts the whole system. External problems would be
so-called natural disasters, wars, geopolitical conflicts, and
protectionism. Crisis would then arise because of these external
interventions, which take us away from the path to equilibrium, which is
always possible.

>From a Marxist perspective, equilibrium is an unusual condition. There are
always forces taking us away that are internal to the dynamics of the
system. So the Marxian framework would look at it in a very different way.
But, again, I go back to this—you always have to be careful from a Marxist
perspective not to say, “Here is the next crisis and it’s the final crisis.”
What I try to do for instance in *The Enigma of Capital,* is to talk very
specifically about what the nature of the internal contradictions of
capitalism are and why the resolution of the crisis of the 1970s created a
configuration that was likely to produce the sort of crisis we’ve finally
seen erupting around us over the last two or three years. That then leads to
the big question: What kind of adjustments are likely to occur within the
capitalist dynamic to create the foundations for a new crisis further down
the way?

*DO YOU think that this economic crisis also represents a crisis in
bourgeois neoliberal ideology?
*
I THINK there’s no doubt that the legitimacy of neoliberal theory has been
called into question. Many people who were once firm believers in the
efficient market hypothesis now recognize that they were wrong. There is the
emergence of a consensus among many economists that stronger forms of
intervention in the economy are really required in order to get out of this
crisis and in order to stabilize the system. The typical neoliberal
arguments that were used back in the 1970s to 1980s as a way to get us out
of the crisis can’t be used anymore—including, of course, the argument that
the crisis is due to greedy trade unions, greedy labor, and that labor is
too well remunerated. You can’t make that argument in these times. In fact
if any argument can be made at all, is that labor is too weak in the present
circumstances. Of course ideologically it is very difficult to get the
Republican Party or the right wing of the Democratic Party to say that the
answer is to re-empower labor in the current circumstances.

The one place where you are beginning to see signs of that happening is of
course China. The Chinese central government has for the first time allowed
a major strike to unfold that was not organized by the communist-led trade
union but was a spontaneous strike. We’ve seen the Honda strike, which has
led to the 30–40 percent increase in wages at Honda. There’s the Foxconn
conflict, which is going to double wages there. The Chinese government seems
to be empowering labor right now in ways that we don’t see happening
throughout the rest of the advanced capitalist world like Europe and the
United States.

*BASED ON what is being done by governments and mainstream economists at the
moment, what is replacing neoliberal ideology?
*
THERE’S A theory of neoliberalism that actually never worked. Margaret
Thatcher tried it and failed in three to four years. Then there’s the
pragmatic form of neoliberalism, which is constantly advocating for free
markets and the withdrawal of state intervention. But in practice this was
always about supporting financial institutions. In the Mexican debt crisis
for example, the Treasury and a revived International Monetary Fund bailed
out Mexico in order to save the New York bankers. What happened there was
the introduction of moral hazard into the system. So this last system was
based on always deciding to bail out the financial institutions at all
costs.

This is not consistent with neoliberal ideology at all. Neoliberal ideology,
pure ideology, would say, “You make your bed, you lie on it. If you make a
bad investment and you go bankrupt, too bad.” Right now what we see is a
problem with the formal ideology that wants to keep the state out of
everything but an embrace by political power, overtly, of the requirement
that they bail out financial institutions at the expense of the population.
There is a bit of a struggle emerging over that because both on the right
and the left of the political spectrum there are people who don’t agree with
that.

As I see it right now, there is no inclination whatsoever to change that
thesis, that that is what you have to do. But then the problem arises that
you shift the crisis. Again, one of the theses very important to me in *The
Enigma of Capital* is that capital doesn’t solve its crisis tendencies but
moves them around. So we’ve sort of solved the banking crisis, but now we’ve
got a sovereign debt crisis of the finances of states. You see this of
course in southern Europe, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. But internally in
the Untied States we also have a fiscal crisis emerging with California for
example, being one of the largest public budgets in the world, which is in
serious difficulty. So we’ve shifted the locus of the crisis from the
financial institutions to state finance.

Then there is a big question of how that is going to be addressed and that
is the big question that is on the agenda right now. Whereas this time last
year it was how to stabilize the banks, it’s now how to stabilize state
finances and this is a question that is not going away easily; it’s one
we’re going to have to be concerned with over the next ten or fifteen years.
Alongside of that, as they attempt to stabilize state finances through
austerity they’re going to stabilize high unemployment. That is the question
emerging now, they shifted it from the financial institutions, then to state
finances, and then to the people in terms of austerity and unemployment. The
big question then is how are the people going to respond?

We see this in some degree with the strikes in Greece and Spain and some of
the agitation that’s been going on in the University of California system
where we actually see popular resistance beginning to build against the way
in which state finances are being stabilized at the expense of the people.
The state finances of course, got into a mess because they stabilized the
financial institutions as a sort of chain effect. So how it’s going to turn
out is going to depend very much, it seems to me, on the way in which the
class struggle evolves. But this is going to be a class struggle vis-à-vis
the state apparatus and state power trying to say, “You are the people that
are going have to bear the costs of this crisis,” and many people saying,
“No, we should not bear the cost of it. The people who bear the cost of it
should be the bankers, the financiers, and the upper classes,” who by and
large—some of them have taken a hit—but most are coming out of it OK at this
point. So we see this dynamic of class struggle unfolding.

*AS YOU have mentioned, here in the United States and in Europe austerity
measures are being introduced. Do you think that the austerity measures are
going to resolve the crisis?
*
THE AUSTERITY measures could help resolve the fiscal crisis of the state,
but in the same way that that crisis arose out of resolving the [crisis of
the] banks. So the big question is what kind of crisis will that promote?
And of course this creates a crisis of unemployment. If states start
introducing austerity—like Cameron in Britain is talking about major cuts
and that’s going to cause major unemployment. Here in New York State there’s
talk of massive budget cuts and massive unemployment in the public sector.
So what that launches then is a huge struggle between the state and the
public sector unions in particular. So we are likely to see, as we have seen
in Greece and Spain, is a widespread struggle because the crisis is being
displaced and this again comes back to my thesis that crises don’t get
resolved, they simply get displaced from one sphere to another.

*WHAT DO you think about the response of the left to the budget cuts and
what do you think would be the way forward for the left?
*
WELL, IT depends who you call the left. There are many groupings on the left
that are discontent with the situation, but I don’t see a unified analysis
of what the nature of the problem is on the left. To many degrees I see many
kinds of solutions and different configurations of organization. So I think
the left has not been together in terms of its response. I think right now,
to the degree that the nature of the crisis is shifting toward public sector
unions, we are likely to see a more classic class struggle response to the
situation than occurred when the crisis was located in the banking system.
What that will lead to is a convergence of many forces on the left around
the idea that we have to protect the population in general against these
austerity measures that are coming from the state. I think the objective
circumstances under which the crisis is unfolding are likely to lead to a
more unified politics on the left, but there are many different factions on
the left.

Sometimes I get in trouble for saying this, but for example, the anarchist
autonomist line does not want to take state power and does not believe in
taking state power, although there are some shifts now among some of the
major theorists in that area. I thought it interesting that in the last book
by Hardt and Negri, they did not oppose taking state power, which is very
unusual from that sphere, so maybe that idea will shift. I think that the
classic left-wing configurations, and I am not talking about the social
democratic, I’m talking more about the Marxist and communist configurations,
I think they have a problem, and I’m making a caricature here. Their notion
of the factory worker as the vanguard proletarian figure that is going to
make the revolution, I don’t think that works; I don’t think it ever really
worked very well. You have to have a broader notion of an alliance of forces
in which the conventional proletariat is an important element, but not
necessarily an element that has a leadership role.

A leadership configuration has to evolve around all those people who are
involved. For example, one of my areas of interest would be those who are
involved in the production of urbanization, the people who produce cities
and the people producing city life. Right now, to the degree that the
struggle is likely to be between public sector workers and the state
apparatus, this is a very specific form of struggle, which is not based in
the factories. It’s going to be the teachers unions and these [types of]
groups that are likely to be pushed into a more vanguard role. So I think
the left groups need to sit back and ask themselves who is likely to play a
vanguard role in the current situation and what should the politics be in
relationship to state governments and to corporate forms as well.

*MARXISM HAS always been about both explaining and changing society. What
role do you think Marxism should play in building a new resistance with a
goal of transforming society?
*
I THINK it plays a key role. From my perspective, the failure of other forms
of understanding of political economy is now so obvious and the possibility
now exists to push really hard for a clearer Marxian understanding of how
political economy works so I think at that level of critique Marxism has a
very important role to play. But I think also that the history of Marxism
and its constructive side is a collective memory that can be drawn upon
politically, and I think the argument has to be made very directly that the
degree of standards of living we did achieve by the 1970s had everything to
do with the dynamics of class struggle as it occurred after 1917, and as it
occurred even in this country during the 1930s.

There is a kind of story line that says that Marxism failed—well, it didn’t.
Actually it had a very constructive role to play. Now at the same time,
within Marxism we also have to look back and be very critical of what I see
as some very conservative, rather dogmatic understandings of the world. For
example, we can’t simply go back and cite Lenin as if somehow this is the
solution. What a good Marxist does is to look at the conventional



 Topic: Announcing the formation of the Friends of Israel Initiative,
"a new project in defense of Israel’s right to exist."

Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com> Sep 17 12:58PM -0700 ^

http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/about-wellcome.php

[image: Friends of Israel]<http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/index.php>
[image: José María Aznar] All we want is a normal and reasonable
conversation about Israel. Surely, that is not too much to ask.
José María Aznar
[image: Carlos Bustelo] We need to bring reason and decency back to the
discussion about the Jewish state. Anti-Israeli hysteria is simply
unacceptable .
Carlos Bustelo

- Home <http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/index.php>
- Opinion Articles<http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/articles.php>
- Events & Activities<http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/events.php>
- About <http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/about-wellcome.php>
- Support <http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/support.php>
- Contact <http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/contact.php>

Welcome
Welcome to our new site

Under the leadership of former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar a
high level group met in Paris in the middle of 2010 to launch a new project
in defense of Israel’s right to exist.

This "Friends of Israel Initiative" has been joined by such notable
figures as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate *David
Trimble<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Trimble>
*, Peru’s former president Alejandro Toledo, Italian philosopher Marcello
Pera, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations *John
Bolton<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Bolton>
*, British historian Andrew Roberts, and others. Their key aim is to counter
the growing efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and its right to
live in peace within safe and defensible borders.

This Initiative arises out of a sense of deep concern about the
unprecedented campaign of deligitimation against Israel waged by the enemies
of the Jewish State and, perversely, supported by numerous international
institutions.

This Initiative differs from previous such ventures primarily in that it is
being led by people who are not Jewish and whose motivations are based on
the firm conviction that Israel is part of the Western world.

Indeed, the sponsors of this initiative are convinced that Israel is of
fundamental importance to the future of the West. Although the peace process
is important, the members of the Friends of Israel Initiative are even more
concerned about the onslaught of radical Islamism as well as the specter of
a nuclear Iran, both of which threaten the entire world.

The Friends of Israel Initiative is committed to act consistently and
diligently in its effort to disseminate its members’ vision of Israel as a
democratic, open, and advanced nation like any other, and that it should be
perceived and treated as such.

Israel is a sovereign democracy which like all the others is, of
course, capable of making mistakes. Nonetheless, this should not be used as
an excuse to question Israel’s right to exist, its legitimacy, or its basic
rights as an independent state.

Israel is an inextricable part of the West. We stand or fall together.



 Topic: Prominent US scholar Ann Stoler endorses BDS!

Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com> Sep 17 11:31AM -0700 ^

http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1361

Ann Laura Stoler - 10 September 2010

By Colonial Design

As someone who has worked for some thirty years as a teacher and student of
colonial studies– on comparative colonial situations, colonial histories,
and the violent and subtle forms of governance on which colonial regimes
rely, it would be difficult not to describe the Israeli state as a colonial
one. It would be difficult not to recognize Israel’s past and ongoing
illegal seizure of Palestinian land, the racialization of every aspect of
daily life, and the large-scale and piecemeal demolition of Palestinian
homes, destruction of livelihoods, and efforts to destroy the social and
family fabric, as decimation by concerted and concentrated colonial design.
These are the well-honed practices of regimes that define colonialisms and
have flourished across the imperial globe. As with other colonial regimes,
the Israeli state designates and redraws geographic borders, suspends
Palestinian civil rights and arbitrarily transgresses what for Israelis are
recognized and guarded as private space.

Israel is particular but it is not unique. Its techniques of occupation are
based on unfounded uses of the legal apparatus of Israeli law. These are the
practices of a colonial state committed to replacing and displacing a
Palestinian population, and committed to its own expansion. That expansion
is persistent, both surreptitious and blatant everyday: room by room in the
old city of Jerusalem, house by house in the spread of settler communities,
meter by meter as the placement of the Wall in the name of “security” cuts
through homes and fields, and divides neighborhoods while it infringes
further into legally recognized Palestinian territories. At issue is both a
confiscation of history and a confiscation of the future possibilities of
those who today find their bedding thrown on the streets in the middle of
the night by Israeli settlers.

If democracy is defined, as Hannah Arendt did, by “the right to have rights”
for an entire population within the state’s jurisdiction, the Israeli state
cannot be considered a democratic one. Nor can a democracy be founded on the
principle of expulsion and the creation of a diasporic population shorn of
its land, belongings and citizenship – a principle avidly embraced by Israel
since l948. For these reasons, I confirm my support for the BDS
international boycott of those Israeli institutions that actively or
passively accept a status quo that condones and expands the occupation,
violates international law, enforces military control and denies Palestinian
rights to self-determination.

*Ann Laura Stoler*


Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor
Of Anthropology and Historical Studies
The New School for Social Research
New York, New York 10003

10 September 2010

[Sent to PACBI by the author]