Has Israel Met Its Match?
April 12, 2008
Today’s guest editorial from friend and brother M. Shahid Alam is a superb analysis of Hizbullah’s successful defiance of Israel and the model it presents for effective resistance against the world’s most lavishly equipped military force.
On January 31, 2008, when the Winograd Commission submitted its final report on the Second Lebanese War of July 2006, this was a first in Israeli history: a report on why the Israeli military had failed in a war.
The Winograd Commission offers a quite honest appraisal of some aspects of the July 2006 War. [1] It acknowledges that it was “a serious missed opportunity.” Israel had “initiated a long war, which ended without its clear military victory (italics added).” The Commission notes that a militia “of a few thousand men resisted, for a few weeks, the strongest army in the Middle East, which enjoyed full air superiority and size and technology advantages.” Nothing could reverse Israel’s handicaps: not even a massive ground offensive launched in the last days of the war.
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr
April 11, 2008
How did a small-time cleric from the outskirts of Baghdad become the most influential figure in the power struggle shaping post-war Iraq? Patrick Cockburn chronicles the events that propelled Muqtada al-Sadr to centre stage.
In early March 2004, I went to visit the office of al-Hawza, Muqtada al-Sadr’s newspaper in Baghdad. There were only a few staff there, but they were relaxed and friendly. I talked to a young man called Hussein who was a student in the French department at Mustansiriyah University on Palestine Street near Sadr City, which was increasingly under Sadrist control. He was explaining the Sadrist positions on various questions when he was interrupted by the roar of an explosion nearer to the city centre.
I said I would have to cut short our meeting to go to the nearest hospital to talk to the injured. It was almost impossible to get to the site of a bomb blast in central Baghdad, unless one was very close by when it happened, because the explosion immediately caused immense traffic jams. I had discovered that the best way to find out what had happened was to go directly to the hospitals receiving the casualties and talk to survivors and their friends.
Lennon, Vedder and the Death of Outrage
April 9, 2008
Three years back I had the pleasure of meeting the legendary South African poet Dennis Brutus, who related a story about one of his earlier visits to Scotland during the Apartheid period. At a game of rugby in which South Africa was participating, he recalled a large group of Scottish anti-Apartheid activists storming the stadium and giving the team the Nazi salute. All were arrested, and Brutus was entrusted with securing men’s release. The bail was set high, so he ended up approaching John Lennon for assistance. After he had heard the story, Brutus says, Lennon went to the adjoining room and on his return quietly handed Dennis a slip of paper. It was a blank cheque.
Yesterday I hosted renowned journalist and good friend Dahr Jamail at the Strathclyde University for a lecture (I use “I” because other than my ever generous friends Tariq Kataria and Jairo Lugo, like all such events I’ve organized in the past, I received virtually no help from anyone else). Dahr was telling me that Eddie Vedder recently donated $100,000 to the Iraq Veterans Against War. Vedder’s intervention, much like Lennon’s, is much different from the jolie, bono, vareity of ‘charity’ that is inevitably accompanied by a press release. Vedder and Lennon seek no publicity; their actions are driven purely by their desire to see a world that is more just and peaceful.
So it appears that while the majority in Britain, as in the US, are living a life too comfortable for them to concern themselves with the murder of a million or so people by their governments and their surrogates, the real meaningful resistance is confined to individual acts of resistance and generosity! Of the 60 or so people gathered for the lecture, I am on first name basis with all save a handful. Where’s the outrage? Where’s the concern? Or have the rest already expended it in the once a year state-assisted, police-chaperoned march through the quiet backstreets that always climaxes in pompous speeches from miscellaneous individuals, invariably laced with conventional wisdom and shallow sloganeering? Only rarely do you get a sensible speech, and even these are undermined by the format which militates against informed opinion. It has to curtail alloted time to accommodate a politician from each party, a representative of police, a ‘community leader’, a trade unionist, a vegetarian, etc — in other words, everyone except one who may have an idea what is going on Iraq, or an idea about the forces that determine and perpetuate these policies.
This type of bumper-sticker politics may help ease one’s guilty conscience, but it doesn’t change reality. It takes resolve, determination and courage to affect change. It takes sacrifices, be it of time or of resources. It takes strategic thinking, and tactical flexibility. Above all, it takes education.
Having said that I was encouraged by the fact that the attendance at the event was very diverse, and despite the easter holidays it was still a substantial number for an event advertised mostly in the empty university. I saw various groups and ages represented, and the Q&A was a pretty lively affair which eventually I had to cut short since the questions wouldn’t abate.
Onwards.
Here is an interview with Vedder on the soundtrack for Into the Wild.
Beyond Vietnam
April 6, 2008
While everyone has heard Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, his most important speech remains for the most part unknown. The subject matter may have something to do with it. While few were bothered by a speech on peace, love and brotherhood; the establishment quickly turned against MLK when he took a stance against the Vietnam war. Here is the speech whose words still ring true, followed by recollections of friends who noticed how quick support dissipated when MLK challenged US militarism and its brutal misadventure in Viet Nam. As Alexander Cockburn points out:
US Army spies secretly recorded black radical Stokely Carmichael warning King, “The Man don’t care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers you got trouble.” Carmichael was right…After his Vietnam speech the major US newspapers savaged King. Fifteen years later the New York Times was still bitter when the notion of a national holiday honoring the civil rights leader was being pressed–with ultimate success–by labor unions and black groups. “Why not a Martin Luther King Day?” an NYT editorial asked primly. “Dr King, a humble man, would have objected to giving that much importance to any individual. Nor should he be given singular tribute if that demeans other historical black figures.” Give one of them a holiday and they’ll all be wanting one.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. (courtesty BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress – International News)
Religion is Now a Potential Ally of Radical Social Change
March 27, 2008
Excellent article by Seumas Milne. ‘Militant secularists are becoming apologists for capitalism and war, but the struggle is within faiths, not against them’, he writes.
The two faces of modern religion were on stark display in Britain this week. In Canterbury, the much-abused anti-war archbishop, Rowan Williams, used his Easter sermon to launch a powerful attack on individualist consumerism and “the greed of societies that assume there will always be enough to meet their desires -enough oil, enough power, enough territory”. Meanwhile in Edinburgh, the conservative Cardinal Keith O’Brien, leader of Scotland’s Catholics, denounced the government for a “monstrous attack on human rights” through its “evil” endorsement of “Frankenstein” experiments. There are clearly serious arguments about the government’s embryology bill and its licensing of the use of empty animal eggs for short-term human stem-cell research into life-destroying diseases, but the message from the cardinal’s outburst was plain: in his wing of the church, the policing of sexuality and procreation trumps the cause of human suffering and liberation every time.
Manu Chao on Al Jazeera
March 22, 2008
A musical revolutionary and true citizen of the world, Spanish musician, Manu Chao, joins Sir David on the programme.
Born in Paris to refugees from Franco, Spain, Chao discusses his new album with Sir David and how politics are a central part of his music. He says every where he goes he is surrounded and influenced by politics.
Some of his music comments on the Bush administration and the current situation in Iraq and Palestine which he says only two words can describe them: tragedy and hypocrisy.
Brave New World
March 18, 2008
MTV’s brave new world. Hard hitting ads on emerging police states.
On a related note, Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio are working on a film based on Aldous Huxley’s prophetic dystopia. ‘A prophet returns‘, writes Susan Salter Reynold.
A writer’s ideas are his legacy. After he dies, it’s up to executors, heirs, lawyers, agents and colleagues to keep them alive — and perhaps especially up to us, the readers, to thread those ideas through the weave of history, the passage of time, our own lives. Writers are the most potent of ghosts. Their spirits lodge in our quotidian decisions; we turn to them in times of change and times of terror. When their wisdom is unavailable, our choices get harder.Aldous Huxley — born in England in 1894, visionary author of 11 novels (most famously “Brave New World,” in 1932), seven short-story collections, seven books of poetry, three plays, two books for children and countless essays — is there for us when we need him most. All his life, Huxley concerned himself with the most pressing issues facing humanity: environmental degradation, capitalist greed, totalitarian oppression, scarcity of resources, war, human cruelty and human potential. After his death — on Nov. 22, 1963, the day JFK died — his widow, Laura, tried to keep his memory and his work alive, but a perfect storm of factors — personalities, family politics — kept most of the work from getting the wide distribution and range of media it deserved.
Rule, Not Reconciliation
March 17, 2008
Dahr Jamail’s assessment of the five years of war, and the real story behind the ‘surge’.
As we mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, rhetoric around the “success” of the so-called surge continues. Presidential hopefuls, along with members of the Bush administration, continue to tout “progress,” citing fewer U.S. casualties and moves amongst Iraqi groups towards “reconciliation.” While indeed, there has been a reduction in violence, it is lost in the headlines that thousands of Iraqis still are losing their lives each month in the conflict. But even worse, the “success” of the surge has the potential to bring violence to all time highs.
In his final State of the Union address in January, George W. Bush proudly held up the newly formed “Awakening Groups,” known locally in Iraq as the Sahwa, as examples of both Iraqi cooperation and independence. Members of these groups now total nearly 80,000, and are paid $300 of U.S. taxpayer money a month to not attack occupation forces. These groups are referred to as “Concerned Local Citizens” by the military, as though they are comprised of concerned fathers and uncles who suddenly became keen to collaborate with members of a foreign occupation force which has eviscerated their country.
Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan
March 17, 2008
‘US veterans gathered in Maryland this past weekend to testify at Winter Soldier, an eyewitness indictment of atrocities committed by US troops during the ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers spoke of free-fire zones, the shootings and beatings of innocent civilians, racism at the highest levels of the military, sexual harassment and assault within the military, and the torturing of prisoners.’ While the corporate media ignored the story, Democracy Now, the Real News Network and several other independent media institutions covered it in depth (see Jeff Cohen’s excellent piece ‘Iraq Winter Soldier Hearings: Victory for Independent Media‘). You can watch Democracy Now’s coverage here, and below you will find videos from Real News. (This page will be updated as more testimonies become available).
Between Negotiations and Resistance
March 4, 2008
Hamas 1988-2008. Today’s guest editorial from my friend Agustin Velloso in Madrid.
2008 marks the 20th anniversary of Hamas as a political movement in Palestine, involving two decades of continuous struggle against Israeli occupation. Most importantly, Hamas has confronted not just the Middle East’s most powerful army, equipped with state of the art weaponry and nuclear arms, but also the most powerful Western countries. These have supported Israel, completely contravening international law in relation to the Occupation. In addition, Hamas has been abandoned to its fate by neighbouring Arab regimes.
In spite of this, since its beginning in1988, Hamas has grown year after year until, in January 2006, it won the legislative elections in the Occupied Territories. It is reasonable to conclude that this popular validation confirms beyond doubt that the Palestinian people support the political programme of Hamas to end Israeli occupation of their land.
