Radical media, politics and culture.
July 20, 2006 - 4:47pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
News

beyrut is me writes:

"A Protracted Colonial War"

Tariq Ali, Guardian

With US support, Israel is hoping to isolate and topple Syria by holding sway over Lebanon.

In his last interview — after the 1967 six-day war — the historian Isaac Deutscher, whose next-of-kin had died in the Nazi camps and whose surviving relations lived in Israel, said: "To justify or condone Israel's wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service indeed and harm its own long-term interest." Comparing Israel to Prussia, he issued a sombre warning: "The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase 'Man kann sich totseigen!' 'You can triumph yourself to death'."

In Israel's actions today we can detect many of the elements of hubris: an imperial arrogance, a distortion of reality, an awareness of its military superiority, the self-righteousness with which it wrecks the social infrastructure of weaker states, and a belief in its racial superiority. The loss of many civilian lives in Gaza and Lebanon matters less than the capture or death of a single Israeli soldier. In this, Israeli actions are validated by the US.

July 20, 2006 - 4:25pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Electoral Politics

As Mexico Awaits Judges' Ruling, The Writing Is On The Wall And In The
Streets:

AMLO Presidente!

John Ross, CounterPunch


MEXICO CITY — The day before Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the
peppery left leader who insists he is the winner of the July 2 election
here, summoned over a million Mexicans to the great Zocalo plaza to lay
out plans for civil resistance to prevent right-winger Felipe Calderon
from stealing the presidency, this reporter marched down from
neighboring Morelos state with a group of weather-beaten campesinos the
color of the earth.


Saul Franco and his companeros farmed plots in the village of
Anenecuilco, the hometown of revolutionary Emiliano Zapata who gave his
life to defend the community's land from the big hacienda owners. "It
is our obligation to fix this fraud and kick the rich out of power,"
Saul explained. "If Zapata was still alive he would be with us today"
the 52 year-old farmer insisted, echoing the sentiment on the
hand-lettered cardboard sign he carried.


But although Saul and his companions admired and supported Lopez
Obrador, they were not so happy with AMLO's party, the Party of the
Democratic Revolution or PRD. "We had a PRD mayor and things went badly
and we lost the next time around," remembered Pedro, Saul's cousin.
Indeed, many PRD candidates are just made-over members of the
once-ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI that
have climbed on Lopez Obrador's coattails to win public office. In 57
per cent of all elections the PRD has won, the party has subsequently
failed to win reelection.

July 20, 2006 - 11:05am -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
The State

kolya abramsky writes: "This is a call by Paul Gipe,
a leading expert in community controlled wind energy (see http://www.wind-works.org/ ."

"Impeach, Convict, Arrest, & Imprison George W. Bush"

Paul Gipe

It’s imperative that we, the American people, stop George W. Bush from starting another war. This time he has his sights set on Iran and, as in Iraq, the intelligence is being fixed around the policy. Worse, Bush is threatening use of nuclear weapons. Has he gone mad? Will he plunge us into a worldwide nuclear war?


Our course is clear. The House must impeach George W. Bush, and the Senate must convict him for a long list of criminal acts that fall under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution for “high crimes and misdemeanors”.

July 19, 2006 - 7:49pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
News

Neocons Rise From Mideast Ashes
Robert Dreyfuss

Israel's reckless, high-stakes decision to launch simultaneous wars against both Hamas and Hezbollah last week is a critical, perhaps world-shattering event. It cannot be seen merely in its local context, that is, as an act by the unilateralist regime in Jerusalem to crush the armed wings of two Islamic fundamentalist organizations in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon. Nor can it be seen merely in its regional context, that is, as an effort to raise the stakes in the struggle against Syria, Iran and rejectionist factions in occupied Iraq. Rather, Israel's actions must be seen, first and foremost, in the context of global politics.

July 18, 2006 - 11:17pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
News

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Two Wars
David Hirsh

Since before it even existed, Israel has been engaged in two wars with its neighbours. One is a just war, waged by Palestinian Arabs for freedom - which became a demand for Palestinian national independence; the other is a genocidal war that aims to end Jewish life in the Middle East.

The job of the left is to insist on the reality of this distinction and to stand against those who recognise the reality of only one or other of these two separate wars.

Nevertheless, when Israeli tanks are stalking through the crowded streets of Gaza, when Katyusha rockets are slamming into Haifa, when Israeli F16s are blowing up buildings in the suburbs of Beirut and when Israeli soldiers are being held in underground dungeons waiting for their own beheading to be broadcast on al-Jazeera, the distinction seems entirely notional.

July 18, 2006 - 11:02pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Marxist Literary Critics Are Following Me!

How Philip K. Dick Betrayed His Academic Admirers To The FBI

Jeet Heer, Lingua Franca

[From Volume 11, No. 4—May/June 2001]

WHEN THE NOVELIST PHILIP K. DICK DIED IN 1982, THE INFLUENTIAL literary theorist Fredric Jameson eulogized him as "the Shakespeare of science fiction." At the time of this encomium, Dick was hardly famous. The author of more than fifty books, he had an enthusiastic following among science fiction fans. But he was rarely read by anyone else.


These days, Dick is far better known. Vintage publishes his fiction in a uniform paperback edition. Hollywood filmmakers transform his stories of imaginary worlds and conspiratorial cartels into movies like Screamers and Total Recall. Meanwhile, academic critics laud him as a postmodernist visionary, a canny prophet of virtual reality, corporate espionage, and the schizoid nature of identity in a digitized world. Indeed, beginning in the last years of his life and continuing to the present, these critics have played a key role in the canonization of Philip K. Dick.


But did Dick return the favor? Not exactly. To their considerable anguish, Dick's academic champions have had to contend with the revelation that their hero wrote letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation denouncing them. In these letters, Dick claimed that Jameson and other literary theorists were agents of a KGB conspiracy to take over American science fiction.

July 18, 2006 - 2:54pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
News

Anonymous Comrade writes:

When Terror Is Just Fine

John Chuckman

Following the assassination of Reinhard Heidrich by Czech partisans in 1942, Hitler’s government executed all the men in the village of Lidici, sent its women and children to concentration camps, and razed the village to the ground. A few weeks later, the barbarism was repeated on the village of Lezaky.


Lidici was far from being the worst atrocity of the war, but it rightly came to symbolize heartless oppression by occupiers, what we sometimes today call state terror.


I cannot think of another historical example which better parallels Israel’s savage behavior in Lebanon. Two of its soldiers are kidnapped, and Israel quickly destroys much of the infrastructure of Lebanon, cuts the country off from the world, and kills, at this writing, two hundred civilians.


Already forgotten in the press is Israel’s behavior leading up to events in Lebanon. Israel had blown up an entire family on a Gaza beach and carried out a number of other killings and assassinations. It killed about twenty innocent people in a week or so. The pitiful efforts of people in Gaza to respond to the outrages were met by more killing and a partial invasion. Most of the cabinet of Palestine was kidnapped, and the elected Prime Minister was openly threatened with assassination.

July 12, 2006 - 11:51am -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Liat Shlezinger writes:

The Old Man & The Blood
Liat Shlezinger

[Translation of Hebrew article with Ilan's comments.]

Ilan Shalif is already 70 but it does not prevent him arriving every Friday at the demonstration against the separation fence in Bil'in and confronting the soldiers of the Israeli IDF. Every Friday for the last year and a half, like a watch whose battery never runs out, he travels the road from Tel-Aviv to the Palestinian village of Bil'in.

"Armed" with only a yellow water bottle and matching yellow pouch, Ilan Shalif is on his way to another battle against the separation fence. Every Friday for the last year and a half, like a watch whose battery never runs out, he travels the road from Tel-Aviv to the Palestinian village of Bil'in. He has not missed even one demonstration... Well, he did miss one when he had an open-heart bypass operation [it was really two demos I missed then, and two more when I was banned from travelling to Bil'in after being released from police custody - I.S.]. But, he stresses that a week later he was back running with the kids [the Israeli Anarchists Against The Wall - I.S.] and dodging the rubber-coated bullets as they whistled by.

July 10, 2006 - 9:57am -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Electoral Politics

Electoral Fraud and Rebellion in Mexico

Roger Burbach

Over half a million people took to the streets of Mexico City on
Saturday to protest the fraudulent election of Felipe Calderon.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the real winner of the presidential
election, told the huge crowd, "the elections were fraudulent from
the start," adding the incumbent president, Vincente Fox "has
betrayed democracy."


The reason Fox and his National Action Party (PAN) pulled out all the
stops to steal the election is quite simple — they are desperately
afraid of the growing class rebellion by Mexico's poor and oppressed.
The campaign slogan of Lopez Obrador was straight forward: "For the
good of all, the poor first." In a country where almost half the
population lives below the poverty line Lopez Obrador pledged to
provide a stipend to the elderly and health care for the poor.
Millions of jobs will also be created, particularly by undertaking
large construction projects to modernize Mexico's dilapidated
transportation system. He also promised to renegotiate the North
American Free Trade Agreement with the United States, particularly
the clauses that allow the importation of cheap subsidized grains
that undermine Mexico's peasant producers.

July 6, 2006 - 10:05am -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

dr.woooo writes:

"The Civil War in Venezuela

Socialism to the Highest Bidder"

Nachie, for the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN)

Over a period of two months spanning January to March in 2006, I backpacked through Venezuela in a reckless manner on behalf of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN), in search of first-hand information regarding the country's current political and social situation and in particular the "Bolivarian Revolution" proclaimed by incumbent president Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías.

My goal was to use the VI World Social Forum, held in the capital city of Caracas during the last week in January, as a launchpad to make the kinds of contacts necessary for this study to be a success. As an autonomous communist and affiliate of RAAN, my ultimate aim was to specifically seek out the contradictions that lay within the institutionalized Bolivarian movement and, therefore, to hopefully discover the sectors of Venezuelan society that were developing anti-capitalist critiques of Chávez's state-driven process.

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