Thursday, May 15, 2008
Maliki & Co. Offer US Forces "A Permanent Home on Our Doorsteps" posted by Yoshie
General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran ("widely described as a charismatic yet modest leader who never abuses his authority," according to McClatchy Newspapers), is right:On Monday, the hard-line Iranian newspaper Jomhuri-e-Eslami accused al-Maliki of lacking backbone in alks with Washington, which include the long-range status of U.S. military operations in Iraq. The daily, which is considered close to Iran's ruling clerics, claimed Washington wants a "full-fledged colony" in Iraq.
It was a rare public jab at al-Maliki, a Shiite. But it was mild compared with the closed-door recriminations during the high-level Iraqi visit, according to accounts by Shiite politicians close to Iraq's prime minister.
The five-member delegation sought to pressure and cajole the Iranians into cutting suspected support for Shiite militias that have battled U.S. and Iraqi forces. But the Iraqis mostly received a scolding, the politicians said.
"The Iranians were very tough and even angry with us," said one of the delegates in the Tehran talks. "They accused us of being ungrateful to what Iran has done for the Shiites during Saddam's rule and of siding with the Americans against Iran."
The Iraqi politicians, five in all, spoke to the AP in separate interviews on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Two of them took part in the talks with the Iranians. The rest were briefed on the meetings.
At one point, a key leader within Iran's Revolutionary Guards accused the Iraqi delegation and their leaders of being tools of Washington and showing ingratitude for years of Iranian support to Iraqi's majority Shiites, who suffered attacks and persecution under Saddam, the politicians said.
Brig. Gen. Ghassem Soleimani, commander of the elite Quds Force unit of the Guards, accused the Iraqis of offering U.S. forces "a permanent home on our doorsteps," the politicians told the AP. (Hamza Hendawi and Qassim Abdul-Zahra, "'Angry' Iran Sharpens Tone with Baghdad's Leaders," Associated Press, 15 May 2008)
Yes, Maliki & Co. are offering the empire "a permanent home" on Iran's doorsteps, against the interests of Iran1 -- unlike Sadr, who "pledged to come to the defense of neighboring Iran if it were attacked."2
Common people of Iran, already preferring Sadr to Maliki by a substantial margin,3 would side with the general on his assessment of the dominant Shi'i factions in the "Iraqi government."
Now the general ought to build elite consensus on this fact and help the Leader, et al. effect a nuanced shift in Iran's policy toward the Shi'i factions in Iraq.
1 See Manal Lutfi, "Iranian Official Accuses al-Maliki of Surrendering to the US," Asharq Al-Awsat, 13 May 2008; and Shadha al-Jubori, "Strategic Agreement with US Is in the Interest of Iraq -- Official," Asharq Al-Awsat, 14 May 2008. Note that so-called hard-liners are far more vigilant on defense of Iran from the empire than reformists, Rafsanjanists, and technocratic neo-conservatives, which is the reason why the Western media promote the latter against the former.
2 Ellen Knickmeyer and Omar Fekeiki, "Iraqi Shiite Cleric Pledges to Defend Iran: Sadr, With Powerful Militia, Vows to Respond to Attack by West on Neighbor," Washington Post, 24 January 2006, A13.
3 Sadr is "viewed favorably by 56 percent [of Iranians] and unfavorably by just 12 percent" whereas "45 percent [of Iranians] have a favorable view of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki while 22 percent have an unfavorable view"(WorldPublicOpinion.org, "Public Opinion in Iran: With Comparisons to American Public Opinion," 7 April 2008, p. 29).
Labels: class, iran, iraq, US imperialism
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The (soaring) cost of living under New Labour posted by lenin
The baseline rate of inflation is now 3% and the headline 4.2%. This will clobber workers already suffering pay cuts and Victorian working conditions. The BBC says that the proportion of incomes going on essential goods has risen to over 30% - I don't know where these statistics come from, because in my household, what with the cost of rent, food, clothing, energy, water, council taxes and so on it has always been closer to 75%, and it's higher now. New Labour's neoliberal policy package relies on its promise to keep inflation down, not just as a means of suppressing pay demands, but also as a promise to voters that their incomes won't suffer sudden, big real terms cuts. Aside from everything else that was wrong with the policy, it was always an illusory idea when commodity prices are determined by global speculation without large-scale state intervention. Governments worldwide are talking about raising export tarrifs and price controls, given the furious social upheaval that rising costs have unleashed. Even Hillary Clinton is proposing temporary price controls on petrol and mortage interest (for this, liberal Obama-supporters upbraid her for failing to understand "basic economic theory"), while McCain is co-sponsoring a bill with Ted Kennedy to control prices on medicines. These are hardly radical measures, but don't expect New Labour to imitate them. Any help this government offers with the bills will be strictly in the form of modest tax-cuts, but as tax receipts fall with the economic downturn, the temptation would surely be to raise the shortfall through indirect measures such as VAT, or by borrowing billions. Either way, the Tories - whose past record in government is gradually sliding down the memory hole - are likely to hammer them for this.Since these price increases are coming at the same time as New Labour pay cuts for the public sector, I would expect an increased tempo in industrial action. In 2007, the number of working days lost to strike action grew 20-fold over the year, with Prison Officers, Royal Mail workers, civil servants, lecturers and others out on the picket lines. It was the second highest rate of strikes in a decade. Although New Labour's early rule was characterised by a decreasing incidence of strike action, a momentum has built up since the firefighters dispute in late 2002. It's pretty far from the peaks of industrial action in the 1970s and 1980s, but as unions increasingly co-ordinate their actions in response to a co-ordinated offensive by the government, last year's record could well be broken. That changes matters. The Tories might like to capitalise on fears of a new 'winter of discontent', but this also serves to remind people of the hated Thatcher years that followed. Given that Cameron's strategy is to try and woo working class voters suffering, and pose as a 'progressive', he won't necessarily do himself any favours with loud union-bashing. Of course, talking to business audiences, the Tories are all for breaking the public sector unions, but in the context of strikes that will widely be seen as legitimate, they may decide to restrain their rhetoric a bit.
Union leaders are pleading with the government to tax the rich and forge a new election deal, modelled on the Warwick Agreement, in advance of 2010. But if New Labour failed to uphold its promises last time round, there is no reason why anyone should believe them this time. And why on earth would union members want to be party to an ass-saving deal with a government that gratuitously attacks them? Fortunately, the PCS is looking at further national strike action at its upcoming conference. Healthcare workers are being balloted on the government's pathetic pay offer, and if they vote against it, they may be out as well. Further education unions have rejected their pay offer. The NUT's recent, highly successful national strike action is likely to result in further action. If you want your money back, you better hope for a big co-ordinated stoppage, and soon.
Labels: gordon brown, neoliberalism, new labour, strikes, tory scum, trade unions
Friend/enemy distinction posted by lenin
For example, let’s take, again, Iraq. This is my supreme example. They went there to do what? (a) To defundamentalize the country, to introduce their—some kind of a secular democracy, which would then serve as a model for the others; (b) to contain Iran. Now, three, four years later, what’s the result? (a) Almost two million, all the educated, secular, middle classes, majority of them left the country. The country is more religiously fundamentalist than ever. (b) We know that among the Shia political elite, the orientation is fundamentally pro-Iranian. So isn’t this a nice paradox that the ultimate result in Iraq of the US intervention is the exact opposite?...
This is also my basic view about the entire Middle East Arab-Israeli conflict, that it’s a wrong conflict. There shouldn’t have been that kind of a conflict. Now, of course, we have to deal with it. But this, I think, is the true triumph of the enemy, not that the bad guys win, but that the very conflict you are dealing with is a wrong conflict. If I’m told, “You have to choose Jews or Arabs,” sorry, no, I refuse to choose. I only—the only thing I can do is honestly to criticize both sides.
And so on. It would be useful to know who this "enemy" is that lured the US army into the wrong conflict with Iraq, and forced Zionist armies to ethnically cleanse the greater part of historical Palestine before subjecting the rest to conquest and colonization. I gather that this figure is quite important in Zizek's understanding of the Middle East. This "enemy" doesn't have too many obvious attributes, but we can say for sure he/she/it has been around for a while (at least since 1948 and perhaps since the first Aliya or even before then, who knows?), is capable of Mephistophelean manipulation of great powers at long range, and is somehow connected to the Orient (the 'bad' Orient, the 'Semitic' Orient, the one that failed to exhibit precocious signs of civilization).
It would also be useful to know who this "we" is? And who might be the friends of "we"? Perhaps this "we" is surreptitiously produced after the fact of the "enemy", whose contours remain as yet mysterious. On the other hand, part of what characterises this "we" might be the capitalist mode of production which, strange to relate, is apparently threatened with destruction by torture and gated communities and slums (as in previous Zizekiana, liberalism, capitalism and democracy are almost synonyms). Suppose "we" is a liberal capitalist, faced with crises brought on by "our" system, trying to stop it from going too far ere "we" perish, but lured into fatal misconduct by an enemy who perhaps doesn't share those, er, values. Are we approaching an answer yet? Reductively, "we" could be a Eurocentric cultural theorist for whom facts are relatively unimportant (Lenin did not refer to imperialism as the "last" stage of capitalism, Parisian rioters did not burn down "their own mosques", "state socialist" countries do not in fact have the "worst" ecological record, etc), and who has some fantasies to traverse?
Labels: eurocentrism, friend/enemy distinction, orientalism, schmitt, sizlak
Monday, May 12, 2008
Solution posted by lenin
In times of famine, Vladimir Ilych Lenin took a robust line on speculation. "We can't expect to get anywhere," he told the Petrograd Soviet in 1918, "unless we resort to terrorism: speculators must be shot on the spot".Labels: capitalism, financial sector, food prices, lenin, leninism
The Mahdi Army Survives Undisarmed posted by Yoshie
A new truce between the "Iraqi government" and the Mahdi Army. Citing AFP and Al-Hayat, Juan Cole sums up the key points of the agreement between them:The al-Maliki government and the Sadrists pulled back from the brink in Sadr City on Saturday. PM Nuri al-Maliki had demanded that the Mahdi Army militia that serves as the Sadrist paramilitary give up its arms and dissolve itself. The compromise simply states that the Iraqi security forces would be allowed in to Sadr City to search for suspected medium and heavy weapons. The implication is that the Mahdi Army may continue to exist and may keep its light weapons (e.g. AK-47s), though it has to pledge not to walk with them in public.
The siege of Sadr City is to be lifted and the major roads in and out of it are to be unblocked, according to the agreement.
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the agreement stipulates that the government should have a court order to come into Sadr City. Arrests of rogue commanders had to to be based on warrants and not just 'indiscriminate.' There is nothing in the agreement about the Mahdi Army disarming altogether, as Nuri Al-Maliki initially demanded. ("Maliki-Sadr Agreement on Sadr City; Al-Maliki Heads to Mosul," Informed Comment, 11 May 2008)
The truce is said to have been brokered by Tehran -- again.
While Washington has two enemies -- not just Sunni insurgents but also Shi'i Sadrists -- whom it can neither conquer nor coopt, Tehran has no determined enemy among the Iraqi Shia and has influence over all major factions of them. Ironically, it's Washington's desire to create "an anti-Iranian Iraq," as well as a front of Arab client states against the so-called Shia crescent stretching from Iran to large swathes of Iraq, Lebanon, and even the Gulf states,1 that has augmented Tehran's influence:
It was the U.S. attempt to create an anti-Iranian Iraq that was to play into Iranian hands and produce the very situation that Washington was trying to avoid.
The more Washington threatened air strikes on Iran because of its nuclear program, the more the Iranians sought to make sure that it had the potential to strike back at American forces in Iraq. Before he was executed, Sadr I believed that he had been let down by Iran; Sadr II had bad relations with Tehran; and at first Muqtada denounced his Shia opponents in SCIRI and the Marji'iyyah as being Iranian stooges. But American pressure meant that the Sadrists had to look to Iran for help, and in a military confrontation the Mehdi Army saw Iran as an essential source of weapons and military expertise. (Patrick Cockburn, "Riding the Tiger: Muqtada al-Sadr and the American Dilemma in Iraq," Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq, Scribner, 2008)
Thus Tehran alone can help bring stability to at least the areas of Iraq predominantly inhabited by the Shia; and, together with Damascus, which has a certain level of influence over some factions of Sunni insurgents, it may eventually -- in sha' allah -- be able to help broker a government of national unity of sorts in Iraq2 if and when Washington ends its occupation of the ruined nation. That's the point that Western leftists should emphasize to counter Washington's propaganda against Iran and Syria. It's the empire, not Iran and Syria, that is the force that perpetuates chaos in Iraq and ends up spreading it everywhere it goes.
1 Washington has, however, failed to move the hearts and minds of Arabs against Iran in particular or the Shia in general. The most admired world leaders among Arabs are Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar Al-Assad, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (in that order), according to Shibley Telhami's "2008 Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll."
2 In any such post-occupation government of national unity in Iraq, Sadrists will play a central role. The Iranian people, a majority of whom prefer Sadr to Maliki, correctly understand it:
A plurality [of Iranians] sees the government in Iraq as legitimate -- down from a modest majority in 2006. Asked whether "the current government is . . . the legitimate representative of the Iraqi people," 45 percent said that it is, while 33 percent said that it is not. This is down from December 2006, when 54 percent thought it was legitimate (31% thought it was not).
Similarly, 45 percent have a favorable view of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki while 22 percent have an unfavorable view. This too has drifted down slightly from 2006, when 48 percent had a favorable view.
More popular is Shi'a opposition figure Muqtada al-Sadr, who was viewed favorably by 56 percent and unfavorably by just 12 percent. Similarly, in 2006 58 percent had a favorable view and 12 percent were unfavorable. (WorldPublicOpinion.org, "Public Opinion in Iran: With Comparisons to American Public Opinion," 7 April 2008, p. 29)
Labels: iran, iraq, iraqi resistance, syria, US imperialism
Sunday, May 11, 2008
A funny thing happened on the way through W9. posted by lenin
You all know about my hobby of taking photographs of London. Sometimes it's demo pics, sometimes it's pictures of obscure subjects, sometimes it's just pretty little vistas. Well, today I was out riding round the West End and up to Paddington, Harrow Road, Westbourne Park, and then was circling back home when I was stopped by two charming police officers. Now, this was just as I was standing on top of my bike on a bridge taking pictures of the scenery, trying to get a good view from what I guess is quite a lofty position. The trouble is, when some people see you going round taking pictures of things, alarm bells start ringing. Apparently, someone had called the cops, and their car sailed up next to me just as I was getting a lovely view of... what? Among other things, the bloody railway tracks some distance from Paddington Station. They advised me, while one of them looked through all the pictures on my digital camera, that this is the sort of thing that is liable to get one arrested under anti-terrorism legislation, what with it sort of being near a major transport hub. They further advised me that following arrest, one would usually end up being strip-searched and possibly questioned for quite a long time under what might prove to be testing circumstances. Luckily, I wasn't a student named Salam Abdulrahman, so I was not arrested or put through the indignity of being having my bottom examined up close by someone without the relevant proctological qualifications. In fact, I was treated courteously, and permitted to ride off into the sunset after an awkward fifteen minutes on the tarmac, a background check and a brief body search. However, it is interesting to think that, had there been a minor blip in the racial coding, it could have been a much worse experience. Had they not liked my answers, even, I would be answering more questions at Paddington Green nick. Not for illegal activity - of course, they allowed me to keep the pictures, and you can see pictures of Paddington station and the tracks on Google Images anyway - but because of the way in which New Labour legislation tolerates and encourages the selective criminalisation of legal conduct. So, that was a funny thing to happen.Labels: anti-terrorism legislation, london, new labour, photographs
Latest Iraqi Resistance Stats posted by lenin
The Brookings Institution provides regular updates on all statistics from Iraq in its 'Iraq Index'. It collates a range of different sources, and it isn't necessarily as authoritative as the official Department of Defense reports. However, it is more consistent in what data it presents and generally omits the Bush administration editorials. The latest report, dated 5 May 2008, is here. Here are some of the key results pertaining to resistance attacks (click to enlarge):
I already addressed the reported the issue of the 'surge' and its effects here and here. I noted that the main causes of a reduction in all kinds of attacks were: a) a brief cessation of the war between Sadr and Badr fighters; the near exhaustion of the sectarian war; b) Sadr's ceasefire; c) the co-opting of Sunni fighters in huge numbers. I also pointed out that the Bush administration had only succeeded in reducing the rate of anti-occupation violence by the precise amount that it had increased during the escalations in 2006-7. The statistics above more or less confirm this picture. (Gilbert Achcar, in an interesting discussion of the political background to the 'surge', also reinforces some of these points). They also suggest that US troop deaths fell to a very low rate in December 2007, and have been rising ever since (don't be misled by the drop at the end of the third chart, as that is the figure for the first four days in May). It is currently at a seven-month high. They confirm that the 'foreign fighter' contingent remains puny, about 2,000 at most - in a total insurgency that was estimated to be about 200,000 strong as early as January 2005, that is at most 1% of the total. As the US has been putting 'Iraqi security forces' in the frontline over the past couple of years - the strategy of 'Iraqification' - they are bearing the greater brunt of deaths. Those same 'Iraqi security forces' are, according to this report, carrying out a large number of the patrols - over half at some points, apparently. The pattern of 'Iraqification' has been maintained in Basra and Sadr City recently. The US is backing up said 'security forces' with air strikes that have contributed to the hundreds of deaths (this may actually be more bloody in the end than Fallujah). Partly because of this, the main cause of deaths among US troops is IEDs, rather than gun battles. Even with that in mind, the main gain of the 'surge' - a reduction in attacks on occupation troops - has been reversing for several months now. If the Sadrist militias have held out well enough to cause the government to want another truce, then the other expected gain - using a window of opportunity to smash the main anti-occupation forces - is unlikely to materialise.
Labels: 'surge', iraq, iraqi resistance, occupation, US imperialism
Friday, May 09, 2008
Crisis and hegemony posted by lenin
The phrase 'war of position', in Gramsci's writings, refers to the kind of struggle conducted in the event that the possibility of revolution is foreclosed. (Or, in the case of Bolshevik Russia, after the revolution has been successful and elements of civil society are organising through the Whites for a counter-revolution). It is a battle for hegemony in a given population group fought along ideological and organisational lines, in order to create the best possible circumstances in which to meet a crisis. What one wants to achieve is a socialist common sense, somewhat analogous to the the 'antiwar common sense' I mention below. Sticking with the martial language for a second, the term 'subaltern' also appears in Gramsci's prison writings at several points. Just as his references to the Machiavelli provided a coded language to talk about the revolutionary party and strategy that would hopefully get past the censors, so the word 'subaltern' adapts Roman military language to talk about the oppressed in a particular way. In its conventional military sense, the term refers to non-commissioned officers, those who are excluded from rank and privilage but are necessary foot-soldiers in the battle. In Gramsci's usage, it designates the oppressed, with a deliberate connotation of them being engaged in a struggle. It was not, pace a certain de-Leninised version of Gramsci popular in postcolonial studies, a designation of pure difference, nor a situation to be celebrated as a realm of occult freedom. (Timothy Brennan is brilliantly scathing on this point in Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right, and Perry Anderson's pre-emptive strike against Gramsci's misappropriation is worth a read). Among the subaltern operate the 'organic intellectuals' - selling newspapers, circulating petitions, gradually undermining the line manager's authority, acquiring epithets like 'ringleader'. That is what the 'war of position' involves.This is an argument about what hegemonic struggle for the left entails at the moment. The polarising features of the global situation are obvious enough. The first is that the economy is tanking. This doesn't always redound to the left's advantage. For example, it could be used by the right in Venezuela to attack the Chavez regime, particularly if Chavez is compelled by the logic of his position to try to constrain any militant response to the crisis. In Italy, part of what brought the right surging to power was the left's complicity in a feckless neoliberal regime that had seen the economy decline badly. Need I even mention what happened last Friday? Didn't think so. So, this invites caution about the relationship between capitalist crisis and the fortunes of the Left. Nonetheless, deep recession bodes poorly for the established order, as a rule, and does open up opportunities for a left able to take them. The neoliberal policy mix isn't going to be abandoned by any of the major parties of government in Europe or America until the crisis gets so bad that it becomes destabilising, but this reinforces the duty and obligation of the left to give expression to anti-neoliberal feeling.
The second is that the 'war on terror', despite recent triumphalist narratives, is tanking as well. The recent slaughters in Sadr City, now accompanied by what looks like a Fallujah-style operation (more on that in a future post), don't look like the actions of a power that is winning. All indications are that the Sunni insurgency is taking off again and practically everyone in the American military and political elite knows that the battle now is over how hard the loss of Iraq will hit. In Afghanistan, the government is begging the occupiers to 'leave the Taliban alone', to their great embarrassment, because they can't defeat them. If the US and its allies don't appear to have the means to subdue either of the two frontier zones at the moment, only a fool would believe that this is because of 'Al Qaeda'. If it was possible for a tiny cluster of hardened Salafist fighters to hold back the American Empire, the damned thing would have fallen already. Clearly, it is because in both countries the rebellion is animated by popular hostility to the occupation. This hostility is strong enough to drive poor farmers who must be sick and tired of war to take up arms, and to even ally with the Taliban whom they have had every reason to despise. The US isn't even having much luck getting the Lebanese government to move seriously against Hezbollah (the talk of a new 'civil war' after recent clashes across the country strike me as hyperbolic, not least because the pro-government forces haven't the means to defeat the opposition forces). This state of overstretch and stasis is why US policymakers are having to rely on a range of militias from the Jundullah to the Mujahiden e-Khalq to assail Iran rather than going for a direct hit. One must also factor into this the political cost of taking the measures necessary to win. Neither Bush nor Brown can up the ante too far without risking domestic upheaval and seriously damaging the legitimacy of their future operations. We in the antiwar movement underestimate our role at our peril: after all, if protests and activism didn't count, the government would not invest so much in trying to neutralise it. One interesting aspect of the antiwar movement has been its ability to accelerate the degeneration of Israel's reputation. The celebrations over its founding hardly look so glamorous in light of the Nakba memorials that are taking place at the same time (and don't forget to join tomorrow's Free Palestine demonstration).
I mentioned a few of the local implications of this global situation in Britain before, so let me instead repeat and summarise an argument about how to relate to that. I note:
- Labourism is more in crisis than ever before, with its heartland erosions pointing to a long-term breakdown in party identity;
- The Tories didn't win on the basis of Howard-style immigrant-bashing and being 'tough on crime', but by playing on Labour's weakness on the 10p tax and post office closures, so this isn't exactly a Thatcherite resurgence;
- Labour's response is to move to the right. Brown is planning on cutting 'green' taxes, Liam Byrne is imposing a points system on immigrants, and the Home Secretary is pressing ahead on upgrading cannabis against expert advice. Given this, it is unlikely that Labour will benefit from a big rush by left-wingers back into the party in order to save it from the Tories;
- But Labour owes its rich friends millions and has no money repay it. It is therefore entering an almighty battle with the unions over funding. Jack Straw is proposing to force unions to hand over all political funds from 4 million affiliated members straight to Labour HQ, with new legislation. Even the relatively friendly leaderships of the GMB and Unison are talking about breaking from Labour if that happens. If the Blairites get their way, their may be a further push to reduce the union block vote (still 40%), diminish the reliance on union funding, and continue the re-alignment of the party on Democratic Party lines by shifting further to the right and soliciting more funds from business. Even if they don't, something has to give, and this opens opportunities for the Left;
- The Tory vote, despite its recent showing, is also fragmenting over the long term with right-wing voters backing smaller parties like UKIP as well as the Nazis. Far be it from me to use metaphors like "the kaleidoscope has been shaken", but the party system is changing with growing rapidity.
- The antiwar movement has created a kind of common sense, which led people to spontaneously oppose Israel's assault on Lebanon and automatically prefer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's version of events to Tony Blair's during the brief 'hostage crisis'. This is not unassailable but, given the long-term centrality of the 'war on terror', it is a strategically important accomplishment in itself. It has also been significant in combatting the Islamophobia that the far right feeds off.
I think these are the basic co-ordinates of our 'war of position'. We are fighting in a context where the usual fixtures of bourgeois politics are in a state of speedy deterioration, and opening up new territory. Any space that the Left is unable or unwilling to occupy will likely be an opportunity either for unprincipled forces like the SNP or the Liberals or, at worst, the far right.
Labels: gramsci, hegemony, leninism, socialism, war of position
Two Kinds of Image Problem posted by lenin
This:
And this:
(Click on images).
Labels: haiti, iraq, orientalism, racism, the arab mind, torture, US imperialism
Thursday, May 08, 2008
The Free Market posted by lenin
Labels: free markets
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Nazis out of City Hall - Smash the BNP! posted by lenin
Well, I'm sorry I didn't post pics and footage from yesterday's demo sooner, but by the time I got back I was barely able to regurgitate my lager and cornish pasty never mind write up a post. Anyway, a couple of things: 1) it was an excellent turnout on very short notice and hardly any publicity at all; 2) after all the speeches and that, it was quite a good idea to have everyone surround City Hall chanting "Nazis out of City Hall - Smash the BNP!" I think Richard Barnbrook should have to hear that quite a bit over the next few months; 3) aside from Weyman Bennett being a good laugh, there was quite an interesting mood there. If I may put it like this, the organisers of Hope Not Hate may wish to reconsider their motto. This was hope and hate. I think people are fucking furious about the scum getting into the Assembly, and I would expect some very strong anti-fascist activity in the foreseeable future. Anyway, here's your pics and protest footage.
Labels: bnp scum, gla elections, nazi, unite against fascism
