Future of Socialism

Take a look at Randhir Singh's "Future of Socialism" (MRZine, 29 December 2007). At 16,471 words, it's about ten times longer than a typical MRZine article, and it may be a little too long to read online, but there is much in it that is worthy of leftists' consideration.

The points that Singh emphasizes are the ones that are particularly important for our time: Marx's understanding of socialism as "a transition between capitalism and communism (not "as a social formation existing in its own right"), the value of difference and individualization (as opposed to the ideology of individualism), the need to put class politics in command (rather than remain a slave to the logic of capitalist development), Marx's criticism of "Russian capitalism admirers" (i.e., those who in effect make a defense of perpetual capitalist development out of some of Marx's statements).

One question that I have about Singh's article concerns this: "The 'actually existing socialism' -- which was not Marx's socialism whose possibility remains open -- has, of course, failed. But, surely, the 'actually existing capitalism' -- which is the only kind of capitalism possible -- has not been the success it is made out to be," says Singh. For "Marx's socialism" to be possible, however, it has to be attempted in the North, but, as Singh says, "Once available to capitalism for it to emerge, consolidate itself, and grow dominant, time is no longer so available to socialism," due to threats of climate change, and "as with 'underdevelopment', 'overdevelopment', too, poses its own unanticipated problems for the realisation of Marx project of socialism." That puts the possibility of "Marx's socialism" into question.

For people of the North to desire to try "Marx's socialism," they will have to value democracy and republicanism more than social wealth, for "Marx's socialism" will never make a majority of people of the North richer than they are. Will they ever?

Marjane Satrapi Speaks

Marjane Satrapi talks about Persepolis on Bebin.TV:

"The One Stable State in the Middle East Is Iran"

"Bhutto Assassinated in Attack on Rally" (Salman Masood and Graham Bowley, New York Times, 28 November 2007). Tariq Ali sums up the endgame of military despotism on which the empire has bet in Pakistan: "In the past, military rule was designed to preserve order -- and did so for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes lawlessness" ("A Tragedy Born of Military Despotism and Anarchy," Guardian, 28 December 2007).

Everyone ought to keep in mind that, "at the moment, the one stable state in the Middle East is Iran," as Immanuel Wallerstein correctly observes.

The basic fact that we should always keep in mind is that the present U.S. administration has a full plate -- maintaining its presence in Iraq, maintaining its presence in Afghanistan, and worrying about the very real possibility of the breakdown of order in Pakistan. Even George W. Bush can appreciate that Iran's possible development of nuclear weapons a decade from now cannot displace these other concerns as a priority.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In the meantime, every one else around the world is thinking of what they should be doing in the Middle East after 2009, with most probably a Democratic president in office in the United States. It should seem obvious to them all that, at the moment, the one stable state in the Middle East is Iran. Iran to be sure has its internal conflicts and the Ahmadinejad faction may well lose the next elections. But Iran -- an oil power, a Shia power, a military and demographic power in the region -- is a major actor that has to be taken into account. Countries will prefer to have Iran on their side than against them. Iran is not going to go away. (Immanuel Wallerstein, "A Major Reversal? The NIE Report on Iran," MRZine, 25 December 2007)

Among all the factors mentioned above, as well as the unwillingness of Russia, China, Germany, and others to go along with the USA, whose subprime state of economy has finally become exposed, it is "the very real possibility of the breakdown of order in Pakistan" that has most effectively put the brake on Washington's Iran campaign.

The stars are finally aligned all right for a détente with Iran . . . if liberals and leftists in the North push hard for it.

Can we give a détente with America to the Iranian people before contradictions of resource populism in Iran (as well as Venezuela -- watch the governments' responses to inflation in both) become more acute, exacerbate its internal conflicts, and once again raise the eternal hope of the American power elite?

Update

The Russians keep delivering -- the Caspian Summit, nuclear fuels, and now an anti-aircraft system "far superior to . . . the US Patriot system."

Russia is to supply Iran with a new and lethal anti-aircraft system capable of shooting down American or Israeli fighter jets in the event of any strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Iran yesterday confirmed that Russia had agreed to deliver the S-300 air defence system, a move that is likely to irk the Bush administration and gives further proof of Russia and Iran's deepening strategic partnership.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The S-300 had a range far superior to that of the US Patriot system, experts said. It could also shoot down cruise and ballistic missiles, they added.

"It's a formidable system. It really gives a new dimension to Iran's anti-aircraft defences," said one Russian defence expert, who declined to be named.

"It's purely a defensive system. But it's very effective. It's much better than the US system. It has good radar. It can shoot down low-flying cruise missiles, though with some difficulty." (Luke Harding, "Russia Will Supply New Anti-Aircraft Missiles for Iran," Guardian, 27 December 2007)

Update 2

Oh well, now "Russia Denies Talks with Iran on S-300 Deliveries" (RIA Novosti, 28 December 2007).

Feminists before the Invasion of Iraq

Ruth Rosen, among others, has reported on the plight of women in war-torn Iraq:

To avoid such dangers, countless Iraqi women have become shut-ins in their own homes. Historian Marjorie Lasky has described this situation in "Iraqi Women Under Siege," a 2006 report for Codepink, an anti-war women's organization. Before the war, she points out, many educated Iraqi women participated fully in the work force and in public life. (emphasis added, "A Wave of Sexual Terrorism In Iraq," AlterNet, 14 July 2006)

But how many feminists spoke up about the fact that "many educated Iraqi women participated fully in the work force and in public life" under Saddam Hussain's Ba'ath Party government and supported that government against the empire?

La última vocación del Cristianismo

La última vocación del Cristianismo

Por Yoshie Furuhashi
Traducción Julio Fernández Baraibar

El mensaje para la Navidad de 2007 de Michel Sabbah, el Patriarca Latino y Arzobispo de Jerusalem, es muy convincente: critica agudamente la ocupación mientras aconseja contra "hablar de crear 'estados religiosos' en la Palestina histórica. La última vocación del cristianismo puede ser muy bien convertirse en el mediador entre judíos y musulmanes en el Medio Oriente.

Más aún, en el mensaje Sabbah cita a Jeremías 6:14, quizás la más apropiada respuesta a Anápolis:

Ellos curan a la ligera
el quebranto de mi pueblo,
diciendo: "¡Paz, paz!",
pero no hay paz.

Maradona Loves Iran

A gift of love from the god of football to the people of Iran: Diego Maradona says, "Estoy con los iraníes de todo corazón, de verdad lo digo, lo digo porque lo siento y estoy con el pueblo de Irán [I'm with the Iranians, with all my heart. I mean it. I say it because I feel it. I stand with the people of Iran]," presenting Iran's charge d'affaires in Argentina Mohsen Baharvand with his token of love for Iran, a shirt that he autographed "Con todo mi cariño para el pueblo de Irán [With all my love for the people of Iran]" ("Con todo cariño," Olé, 24 December 2007).

Maradona's Message to the People of Iran

El Diez's shirt will be on display in the museum of gifts at Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, no doubt to the delight of his fans in Iran.

Eduardo Galeano said of Maradona: for many years he committed "el pecado de ser el mejor, el delito de denunciar a viva voz las cosas que el poder manda callar y el crimen de jugar con la zurda, lo cual, según el Pequeño Larousse Ilustrado, significa 'con la izquierda' y también significa 'al contrario de cómo se debe hacer' [the sin of being the best, the offense of loudly condemning the things that the powerful ordered silenced, and the crime of playing left-handed, which, according to The Little Illustrated Larousse, means being 'with the Left' and also means being 'contrary to what we are supposed to do']" (El Fútbol a sol y sombra, 1995). The man-child is still playing left-handed, after all these years.

Divorce Japanese Style

I have always thought that the Japanese are not made for heterosexuality, let alone monogamy.

• "Almost 40 percent of Japanese married couples speak to each other less than 30 minutes a day, with more wives than husbands contemplating divorce, a recent survey [of 1,200 married people by Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co.] revealed. . . . [C]ouples in their 40s spend the least time chatting -- almost 54 percent of husbands and wives in that age group spent less than half an hour per day talking with each other" (Yoko Kubota, "Married Japanese Quietly Contemplate Divorce: Survey," Reuters, 26 November 2007).


• "A change in Japanese law this year allows a wife who is filing for divorce to claim as much as half her husband's company pension. When the new law went into effect in April, divorce filings across Japan spiked 6.1 percent. Many more split-ups are in the pipeline, marriage counselors predict" (Blaine Harden, "Learn to Be Nice to Your Wife, or Pay the Price: Japan's Salarymen, with Pensions at Stake, Work on Their Marriages," Washington Post, 26 November 2007, A1).

My parents, after more than four decades of marriage, are still together. Not only that, they are decidedly heterosocial, in that they have always spent more of their free time with each other than with their respective same-gender friends. Very unlike many Japanese wives and husbands their age.

The Last Vocation of Christianity

The 2007 Christmas message of Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch and Archbishop of Jerusalem, is very cogent: it sharply criticizes the occupation while counseling against "talk about creating 'religious' States" in historic Palestine. The last vocation of Christianity may very well be to be the mediator between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East.

Moreover, in the message Sabbah cites Jeremiah 6:14, perhaps the most fitting rejoinder to Annapolis:

They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
'Peace, peace,' they say,
when there is no peace.

Update

Yoshie Furuhashi, "La última vocación del Cristianismo," Traducción Julio Fernández Baraibar, Critical Montages, 25 December 2007.

Um Kulthum Sings for Palestine

Um Kulthum sings for Palestine.

طريق واحد

The (very sixties) lyrics, in Arabic and in English translation, are found at TLAXCALA.

¿Socialismo Louis Vuitton en Venezuela?

¿Socialismo Louis Vuitton en Venezuela?

Por Yoshie Furuhashi
Traducción de Julio Fernández Baraibar

El minstro de Interior venezolano, Pedro Carreño, fue pescado criticando al capitalismo mientras calzaba zapatos de Gucci y llevaba una corbata de Louis Vuitton:

Al preguntarsele si no era contradictorio criticar al capitalismo mientras personalmente se preferían lujos importados, el ministro tartamudeó un poco y dijo: "No es contradictorio porque yo quisiera que Venezuela produjera todo esto y entonces podría comprar lo que se produce aquí en lugar de tener que importar el 95 % de lo que consumimos. (Enrique Andrés Pretel, "Ministro venezolano en apuros para defender socialismo de Chávez," Reuters, 13 December 2007).

A diferencia de los derechistas, que se están haciendo el día con este vídeo, no me interesa la acusación de hipocresía.¹ ¿Quién puede culpar al ministro porque le guste usar linda ropa?

Pero hay una pregunta que debe hacerse: ¿sabe el ministro que sus artículos europeos de moda no han sido hechos con la fuerza de trabajo con altos salarios de Europa, sino con los mal pagados trabajadores asiáticos? ¿Sabe que lo único europeo que tienen esos artículos son los precios?

De hecho, muchos artículos de lujos hoy están hechos en líneas de montaje en países en desarrollo, donde la mano de obra es inmensamente más barata. Vi esto por primera vez cuando visité una fábrica de artículos de cuero en China, donde mujeres de 18 a 26 años ganaban US$ 120 por mes cosiendo y pegando bolsos, valijas, carteras y necesaires. Un bolso, que vi cuando lo armaban -- para una marca cuyos dueños insisten que es manufacturada solamente en Italia -- cuesta producirlo US$ 120 la unidad. Esa noche vi el mismo bolso en una gran tienda de Hong Kong al precio de US$ 1.200, pura remarcación. (Dana Thomas, "Made in China on the Sly," New York Times, 23 de noviembre de 2007)

Luego quedan otras cuestiones, sugeridas por la propia respuesta del ministro: ¿Venezuela está haciendo algún progreso en superar la enfermedad holandesa (altos precios del petróleo que sobrevalúan la moneda, haciendo que las importaciones sean más baratas y subdesarrollando la producción interna de lo que no sea petróleo)? Las tendencias presentadas por el Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas de Venezuela no son alentadoras.

Gráfico: Valor de las importaciones de Venezuela, 2000-2007

La inversión productiva en general se ubica por detrás del consumo y la producción fabril está entre los sectores más postergados. (Las notas del blog Oil War que siguen están basadas en cifras proporcionadas por el Banco Central de Venezuela en "El PIB aumentó 8,7% durante el tercer trimestre de 2007," 15 de noviembre de 2007):

El crecimiento más importante fue en las comunicaciones con un 24,3% seguido por el comercio con un 18,4% y los transportes con un 15,5%. Los sectores más postergados fueron la producción fabril con 7,7% y la construcción con un 4%. Nótese que tanto la producción fabril como la construcción crecieron a un ritmo más lento que el de la economía total. Claramente la creciente sobrevaluación de la economía venezolana está impidiendo el crecimiento de la producción fabril y manteniéndola por debajo de lo que debería ser.

Lo interesante es que el banco puntualiza que la producción agrícola ha estado creciendo a un promedio de 15% desde el 2005. De modo que la escasez es claramente el resultado de un crecimiento de la demanda y no de la caída de la producción.

En números más generales, las importaciones crecieron un 30,9% (¿esto es bueno o malo?), el consumo general aumentó 20,4% (sospecho que esto hace votantes felices), y la inversión de capital fijo subió 17,3% lo cual es atribuido por el gobierno al crecimiento de la importación de maquinarias. Sin embargo, desde hace un tiempo hemos visto subir las inversiones mientras la producción aumenta a tasas más lentas. ("Yawn," Oil Wars, 15 November 2007)

Parece que el día en que el ministro pueda comprar todo lo que quiera en el país no está muy próximo y él no está dando personalmente un buen ejemplo de swadeshi² para el resto de la nación.

El desafortunado espectáculo del Socialismo Louis Vuitton apareció más o menos al mismo tiempo que las noticias del levantamiento del control de precios de la leche larga vida y muy poco después de la derrota de la Reforma Constitucional. El comienzo de diciembre del 2007 puede ser recordado como el momento cuando las contradicciones del populismo de recursos en Venezuela se hicieron más evidentes que nunca.

Y al último, pero no por ello menos importante, hay un problema que concierne a la mayoría de los venezolanos, de acuerdo a las encuestas de noviembre del 2007 de Consultores 30.11, sobre criminalidad.

No hay duda que la incidencia del crimen es muy alta en Venezuela, así como en el resto de América Latina, lo cual es, en parte, un producto de la enorme desigualdad social, pero la tasa de homicidios en Venezuela, por ejemplo, es una de las más altas del mundo, muy por encima de lo que uno se podría esperar por su nivel de desarrollo humano (UNDP, "Homicides (Per 100,000 People)," Human Development Report 2007/2008).

Los chavistas deberán superar esa y otras contradicciones si quieren permanecer en el poder y continuar con la transformación de su país. Pero, ¿cómo?


1 Algunos izuierdistas venezolanos, sin embargo, no permitirían al ministro salir tan fácilmente de la hipócrita cuestión:

Y con una corbata Louis Vuitton y unos zapatos Gucci tú no puedes venir a decirme que estás poniendo los intereses colectivos por encima de los individuales, mucho menos si tu respuesta a las críticas es que en Venezuela "no se fabrican" corbatas ni zapatos . . . no me jodas, que en estos momentos tengo puestos unos zapatos venezolanos Vic Matic bien bonitos, que cuestan 120 mil bolívares y me han durado 2 años ya. (Luigino Bracci Roa, "Pedro Carreño y la corbata Louis Vuitton, o cuando la oposición tiene toda la razón. . . ," El espacio de Lubrio, 13 December 2007)

¿No es tiempo de que los funcionarios venezolanos comiencen a emular la rectitud de sastre de sus socios iraníes que le fruncen el ceño a la "kravati" (en persa en el original)?

Pero la peor noticia no es del departamento de modas sino del departamento de compras: el gobierno venezolano le acaba de dar un contrato de US$ 57 millones a la KBR para construir una planta de amoníaco. ("Cuando pondrán su dinero donde están sus bocas?" Oil Wars, 14 de diciembre de 2007).

2 Swadeshi: autosuficiencia en hindi. El movimiento Swadeshi formó parte del movimiento de la independencia de la India. Entre las estrategias que incluía el movimiento swadeshi estaban el boicot a los productos británicos, así como el restablecimiento de la economía doméstica y sus técnicas de producción. Swadeshi, como estrategia, fue el enfoque clave para el Mahatma Gandhi, quien lo describió como el alma del autogobierno indio. (Nota de JFB)

General Strike in Greece

Here's a video of the general strike of 12 December 2007 in Greece (courtesy of KKE Skandinavien, the Scandinavian Organization of the Communist Party of Greece, so the text is in Swedish and the video features the PAME, the All Workers Militant Front).

As in France, the main issue is pensions. The Greek General Confederation of Labor says that "participation in the nationwide, general strike ranged from 90 percent to 100 percent" and that 200,000 marched in Athens alone (Maria Petrakis, "Greeks, Troubled by Pension Changes, Strike, March in Thousands," Bloomberg, 12 December 2007).

Japan, a Blogging Nation

The Japanese apparently blog more than anyone else.

Although English speakers outnumber Japanese speakers by more than 5-1, slightly more blog postings are written in Japanese than in English, according to Technorati, the Internet search engine that monitors the blogosphere.

By some estimates, as much as 40 percent of Japanese blogging is done on mobile phones, often by commuters staring cross-eyed at tiny screens for hours as they ride the world's most extensive network of subways and commuter trains.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Technorati found that of all recorded blog postings in the fourth quarter of last year, 37 percent were written in Japanese, 36 percent in English and 8 percent in Chinese.

This was not an aberration. In the past three years, Japanese has been running ahead of or about even with English as the dominant language of blogging, according to Technorati. About 130 million people understand Japanese, while about 1.1 billion understand English. (Blaine Harden, "Japan's Bloggers: Humble Giants of the Web," Washington Post, 6 December 2007, A01)

What are they blogging about? Mainly about "cats, kids and lunch." Blogs in Japanese are largely media of phatic communication meant to be read only by friends of bloggers, or so suggests research on comparative blogging behavior cited in this article. No doubt because nothing -- n o t h i n g -- politically interesting, let alone world-historical, happens in Japan.

There are some Japanese blogs worthy of your attention, however. My favorite is イランという国で [In a Country Called Iran], kept by a Japanese woman who has been living in Iran since 1996, teaching the Japanese language at the University of Tehran. She's been blogging about her life in Iran, her observations on Iranian culture and society, and her conversations with Iranians since 2004, her topics ranging from her grocery shopping to her argument with campus security guards who check on whether her outfit is up to the codes. In a good old expat fashion, she complains a lot -- especially about Iranian students, who like to avoid homework and come to class late -- but she also demystifies how things are, giving her audience verbal and visual images of everyday life of Iranians that are missing from the Western media.

Ibrahim Mousawi Speaks

Ibrahim Mousawi, editor of the Hizballah newspaper Al Intiqad, speaks, emphasizing that "What is happening in Palestine, it's not an Islamic issue, it's not an Arab issue, it's not a religious issue -- it's a human issue":

World Against War

Check out the videos of the speeches delivered at the World Against War conference (London, 1 December 2007) on the Web site of the Stop the War coalition. Here are the speakers from the conference's Iran session:

Abbas Edalat, Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

Marzieh Mortazi Langroudi, Mothers for Peace, Iran

Mohammad Omidvar, Tudeh

Elaleh Rostami Povey, Campaign Iran

Contradictions of Resource Populism

Venezuela's Interior Minister Pedro Carreño got caught criticizing capitalism while sporting Gucci shoes and a Louis Vuitton tie:

Asked if it wasn't contradictory to criticize capitalism while personally preferring imported luxuries, the minister stammered a bit and finally said: "No es contradictorio, porque yo quisiera que Venezuela produjera todo eso y entonces yo comprar todo lo que se produzca aquí y no tener que importar el 95 por ciento de los rubros que consumimos [It's not contradictory, for I would prefer Venezuela to be producing all this, and then I could buy what's produced here instead of having to import 95% of what we consume]" (Enrique Andrés Pretel, "Ministro venezolano en apuros para defender socialismo de Chávez," Reuters, 13 December 2007).

Unlike right-wingers, who are having a field day with this video, the charge of hypocrisy does not interest me.¹ Who can blame the minister for wishing to wear nice clothes?

But a question may be still asked: does the minister know that his European brand fashion items may not have been made by high-wage European craftsmen but low-wage East Asian workers, the only thing "European" about them being their prices?

In fact, many luxury-brand items today are made on assembly lines in developing nations, where labor is vastly cheaper. I saw this firsthand when I visited a leather-goods factory in China, where women 18 to 26 years old earn $120 a month sewing and gluing together luxury-brand leather handbags, knapsacks, wallets and toiletry cases. One bag I watched them put together -- for a brand whose owners insist is manufactured only in Italy -- cost $120 apiece to produce. That evening, I saw the same bag at a Hong Kong department store with a price tag of $1,200 -- a typical markup. (Dana Thomas, "Made in China on the Sly," New York Times, 23 November 2007)

Then, there remains another question, suggested by the minister's reply itself: is Venezuela making progress in overcoming the Dutch disease (higher oil prices overvaluing the currency, making imports comparatively cheaper and underdeveloping the domestic non-oil production)? The import trends charted by Venezuela's National Statistics Institute are not exactly encouraging.

Productive investment in general is clearly lagging behind consumption, and manufacturing is among the most shortchanged sectors (Oil Wars' notes below are based on the Banco Central de Venezuela, "El PIB aumentó 8,7% durante el tercer trimestre de 2007," 15 November 2007):

The fastest growth was in communications at 24.3% followed by commerce at 18.4% and then transportation at 15.5%. The lagging sectors were manufacturing at 7.7% and construction at 4%. Note that both manufacturing and contruction were both slower than growth in the economy as a whole. Clearly the increasing overvaluation of the Venezuelan economy is stunting manufacturing growth and keeping it below what it should be.

Interstingly the bank noted that agricultural production as been increasing at an average of 15% since 2005. So what shortages there are clearly result from increased demand not falling output.

In more general numbers imports were up 30.9% (is this good or bad?), consumption by consumers is up 20.4% (I guess this makes for happy voters), and fixed capital investment is up 17.3% which the government attributes to increased imports of machinery. However, for some time now we have seen investment go way up while production seems to be increasing but at a much slower rate. ("Yawn," Oil Wars, 15 November 2007)

It looks like the day when the minister can buy at home everything he can possibly want is far from close, and he is not personally setting a great example of swadeshi for the rest of the nation to follow.

The unfortunate spectacle of Louis Vuitton socialism came at about the same time as the news of removal of the price controls on long-life milk and shortly after the defeat of the Constitutional Reform. The beginning of December 2007 may be remembered as the time when contradictions of resource populism in Venezuela became more visible than before.

Last but not the least, there is a problem that concerns the Venezuelans the most, according to the November 2007 Consultores 30.11 poll -- crime.

There is no question that crime incidence is very high in Venezuela, as it is in the rest of Latin America, which is in part a function of wide economic inequality, but Venezuela's homicide rate, for instance, is one of the highest in the world, far worse than one might expect from its level of human development (UNDP, "Homicides (Per 100,000 People)," Human Development Report 2007/2008).

Chavistas will have to overcome these and other contradictions if they want to stay in power and further transform the nation. But how?


1 Some Venezuelan leftists, however, may not let the minister off the hook so easily on the hypocrisy question:

Y con una corbata Louis Vuitton y unos zapatos Gucci tú no puedes venir a decirme que estás poniendo los intereses colectivos por encima de los individuales, mucho menos si tu respuesta a las críticas es que en Venezuela "no se fabrican" corbatas ni zapatos. . . no me jodas, que en estos momentos tengo puestos unos zapatos venezolanos Vic Matic bien bonitos, que cuestan 120 mil bolívares y me han durado 2 años ya. [And with a Louis Vuitton tie and Gucci shoes on, you can't come to tell me that you are putting collective interests above individual ones, much less if you respond to your critics by saying that ties and shoes are "not being manufactured" in Venezuela. . . . Don't kid me. At this very moment I am wearing very pretty Vic Matic Venezuelan shoes, which cost me 120,000 bolivars and have lasted for the last two years] (Luigino Bracci Roa, "Pedro Carreño y la corbata Louis Vuitton, o cuando la oposición tiene toda la razón. . . ," El espacio de Lubrio, 13 December 2007)

Is it time for Venezuelan officials to begin to emulate the sartorial rectitude of their Iranian counterparts who still frown upon the kravati?

But news from the department of government procurement is worse than news from the fashion department: the Venezuelan government just gave KBR a $57 million dollar contract to build an ammonia plant ("When Will They Put Their Money Where Their Mouths Are?" Oil Wars, 14 December 2007).

Update

Read it in Spanish: Yoshie Furuhashi, "¿Socialismo Louis Vuittón en Venezuela?" Traducción de Julio Fernández Baraibar, Critical Montages, 19 December 2007

"Sitting This One Out"

Adolph L. Reed, Jr. has finally had it: "This time, I’m not going to acquiesce in the fiction that the Presidential charade has any credibility whatsoever. I’m not paying any attention to the horse race coverage -- that mass-mediated positioning in the battle for superficial product differentiation" ("Sitting This One Out," The Progressive, November 2007). I wish he had written this in 2004, but it's better late than never. Both running Third Party campaigns and pushing for left-liberal candidates in the Democratic Party primaries have clearly failed in the United States, leaving us no organized Left to speak of in the belly of the beast. At this point, the best we can do is probably to try the hardest to prevent political activism on other fronts from becoming subordinated to electoral calculations, and views like Reed's help us in this attempt.

His criticism of marches, rallies, and even civil disobedience in the United States, which are today all "carefully choreographed and designed to be minimally disruptive," is just as sharp.

I do not, however, share his view that "The anti-war movement isn’t coherent or popularly grounded enough to exert the pressure necessary to improve the electoral options; only the labor movement has the capacity to do so, but it doesn’t have the will." The problem is deeper. The reason that the so-called "labor movement" doesn't have the will is that it long ago ceased to be a labor movement, the residual rhetoric of labor leftists notwithstanding, and organized labor as it exists now is unlikely to become a social movement again.

Venezuelan Price Controls in Danger

The Financial Times reports that shortages of basic goods and the annual rate of inflation that is "more than 20 per cent" have led the Venezuelan government to begin to lift price controls:

On Monday the government took its first step towards attacking widespread shortages by lifting price controls on long-life milk, one of several goods regularly unavailable in shops, leading to long queues and discontent.

There is speculation controls may also be removed from other scarce goods such as sugar, eggs, black beans, chicken and red meat. (Benedict Mander, "More Venezuela Price Caps May Go," 12 December 2007)

Venezuela, which, unlike Iran, has never had a Jacobin revolution (thus leaving all strata of the ruling classes more or less intact) and where the recent defeat of the Constitutional Reform makes the prospect of the Bolivarian process (an evolutionary approach that is perceived as a "kinder, gentler" alternative to a Jacobin revolution) much less certain than before, has a weaker politico-economic foundation for populism than Iran, though inflation leads neoliberals to put the same pressures on price controls, government subsidies, state-mandated wage increases, and other measures that "distort the market" in Iran, too.

Is there a way to curb inflation without resorting to market discipline? Martin Hart-Landsberg suggests that there may be one, taking inspiration from the experience of popular participation in price control implemented by the the Office of Price Administration of the United States government in the early 1940s: "Another World Is Indeed Possible" (MRZine, 7 November 2007). I am not certain if the measures described in this article can be applied in Iran or Venezuela, but they ought to be considered by the governments of both nations.


Update

Yoshie Furuhashi, "Contradictions of Resource Populism," Critical Montages, 15 December 2007.

Louis Vuitton Socialism in Venezuela?

Venezuela's Interior Minister Pedro Carreño got caught criticizing capitalism while sporting Gucci shoes and a Louis Vuitton tie:

Asked if it wasn't contradictory to criticize capitalism while personally preferring imported luxuries, the minister stammered a bit and finally said: "No es contradictorio, porque yo quisiera que Venezuela produjera todo eso y entonces yo comprar todo lo que se produzca aquí y no tener que importar el 95 por ciento de los rubros que consumimos [It's not contradictory, for I would prefer Venezuela to be producing all this, and then I could buy what's produced here instead of having to import 95% of what we consume]" (Enrique Andrés Pretel, "Ministro venezolano en apuros para defender socialismo de Chávez," Reuters, 13 December 2007).

Unlike right-wingers, who are having a field day with this video, the charge of hypocrisy does not interest me.¹ Who can blame the minister for wishing to wear nice clothes?

But a question may be still asked: does the minister know that his European brand fashion items may not have been made by high-wage European craftsmen but low-wage East Asian workers, the only thing "European" about them being their prices?

In fact, many luxury-brand items today are made on assembly lines in developing nations, where labor is vastly cheaper. I saw this firsthand when I visited a leather-goods factory in China, where women 18 to 26 years old earn $120 a month sewing and gluing together luxury-brand leather handbags, knapsacks, wallets and toiletry cases. One bag I watched them put together -- for a brand whose owners insist is manufactured only in Italy -- cost $120 apiece to produce. That evening, I saw the same bag at a Hong Kong department store with a price tag of $1,200 -- a typical markup. (Dana Thomas, "Made in China on the Sly," New York Times, 23 November 2007)

Then, there remains another question, suggested by the minister's reply itself: is Venezuela making progress in overcoming the Dutch disease (higher oil prices overvaluing the currency, making imports comparatively cheaper and underdeveloping the domestic non-oil production)? The import trends charted by Venezuela's National Statistics Institute are not exactly encouraging.

Productive investment in general is clearly lagging behind consumption, and manufacturing is among the most shortchanged sectors (Oil Wars' notes below are based on the Banco Central de Venezuela, "El PIB aumentó 8,7% durante el tercer trimestre de 2007," 15 November 2007):

The fastest growth was in communications at 24.3% followed by commerce at 18.4% and then transportation at 15.5%. The lagging sectors were manufacturing at 7.7% and construction at 4%. Note that both manufacturing and contruction were both slower than growth in the economy as a whole. Clearly the increasing overvaluation of the Venezuelan economy is stunting manufacturing growth and keeping it below what it should be.

Interstingly the bank noted that agricultural production as been increasing at an average of 15% since 2005. So what shortages there are clearly result from increased demand not falling output.

In more general numbers imports were up 30.9% (is this good or bad?), consumption by consumers is up 20.4% (I guess this makes for happy voters), and fixed capital investment is up 17.3% which the government attributes to increased imports of machinery. However, for some time now we have seen investment go way up while production seems to be increasing but at a much slower rate. ("Yawn," Oil Wars, 15 November 2007)

It looks like the day when the minister can buy at home everything he can possibly want is far from close, and he is not personally setting a great example of swadeshi for the rest of the nation to follow.

1 Some Venezuelan leftists, however, may not let the minister off the hook so easily on the hypocrisy question:

Y con una corbata Louis Vuitton y unos zapatos Gucci tú no puedes venir a decirme que estás poniendo los intereses colectivos por encima de los individuales, mucho menos si tu respuesta a las críticas es que en Venezuela "no se fabrican" corbatas ni zapatos... no me jodas, que en estos momentos tengo puestos unos zapatos venezolanos Vic Matic bien bonitos, que cuestan 120 mil bolívares y me han durado 2 años ya. [And with a Louis Vuitton tie and Gucci shoes on, you can't come to tell me that you are putting collective interests above individual ones, much less if you respond to your critics by saying that ties and shoes are "not being manufactured" in Venezuela. . . . Don't kid me. At this very moment I am wearing very pretty Vic Matic Venezuelan shoes, which cost me 120,000 bolivars and have lasted for the last two years] (Luigino Bracci Roa, "Pedro Carreño y la corbata Louis Vuitton, o cuando la oposición tiene toda la razón. . . ," El espacio de Lubrio, 13 December 2007)

Is it time for Venezuelan officials to begin to emulate the sartorial rectitude of their Iranian counterparts who still frown upon the kravati?

But news from the department of government procurement is worse than news from the fashion department: the Venezuelan government just gave KBR a $57 million dollar contract to build an ammonia plant ("When Will They Put Their Money Where Their Mouths Are?" Oil Wars, 14 December 2007).

Update

Yoshie Furuhashi, "Contradictions of Resource Populism," Critical Montages, 15 December 2007.

An All-American Muslim Story

Here's an All-American Muslim story. A group of Christians yell "Merry Christmas" to everyone on subway. In return, two young Jewish couples wish them a "Happy Chanukah." The Christians, enraged by the existence of religious diversity, attack the Jews:

One of the young men, who at one point displayed a tattoo of Jesus, shouted "Happy Chanukah?! That's when the Jews killed Jesus," said [attack victim Walter] Adler, who also heard shouts of "dirty Jews," "you f---ing Jews" and other slurs. (Doug Chandler, "Victims of Subway Assault Push for Hate-Crime Charges," Jewish Week, 12 December 2007)

(The Christian thugs are not only bigoted but also chronologically challenged.)

Only a young Muslim immigrant intervenes to protect the Jews from the Christians -- no one else on the train does. The Christians beat up the Muslim guy, though his intervention allows one of the Jewish victims to pull the emergency brake and call the police.

The Muslim hero, however, is unable to "go to the doctor because he's too busy working two waiter jobs and doesn't have the money for medical care" (Melissa Grace, "Muslim Hero Breaks Up Train Beating," New York Daily News, 12 December 2007) -- that's what makes this not just any old Muslim story but an All-American Muslim story.

NEWS: Iranian Bakes a Cookie

This is among the best routines of Maz Jobrani:

Bomb Blasts in Algeria

What has created the conditions for the growth of Al Qaeda, whose Maghreb branch took responsiblity for the bomb blasts in Algeria that killed 26 and wounded 177? "For a long time, in Algeria as well as in other Muslim countries, European and North American governments led by their oil interests entertained the most ambiguous relations with the extreme right political forces working under the cover of Islam" ("Bomb Blasts in Algeria: A Call from Concerned Algerian Citizens to Citizens' Organizations, Progressive Parties, and Unions," MRZine, 13 December 2007).

Those who understand this problem as a question of secularism versus "political Islam," however, miss the point. The Islamic Republic of Iran, among whose mortal enemies are international terrorists of the Al Qaeda variety, was among the first to condemn the terrorist attacks in Algeria: "Iran Condemns Algeria Bombings" (Press TV, 11 December 2007).

The real battle is not between Islamists and secularists but between builders and destroyers of civilization.

The way the empire and AQ-type terrorists, the aforementioned destroyers of civilization, are carrying on, pretty soon, the only oasis of calm in the whole MENA region will be Iran, "a 'strong nation,' one whose major components, if not all, of both popular classes and ruling classes, do not accept the integration of their country into the globalized system in a dominated position" in the words of Samir Amin ("Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism," Monthly Review 59.7, December 2007).

American Jews Oppose Military Action against Iran

This just in: American Jews are opposed to any military attack on Iran, by a large margin, according to the American Jewish Committee's 2007 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion (6-25 November 2007).

7. Would you support or oppose the United States taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons?
Support	35
Oppose	57
Not Sure	8

The rest of the survey is just as good.

No, this doesn't surprise us: the fact obscured by both the Israel lobby and some of its most foolish critics is that, after all these years, Jewish Americans still largely lean to the Left, thinking more like oppressed Blacks than privileged whites, and adjusted for income differences (lower incomes tend to correlate with more progressive opinions on foreign policy as well as economics), Jewish Americans are probably the most progressive group in the USA; and that neo-conservatives are a tiny minority at odds with a great majority of Jewish Americans they claim to represent (Glenn Greenwald, "New Poll Reveals How Unrepresentative Neocon Jewish Groups Are," Salon.com, 12 December 2007). Now, isn't it great to have what we know confirmed by the American Jewish Committee again?

Update

"Two-Thirds of Israelis Oppose Attack on Iran: Poll" (Agence France Presse, 6 December 2007). Take that, neo-cons!

UFPJ, Iran, and the Democratic Party

United for Peace and Justice, a US anti-war coalition, has finally come to realize that it can't just focus on Iraq, compartmentalizing it from the rest of US Middle East strategy: "We must develop new ways to express our outrage that this war continues to cause so much death and destruction both in Iraq and here at home. At the same time, we must be vigilant in preventing a new war on Iran" ("2008: Looking Forward to a Critical Year for Peace and Justice," A Message from the UFPJ National Steering Committee, 10 December 10 2007). The second part of its three-part campaign in 2008, says the coalition's steering committee in the same message, will be to "focus energies on preventing any attacks, including the use of sanctions, on Iran."

So far, so good. Washington's rationale for and strategy of the Iraq War has shifted to containing Iran, and it is crucial for US activists, like those involved in UFPJ, to recognize this fact:

Behind a maze of concrete blast walls rising from a desolate desert landscape that once was the scene of pitched battles between the armies of Iran and Iraq, a new American base is springing to life.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And though the U.S. troops here were deployed as part of the surge of U.S. brigades dispatched to Iraq earlier this year, they will not be withdrawn when the surge brigades are drawn down, something U.S. commanders have said will happen by the middle of next year.

Instead, the intention is to maintain "a continuous presence" in the border area, training Iraqi border guards, looking for smuggled weapons and monitoring the flow of goods and people from Iran, according to Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch of the 3rd Infantry Division, under whose command the base falls.

The new base along the Iranian border illustrates another shift in the U.S. military's Iraq mission. From toppling Saddam Hussein to searching for weapons of mass destruction to defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq, checking Iran's expansive influence within the new Iraq has emerged as a key U.S. goal.

Containing Iran "is now clearly part of our mission," Lynch said in an interview during a tour of the base. (Liz Sly, "In Iraq, U.S. Base Eyes Iran Border: New Effort to Curb Tehran's Influence," Chicago Tribune, 10 December 2007)

The devilish problem, like God, is in the details. The UFPJ steering committee says: "We will use many different tactics, including activities and projects specifically related to the election-year cycle" (emphasis added). Uh-oh. Will political activism be once again taken hostage by electoral politics, support for the Democratic Party in particular?

Update

I just heard at the UFPJ Iran Working Group listserv that the coalition is working with Just Foreign Policy, the National Iranian American Council, and other groups to coordinate a nationwide speaking tour of Stephen Kinzer, the author of All the Shah's Men, in February. There will be a conference call about it on Tuesday, 18 December 2007, 9 PM EST. Very good.

"Pretty Lame"

I just read JoAnn Wypijewski's article in CounterPunch: "Is There a Left Here Left?" (10 December 2007). She raises many questions that I have been thinking about myself, about the state of politics both on the local and national levels. I don't know if many US leftists feel the same need to ask these questions, but I have seen several others, who come from diverse political orientations on the Left, do so, too.

The main problem that unites us is this:

'Why hasn't the Left done better at organizing around these key issues?' The question presupposes there is a coherent force in the country that can be called by that name, "the Left". I don't think there is, in the sense of any potent organized force, let alone mass movement or even mini-movement that is challenging the fundamental terms of the system and is equal to the moment. And this -- the disequilibrium of movement to moment -- I think, is the cause for so much despondency (secret and not-so-secret) among American leftists, who certainly are alive even if some identifiable political and ideological home with a clear project, "The Left", is not.

I don't agree with everything Wypijewski says in her diagnosis (e.g., her estimation of the Latin American situation is more optimistic than mine), but it's the fact that we have the same problem and are asking the same questions that helps me and hopefully will help others who see themselves in the same dead end.

But we are not exactly thinking together, we are only "virtually" thinking together, as Wypijewski says:

A lot of this is not new, obviously, but the disorganization of so much of society feels new (and I'm talking over the past maybe 15 years). Sometimes I think that at a minimum we ought to be encouraging people to join -- anything. The PTA, the Kiwanis Club, the local pathetic chapter of the NAACP, the local tenants group, the freelancers union, the local Democratic club or libertarian club, whatever, just to start remembering how to think together. And even if it prompted people to see what they don't want to be part of, maybe it would encourage them to create something that they do. This sounds pretty lame, I know. But the situation is pretty lame, or so it seems. The whole reason the church has been so effective in politics, I think, is because it's one of the last stands in society where people aren't alienated: they meet every week, share a set of ideas and values, engage in something that is practical and enchanted at the same time. And what does the left have? Virtual communities, virtual organizing, virtual communication. I don't think it's all that helpful. You can get a hundred thousand people to a demo, or to sign a letter or call their Congress people or donate to some candidate or cause (send money for an ad in the NYTimes!), but they're pretty much alone.

So, it seems to me the first step has to involve a reorganization of society, people getting together.

This is the point on which I agree with Wypijewski the most. And I love her for being honest about feeling at a loss for practical solutions to the problem of the absence of a Left discussed in her article: "This sounds pretty lame, I know. But the situation is pretty lame, or so it seems." My sentiments entirely.

Scott Ritter on Iran, Israel, and the Empire

Scott Ritter wrote a book about US foreign policy on Iran: Target Iran: The Truth about the White House's Plans for Regime Change (Nation Books, 2007). While one is tempted to be grateful to anyone who is forcefully opposed to Washington's Iran campaign, Ritter's reasons for opposition are, let's say, unsound. In his article in The Nation, Ritter argues:

I would strongly urge Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, to hold real hearings on Iran. Not the mealy-mouthed Joe Biden-led hearings we witnessed on Iraq in July-August 2002, where he and his colleagues rubber-stamped the President's case for war, but genuine hearings that draw on all the lessons of Congressional failures when it came to Iraq. Summon all the President's men (and women), and grill them on every phrase and word uttered about the Iranian "threat," especially as it has been linked to nuclear weapons. Demand facts to back up the rhetoric.

Summon the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or any other lobby promoting confrontation with Iran, to the forefront, so that the warnings they offer in whispers from a back room can be articulated before the American public. Hold these conjurers of doom accountable for their positions by demanding they back them up with hard fact. See if the US intelligence community concurs with the dire warnings put forward by these pro-war lobbyists, and if it doesn't, ask who, then, is driving US policy toward Iran? Those mandated by public law and subjected to the oversight of Congress? Or others, operating outside any framework representative of the will of the American people?

If a real case, based on facts as they pertain to the genuine national security interests of the United States, can be made for a confrontation with Iran that leads to military conflict, so be it. America should never shy away from defending that which legitimately needs defending. The sacrifice expected of our military forces, while tragic, will be defensible. But if the case for war with Iran is revealed to be as illusory as was the case for war with Iraq, then Congress must take action to stop this conflict from occurring. This is the Democrats' issue now, the one that will make or break them in 2008 and beyond. ("Stop the Iran War Before It Starts," The Nation, 24 January 2007)

The problem of this line of thinking is clear: (A) it lets US imperialism off the hook, holding the Israel lobby¹ chiefly responsible for US Middle East policy, and (B) it helps reinforce illusions about the Democratic Party elite. (A) and (B), needless to say, are two sides of the same political coin. The problem of the article is only magnified in the book.

1 The Israel lobby has a role in US policy making, but what it does is not to make US policy imperialist, but to tar and feather left-wing dissenters, especially Jewish ones, as "anti-Semites" and thereby narrow the range of political discourse to further US imperialism which predates the rise of the lobby, operates everywhere in the world including in places where neither Israel nor oil is at stake, and will outlive the demise of the Jewish state if it comes.

Hands on the People of Iran

There is an organization in the United Kingdom that calls itself "Hands Off the People of Iran," an organization created in sectarian competition with the larger, more established Stop the War Coalition and the UK branch of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran.

HOPOI declares in its founding statement: "We want regime change -- both in Iran and in the imperialist countries."¹ But the means it advocates in its bombastic slogans show that it promotes "regime change" only in Iran.

How do I know that? Because HOPOI, in the same statement, calls for "[s]upport to all working class and progressive struggles in Iran against poverty and repression" and "[s]upport for socialism, democracy and workers' control in Iran," but not in the imperialist countries.

Perhaps the organization ought to change its name to "Hands on the People of Iran." After all, its approach to the domestic politics of Iran is very hands-on.

1 BTW, I thought that communists, like most of HOPOI's main organizational backers, wanted social revolution, not mere "regime change." O Tempora! O Mores!

Islamophobia and Anticommunism

There is no question that Martin Amis is a reactionary, as is made clear, for instance, by his remark on Muslims:

There's a definite urge -- don't you have it? -- to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order'. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation -- further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan. . . Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children. They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs -- well, they've got to stop their children killing people. (qtd. in Ginny Dougary, "The Voice of Experience," Times, 9 September 2006)

The remark has been justly criticized by Terry Eagleton ("Rebuking Obnoxious Views Is Not Just a Personality Kink," Guardian, 10 October 2007) and Ronan Bennett ("Shame on Us," Guardian, 19 November 2007) among others.

Such sharp criticisms have put Amis on the defensive. He now claims:

[I]t's not about race. It's about ideology.

If every inhabitant of a liberal democracy believes in liberal democracy, then it doesn't matter what creed or colour they are. ("No, I Am Not a Racist," Guardian, 1 December 2007)

Amis has a point: at bottom, it's not about race but about ideology. The fundamental question is indeed whether one "believes in liberal democracy" -- i.e., political liberalism and the capitalist mode of production, which together negate democracy -- as an article of faith. Neither Islamists nor Marxists do, though the ideology of the former is not the same as that of the latter.

Islamophobia is similar to many ideologies of social oppression -- e.g., racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia -- but it resembles them less than anticommunism. The rise of Islamophobia, like the rise of Islamism itself, is correlated to the decline of communism. Nowadays, Reds who question political liberalism are in short supply, so the Guardians of the Capitalist Revolution have cast Islamists as the last specter that haunts their global hegemony. The smarter sort of Islamophobes make selective use of not only former Muslims but also liberal ones, just as the smarter sort of anticommunists made selective use of not only former communists but liberal ones as well.

What Amis forgets, however, is that anticommunism often worked hand in hand with racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant xenophobia. Fighters against such social oppressions often found Marxism a useful political weapon, and more communists and communist sympathizers were found among them than among the socially and economically privileged. Anticommunist reactionaries took this kernel of truth and exaggerated it to promote their politics of fear. Today, Islamophobic reactionaries like Amis are doing the same, holding Muslim communities collectively responsible for what Islamists say or do.

The State of Exception

After the defeat of the Constitutional Reform at the 2 December 2007 referendum, Hugo Chávez said that the reform proposal is still alive, though it is defeated for now, and that he won't retract a single comma from it.

Some of the articles in the reform proposal -- such as the shortening of the working day, social security for informal-sector workers, and prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation -- should raise no controversy among leftists, and the Chávez government can implement them during the rest of his term even without putting them to a new referendum.

Others, however, are very much debatable. What is most debatable is not what the corporate media focused upon -- the removal of term limits (the limits which many states do not have though the media tried to pass off their removal as if it were the ticket to presidency for life) -- but an attempt to write exceptions to the Constitution into the Constitution itself.

Section VIII. Constitutional exceptions: Right to information no longer guaranteed during state of emergency, emergencies to last as long as the conditions that caused it.

Art. 337 - Change in states of emergency, so that the right to information is no longer protected in such instances. Also, the right to due process is removed in favor of the right to defense, to no forced disappearance, to personal integrity, to be judged by one's natural judges, and not to be condemned to over 30 years imprisonment.

Art. 338 - States of alert, emergency, and of interior or exterior commotion are no longer limited to a maximum of 180 days, but are to last as long as conditions persist that motivated the state of exception.

Art. 339 - The Supreme Court's approval for states of exception is no longer necessary, only the approval of the National Assembly. (Gregory Wilpert, "Venezuela's Constitutional Reform: An Article-by-Article Summary," Venezuelanalysis, 23 November 2007)

Giorgio Agamben says: "The state of exception establishes a hidden but fundamental relationship between law and the absence of law" ("Interview with Giorgio Agamben -- Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life," German Law Journal 5.5, 1 May 2004). That is everywhere the case in modern states. What the Constitutional Reform proposal just voted down in Venezuela did, however, was to make that "hidden but fundamental relationship between law and the absence of law" explicit. (What do leftists think of that? Their post-referendum analyses have yet to address this question.) No wonder that the corporate media maintained relative silence on the matter, for states of the global North, led by the United States, are themselves in the process of moving "from a state of emergency into a permanent state of exception" (Jean-Claude Paye, "A Permanent State of Emergency," Monthly Review 58.6, November 2006).

Venezuela's Constitutional Reform: Why Did It Fail?

Venezuelans voted No to the Constitutional Reform, 50.7% to 49.3%. The turnout was 56%. That is a much lower level of participation than in the presidential elections of 2006, which saw the turnout of 75%. Simon Romero reports:

Turnout in some poor districts was unexpectedly low, indicating that even the president’s backers were willing to follow him only so far. Some Chávez supporters expressed concern that if they voted against the measures they might be retaliated against. Turnout of registered voters was just 56 percent.

There was no line in front of the voting center at the Cecilio Acosta school in Petare on Sunday morning, as a few dozen people who had already voted milled about the street. Some volunteers working the voting machines sat idle, waiting for more voters to arrive. Other voting centers in Petare had lines outside, but they were less than half a block long.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Confusion persisted Sunday over the amendments, with a major complaint among the president’s supporters and critics that they had too little time to study the proposals. ("Opposition Cheers Defeat of Chávez Plan in Venezuela," New York Times, 4 December 2006)

I suspect that Romero is for once correct: the reform proposal, a sprawling package that mixes means with ends, i.e., measures to dramatically augment the executive power with policies to achieve egalitarian goals (from social security for informal-sector workers to prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation), was neither well understood nor thoroughly debated, let alone wholly embraced, by even all of Chavistas.

Update

John Riddell and Suzanne Weiss's report confirms the lack of education about the contents of the Constitutional Reform:

We saw little evidence of public discussion. Efforts were being made to circulate the text of the reforms, which filled several dozen pages of legalistic prose. But at first, we saw these distributions only close by the National Assembly. Not until the last few days did we see "red points" -- with tables, banners, and music -- carrying out the distributions across the city. In the last week, a "dual-column" version was also distributed. We spent time pouring over it, trying to grasp the changes, but it was slow going. Only in the final few days before the vote did we see flyers that attempted to summarize the changes. ("After Referendum Defeat, Chávez Pledges to Continue the Struggle: A Report from Caracas," MRZine, 9 December 2007)

¡Ahora Sí!

Here are two songs in support of YES to Venezuela's constitutional reform, whose fate is to be determined by the referendum of 2 December 2007.

¡Ahora Sí!
by El Jekke y su Banda



Click here to download "¡Ahora Sí!" in MP3.

Ahora Vamos por el Sí
by Lloviznando Cantos







Click here to download "Ahora Vamos por el Sí" in MP3.

29 November: From the Partition to Annapolis

In 1947, the UN, led by the USA and the USSR, voted to partition Palestine.

In the words of the New York Times the next day:

The decision was primarily a result of the fact that the delegations of the United States and the Soviet Union, which were at loggerheads on every other important issue before the Assembly, stood together on partition. Andrei A. Gromyko and Herschel V. Johnson both urged the Assembly yesterday not to agree to further delay but to vote for partition at once. (Thomas J. Hamilton, "Assembly Votes Palestine Partition")

The Soviet role in the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel was the biggest blow against socialism in the Middle East, as Jordanian Marxist Hisham Bustani argues in "Critique of the Arab Left: On Palestine and Arab Unity" (MRZine, 19 November 2007), and Arab socialists have never quite recovered from it.

The Arab power elites walked out in 1947. In 2007, however, they walked right into Annapolis. If 1947 marked the abortion of the Arab Left, 2007 may very well be the final nail in the coffin of secular Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism.

CIA in Venezuela: Operación Tenaza

Aporrea.org published a Spanish translation of a confidential memo that Michael Middleton Steere of the US Embassy wrote for the CIA, which reveals a plan to sabotage the 2 December 2007 referendum on the constitutional reform in Venezuela, codenamed "Operación Tenaza" [Operation Pincers]: "Operación Tenaza: Informe confidencial de la CIA devela plan de saboteo al referéndum del 2 de diciembre" (27 November 2007). See James Petras's analysis of the memo: "CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces" (CounterPunch, 28 November 2007). Eva Golinger says she will see to it that "the original document in English will be available in the public sphere soon for viewing and authenticating purposes" ("Operation 'Pliers,'" Postcards from the Revolution, 28 November 2007). Stay tuned.

Critical Montages in Iran

BTW, have I mentioned that, according to Alexa, 23.1% of the Critical Montages readers (as of 28 November 2007) come from Iran?

A surprising proportion comes from (what is left of) Yugoslavia.

MR in Iran

According to Alexa, as of 27 November 2007, 21.7% of online readers of Monthly Review and MRZine are from Iran:

Iranians made up 7.8% of the MR/MRZine readers just two months ago. Even back then, no other Western leftist publication had such a readership demographic. Now, our readership profile is even more exceptional than before. Leftists who want to speak to Iranians should consider publishing in MR/MRZine.

The New Monastics

This poem by Dennis Brutus was posted to Debate, a discussion list of the independent left in Southern Africa, today.

The New Monastics
by Dennis Brutus

Tall black-shadowed cypresses
slender beside arcaded cloisters:
thus were monastic enterprises:
now with our new doctrines
secular-consumerist we bend
with similar devoutness in service
to our modern pantheon --
Bretton Woods, its cohort deities
-- World Bank, IMF, WTO --
diligently we recite
"We have loved, o lord, the beauty of your house
and the place where your glory dwells"
"Amen" we chorus in unison
as ordered by our Heads of State
obediently we traipse to our slaughterhouse
directed by our Judas-goats
Mbeki's herds tricked out in shabby rags
discarded by imperialist gauleiters
who devised our Neepad subjugation

ActionAid Economic Justice course,
Kenyan School of Monetary Studies
Nairobi, November 26, 2007

Annapolis: Wooing Syria to Isolate Iran

What's the main purpose of the Annapolis talks? I'm afraid it is to woo Syria to isolate Iran, as Cam Simpson and Jay Solomon suggested in the Wall Street Journal:

The stated goal of Mr. Bush's first serious stab at Middle East peacemaking is to revive negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to end the region's most enduring conflict. But administration officials hope progress in talks scheduled to begin Tuesday in Annapolis, Md., also curries favor with skeptical Sunni Arab leaders, whom the U.S. needs to check Iran's growing regional clout.

Underscoring that effort, the Bush administration is even courting a long-time pariah, Syria. Syria's bitter enemy, Israel, is going even further, indicating that its arms are open wide to Damascus. Talks with Syria could go some way in weakening Tehran's strongest alliance in the region.

"This is one of those moments in history where the Syrians have been given an opportunity to jump," a senior Israeli official said this past week. "If they do jump, they will be embraced."

On Sunday, Syrian officials reported that the country will be represented at the conference by Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad because the issue of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights has been added to the agenda, according to The Associated Press. (At Mideast Talks, U.S. and Israel Seek to Isolate Iran by Wooing Syria, 24 November 2007, p. A1)

Naturally, the Turks are playing both sides of the game, hosting the Istanbul Al-Quds International Forum (at which four Iranian delegates were guests) and mediating Israel and Syria: "Mr. Olmert has used Turkish intermediaries to explore options with the Syrians, according to Israeli officials" (Simpson and Solomon, 24 November 2007).

Washington surely wants at least a diplomatic coup equivalent to what Tehran delivered through the Caspian Summit: Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, "Caspian Summit a Triumph for Iran," Asia Times, 18 October 2007. Pulling Syria away from Iran, even if the talks produce no result regarding Israel/Palestine, would constitute such a coup. The question is whether Washington and Tel Aviv are prepared to make any concessions toward Syria regarding Lebanon.

Emad Hajjaj on Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq

Compared to Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq, or much of the rest of the Middle East for that matter, Iran is at least a coherent nation, fractious as the Iranian people are. . . .

by Emad Hajjaj

The US client states and the media -- sometimes even decent ones like the Al-Ahram Weekly -- in the Arab Middle East have been prompting the Arab populaces to blame the problem illustrated by Emad Hajjaj's cartoon above on Iran rather than the US-led multinational empire, seeking to have them mistake the secondary contradiction (contradictory short-term interests of the power elites of the states in the Middle East) for the primary one (the peoples of the Middle East vs. the ruling classes of the US-led multinational empire). Stacking these contradictions in the correct order is the foremost task of anti-imperialists in the Middle East. The Istanbul Al-Quds International Forum was helpful, but the nature of the forum didn't allow discussion of any complex and difficult problem like this. The Cairo International Conference and Liberation Forum on 27-30 March 2008 will be a good place to begin to tackle it.

76 Percent

The "Harper's Index" of December 2007 (Harper's Magazine, p. 17) reports, citing a Diageo-Hotline poll:

Percentage of Democrats who think that Hillary Clinton is proposing to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq within a year: 76

That means that we have failed to educate even Americans who are opposed to the Iraq War, let alone the rest of the nation.

When Sex Is Not Subversive. . . .

One of the enduring myths of modernity is that the social order depends upon repression of sex and therefore sex is a subversive act. Both states that censor sex and dissidents who defy them share this myth. The myth has inspired countless artists into sexual dissidence.

Oshima Nagisa's In the Realm of the Senses (1976), set in 1936, is perhaps the best of the genre that depicts sex as a symbolic statement against the repressive state. The pivotal scene of the film has its protagonist Kichi walk in the opposite direction to a military parade, and the end of the film has him willingly submit to his lover Sada's wish to strangle him as she has sex with him. After his death, Sada castrates Kichi, completing the reversal of the power relation in which he was initially her master. The state obliged the artist, and In the Realm of the Senses, upon its release, was censored in Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries where either the film was banned altogether or controversial scenes were cut or altered.

Araki Nobuyoshi, a photographer best known for bondage photos, takes a different tack than Oshima. In his photos, female bodies meticulously conjugated according to the exacting grammar of fetishism are part of everyday life, often surrounded by commonplace objects, a zabuton on tatami, a tea cup and saucer, things like them, shot in the same tender spirit with which he captures shitamachi [old downtown Tokyo], very unlike those of Hans Bellmer or Robert Mapplethorpe. Were Araki a woman, his work would be more fascinating than it is. Even limited by his social identity, though, his work may prove more enduring than those of artists who have played the expected role of antagonist in the aforementioned sexual myth of modernity. On the occasion of the release of the uncut version of In the Realm of the Senses, Freda Freiberg wrote:

In the mid '70s, when this film was produced, it created a storm of controversy, and encountered censorship problems in several countries, not just Japan. Its explicit treatment of sexual intercourse and its bloody castration scene outraged and disturbed viewers brought up on Hays Code morality. It was an international sensation, provoking packed houses and lively debate at the 1976 Melbourne Film Festival.

Now, 25 years later, its re-release in the original uncut version has passed almost unnoticed by viewers in Melbourne, despite the plaudits of film critics. It has become a classic, but not a cult classic apparently. That is the unkindest cut of all. The public's lack of interest serves to remind us of all those clichés about yesterday's sensation and the ephemerality of fame. ("The Unkindest Cut of All?" Senses of Cinema 12, February-March 2001)

Freiberg laments the passing of the time of sexual dissidence, but that is perhaps a welcome sign that sex has become unremarkable -- just a part of everyday life, as Araki has always insisted.

Somalia: "We Want the Islamists Back"

The US-led multinational empire's Plan A is to establish a state friendly to Washington's vision of capitalism. But what is its Plan B when no objective conditions exist for Plan A or Washington has a geopolitical desire that trumps its usual economic goal?

Somalia illustrates Plan B. After a long civil war and foreign interventions, the Islamic Courts Union managed to establish a government. Washington immediately enlisted Ethiopia and overthrew it in a proxy war. Chaos has returned to Somalia, and, combined with natural disasters, the result is a humanitarian nightmare far worse than Darfur: the malnutrition rate in the worst areas of Somalia is now 19%, exceeding 13% in Darfur, according to Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times ("As Somali Crisis Swells, Experts See a Void in Aid," 20 November 2007). In short, Plan B is this: if you can't have what you want, at the very least make sure that no one else can have it either.¹

Gettleman reports in the same article that even United Nations officials admit that the short-lived Islamist government was superior to the Hobbesian state of anarchy imposed on Somalia by Washington:

Pirates lurking off the coast of Somalia have attacked more than 20 ships this year, including two carrying United Nations food. The militias that rule the streets -- typically teenage gunmen in wraparound sunglasses and flip-flops -- have jacked up roadblock taxes to $400 per truck. The transitional government last month jailed a senior official of the United Nations food program in Somalia, accusing him of helping terrorists, though he was eventually released.

United Nations officials now concede that the country was in better shape during the brief reign of Somalia's Islamist movement last year. "It was more peaceful, and much easier for us to work," Mr. [Eric] Laroche [the head of United Nations humanitarian operations in Somalia] said. "The Islamists didn't cause us any problems."

Mr. [Ahmedou] Ould-Abdallah [the top United Nations official for Somalia] called those six months, which were essentially the only epoch of peace most Somalis have tasted for years, Somalia's "golden era."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"We want the Islamists back," said Mohammed Ahmed, a shriveled 80-year-old retired taxi driver.

Mr. Mohammed said he was not especially religious. "But," he said, "at least we had food." ("As Somali Crisis Swells, Experts See a Void in Aid," 20 November 2007)

Ideologues make the empire out to be a progressive force for modernity and pass off all its adversaries as a reactionary force against it. The reality is the opposite. The effect of imperialism delays the development of modernity at best and at worst destroys the minimum necessary condition for its establishment: a national government.

1 While the logic of an individual capitalist may be quarterly cost-benefit calculations, the logic of the capitalist mode of production, whose guardian is the empire, isn't. As Joseph Conrad suggests in Nostromo, the logic of imperialism is a dream logic rather than the reality principle: "Those Englishmen live on illusions which somehow or other help them to get a firm hold of the substance" (Part 2 "The Isabels," Chapter 7). What is a firm hold at one point, however, may later become a quicksand, for imperialists don't have all the cards necessary to win once and for all. When threatened with defeat, imperialists prefer an assertion of power to profit. In Nostromo, if the alternative is allowing the populist rebels to take over the silver mine that he inherited from his father, Charles Gould would rather blow up the mine and half the country with it:

"I have enough dynamite stored up at the mountain to send it down crashing into the valley" -- his [Charles's] voice rose a little -- "to send half Sulaco into the air if I liked." . . . "Why, yes," Charles pronounced, slowly. "The Gould Concession has struck such deep roots in this country, in this province, in that gorge of the mountains, that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to dislodge it from there. It's my choice. It's my last card to play." (Nostromo, Part 2 "The Isabels," Chapter 5)