Bolivia: The Crime of Indigenous Insubordination

Bolivia:
The Crime of Indigenous Insubordination
by Jubenal Quispe

Bolivia today lives under the most cruel and appalling xenophobic dictatorship of masters whose demented pride has been wounded. If you haven't already seen it, watch this video.

It happened on the 24th of May, in Sucre, the capital of Bolivia and crucible of the failed attempt at Bolivian mestizaje.

Those who believed that ignorant racism was a bitter memory in Bolivia were wrong. White Bolivia, created and ruled by masters, was and is essentially anti-Indian. In 1825, the masters founded the Republic of Bolivia in the House of Liberty in the city of Sucre, excluding and subordinating indigenous peoples. Almost two centuries later, last week in front of the same mythical House, before TV cameras, they flogged insubordinate indigenous brothers. It was a macabre act that symbolizes the ethnophagic essence of official white Bolivia.

Given this situation, several questions arise. Where is the state, the monopoly of legitimate force? Will it be completely weakened in Bolivia? And if that's the case, what is the government of Compañero Evo Morales to do if there is no longer a state to manage? Or could it be that xenophobic violence of masters today is tolerated by the state so that its opponents would defeat themselves? These are questions that the government must answer. But the urgent question is: Why does white Bolivia hate Indians so much? There are many answers to this question.

They hate us because we are the mirror that reflects their failure and their historic defeat. They had nearly two centuries since the founding of Bolivia to build a "modern" and mestizo Bolivian nation, according to their interests and aspirations, but they failed morally and intellectually. Today, Bolivia is not "modern," nor is it mestizo. In two centuries of governing, they created only a kleptomaniac bureaucracy that squandered the country.

They copied educational reforms and compulsory military services and used the state to promote public policy to destroy our cultures, but they failed even in this. Now, as never before, Bolivian diversity bewilders them even in their bedrooms. Our presence pains them for it reminds them of their almost innate sterility, their impotence to achieve their aspirations.

They suffer from chronic anomie (lack of identity) in the face of multiple and dynamic indigenous identities that are affirming themselves everywhere. They suffer from profound existential insecurity because they can no longer affirm themselves by negating and annihilating the different, the Other. This pathological insecurity unleashes xenophobic behaviors in them. But with these attitudes the only thing they gain is national and international repudiation. Thus they are caught in the maelstrom of solitude.

They flog our brothers in public squares, as they flogged our fathers and grandfathers to death, because our presence reminds them of their schizophrenic reality. They dream of being Western, but indigenous genes run in their blood. They long to practice liberal morality, but their weak will pushes them to the vices of Indians whom they hate so much. They suffer from profound cultural schizophrenia: always hating what they are and dreaming about what they are not. They are unhappy wretches who don't even know who they are, much less have a clear vision of Bolivia as a country, nor have they ever had one. It pains them to go down in the history of Bolivia as vile moral and intellectual failures. It pains them that from now on criminals will no longer pass for national heroes in history.

It is demonstrated that the indigenous people are what they could not be: the bastion of the Bolivian identity in the making. We have defended and recovered the natural resources and dignity of the people against multinational corporations, monsters to whom the masters of white Bolivia prostituted themselves. Our achievements for Bolivia pain them because they demonstrate their fateful failure. So they humiliated our brothers in front of their House of Liberty.

The flogging that our fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters endure pains our soul, but it's a productive pain because it keeps and will keep alive our fruitful and subversive historical memory. Together with our unburied dead who roam the fertile Bolivian lands demanding justice, we will fight till we restore dignity to the life without dignity to which they condemned us. We were not born only to die trying, nor have we risen only to surrender at dawn.

---

Jubenal Quispe is a lawyer, theologian, and writer in Spanish and Quechua. He is a university lecturer and researcher at the Maryknoll Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The original article in Spanish was published in Bolpress on 30 May 2008. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.

Obama: "We're the Saudi Arabia of Coal"

Barack Obama says, "We're the Saudi Arabia of coal," and Hillary Rodham Clinton agrees: "I support developing the country's coal resources in a responsible way that lessens our dependence on foreign oil" (Dan Testa, "Exclusive: Obama, Clinton Make Closing Arguments as Montana Primary Looms," Flathead Beacon, 29 May 2008).

I bet that underinvestment in oil, combined with a foolish ideology that says we must lesson "our dependence on foreign oil," will make climate change worse, pace environmentalists who are hoping that the current oil supply crunch will give them leverage necessary to push for actions to diminish emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Louise Michel

28 May 1871 was the last day of the "semaine sanglante," which put an end to the Paris Commune. Tens of thousands of Communards were summarily executed or imprisoned, and about 4,000 were deported to New Caledonia, a penal colony of France.

In New Caledonia, the exiled Communards encountered the Kanaks, the indigenous people of the islands, who were also oppressed by the same ruling class that had crushed the Commune. When the Kanaks rose up in rebellion in 1878, however, most of the Commundards "rallied to the French state," with a few exceptions such as Louise Michel, who wrote: "The Kanaks were seeking the same liberty we had sought in the Commune."

Can the rebels of the North side with the rebels of the South? The history of the metropolitan Left in imperialism gives an ambiguous answer to this question.

Sadr Calls for Weekly Protests against US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement

This just in: "Militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called Tuesday for followers to hold weekly protests against a U.S.-Iraqi security deal under negotiation that could lead to a long-term American troop presence" (Qassim Abdul-Zahra, "Militant Cleric Urges Protests on US-Iraq Deal," Associated Press, 27 May 2008). It should be clear to the Iranians which Iraqi Shi'i faction is their best friend.

Petrobras

If you spend it (money), you'll find it (oil), pace peak oil theorists. Take Petrobras, "the third biggest company in the Americas by market value, surpassing American outfit Microsoft, and the world’s sixth biggest based on the same criterion":

. . . Petrobras is ramping up its deep-water drilling capacity at a furious pace. This week, the company, which has already leased about 80% of the world fleet of vessels capable of drilling in deep water, announced plans to lease 40 more drilling vessels and semi-submersible oil platforms starting in 2017. Petrobras also has announced that it will hire 14,000 more workers and set up a new management division for drilling through salt. (John Lyons and David Luhnow, "New Find Fuels Speculation Brazil Will Be a Power in Oil," Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2008, B1)

If maximizing oil investment and future oil output were the goal, a pro-capitalist¹ state enterprise of a nation whose economy is not dependent on oil export, like Petrobras (32% state-owned), combining the advantages of state and capital, would likely find it easier to achieve it than both oil majors (which would rather spend profits on stock buybacks than exploration and development) and the national oil companies of such populist oil states as Iran and Venezuela (which tend to massively subsidize domestic energy consumption and often employ more workers than strict business calculations would allow).

If the US power elite were motivated by the fear of oil demand outstripping oil supply, one of the smart capitalist things to do would be to create their own national oil company on the model of Petrobras, rather than engaging in the imperialism of fools that is their Middle East policy.

1 Excited by a spate of big oil finds, Brazil, too, may be soon following the path of resource nationalism, however: Bernd Radowitz, "Oil Finds Reportedly Prompt Brazil to Consider Changing Energy-sector Rules," MarketWatch, 18 April 2008.

Russia Cuts Taxes for Oil Companies

The beginning of the end of resource nationalism, defeated by capital's refusal to invest and the resulting production decline?

• "Russian Govt Clears First Step in Oil Tax Cuts," Reuters, 26 May 2008


• "Russian Government Approves Tax Cuts for Oil Firms from 2009," RIA Novosti, 26 May 2008


• "Russian Oil Companies to Get Tax Holidays," Russia Today, 26 May 2008


• Chris Weafer, "Oil Taxes: Mind the Gap -- $20 Bln Tax Cut But in Two Stages," Prime-Tass, 26 May 2008

But where is the guarantee that the money saved through tax cuts will actually go to investment into oil production?

Ecuador's Struggle over Oil

All populist leaders of oil states in the South face this dilemma: how to increase investment in oil and acquire the latest production technology while fighting with private oil companies over control of oil and share of oil profit.

Ecuador is a case in point: Alonso Soto, "Ecuador Offers Oil Firms Tax Cut to Keep Output Up," Reuters, 16 May 2008; "Ecuador Offers to Buy Out Oil Companies," Associated Press, 17 May 2008; "Ecuador's State Oil Company President Resigns," Associated Press, 20 May 2008; Alexandra Valencia, Saul Hudson, and Matthew Lewis, "Ecuador Names Admiral to Head State Oil Company," Reuters 22 May 2008; "OPEC to Support Ecuador Oil Industry," 26 May 2008.

"Peak oil" theory distracts us from this political problem by getting us to think that any decline in production is a matter of natural limits.

US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement

The fate of the proposed US-Iraq status of forces agreement will be a test of the degree of influence of hard-liners on Iran's foreign policy and on Shia factions in Iraq:

• Strong Opposition To Proposed US-Iraq Deal," Iran Daily, 24 May 2008 (citing Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Sistani and Ali Akbar Velayati, an advisor to the leader of the Islamic Revolution on international affairs).


• Juan Cole, "Sistani Forbids Feeding Americans; Warns against Security Agreement; Hundreds of Sadrists Arrested," Informed Comment, 25 May 2008.


• Mark Kukis, "The Return of Iraq's Ayatollah," Time, 25 May 2008.


• Juan Cole, "Will Sistani Declare Jihad on US?" Informed Comment, 23 May 2008.


• "Iran Warns against US-Iraq Deal," Alalam News, 24 May 2008 (citing Velayati).


• "Iran Cleric Blasts US-Iraqi Military Agreement," AFP, 23 May 2008 (citing Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts).


• Hussein Shariatmadari, "Iraq on the Edge," Kayhan International, 11 May 2008.


• Ali Akbar Dareini, Iran Hard-liners Come Out against Iraqi-US Deal," Associated Press, 12 May 2008 (citing Jomhuri-e-Eslami and Hezbollah).

Update

This just in: "Militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called Tuesday for followers to hold weekly protests against a U.S.-Iraqi security deal under negotiation that could lead to a long-term American troop presence" (Qassim Abdul-Zahra, "Militant Cleric Urges Protests on US-Iraq Deal," Associated Press, 27 May 2008). It should be clear to the Iranians which Iraqi Shia faction is their best friend.

Criminalizing Immigrants, Administratively

Criminalization of unauthorized immigration is one of the few right-wing legislative initiatives in the United States that massive demonstrations, major wildcat strikes, and lobbying, by capitalists as well as trade unions, managed to block in 2006, but the White House is achieving administratively what the Right couldn't get legislatively:

In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.

The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported. (Julia Preston, "270 Illegal Immigrants Sent to Prison in Federal Push," New York Times, 24 May 2008)

The 2006 demos came at the height of the housing bubble in the US, whose construction boom had significantly boosted undocumented immigrants' economic bargaining power and bolstered their political confidence. Now, after the burst of the bubble, it would be very difficult to mount the same level of action for immigrant rights: Eduardo Porter, "Housing Slump Takes a Toll on Illegal Immigrants" (New York Times, 17 April 2007).

For the ruling class, immigrant workers are the most disposable part of the reserve army of labor, who are also useful as scapegoats on whom they can blame economic troubles. The spontaneous consciousness of workers is more often shaped by experience of competition for private-sector jobs and public-sector programs than solidarity, especially in the context where the frequency of industrial actions has so declined that most workers have never had a chance to experience working together to win. That makes it very difficult -- but also urgent -- to create a political culture that can withstand the divide and conquer strategy of the Right.

Oil

Higher oil prices appear to be driving US politicians, especially Democrats, crazy, making them do foolish things like passing a bill to sue OPEC (324 to 84 in the House): "House Passes Bill to Sue OPEC over Oil Prices" (Tom Doggett, Reuters, 20 May 2008). But, you know what, invading Iraq or suing OPEC doesn't bring more oil fields online or bring down oil prices -- only investment on the supply side and conservation on the demand side can (or else higher oil prices will help bring about far-reaching recessions and bring down demand and prices . . . painfully and temporarily).

Strangely, however, not only current higher oil prices but even an increasing fear of a failure to produce enough oil in time to meet the growing world demand for it (due to rising energy consumption in the South) doesn't appear to motivate them to do rational things at all, such as lifting sanctions on major oil producer nations, like my dear Islamic Republic of Iran (which is forced to rely more and more upon itself: Nasser Karimi, Iran Looks to Tap Key Oil Field with Homegrown Crews," Associated Press, 11 May 2008).

The capitalist relations of production and consumption -- especially an insatiable greed for geopolitical power to which they give rise in the minds of the US power elite whose military force exists to defend them -- are clearly serving as fetters on the ability of humanity to develop a more intelligent mode of production and consumption of energy, but this integument is not automatically burst asunder, nor are there forces that are seeking to do so.

Khorramshahr

In memory of the liberation of Khorramshahr (the third of Khordad of 1361, 23 May 1982) during the Iran-Iraq War, listen to a song dedicated to Mohammad Jahan Ara and other martyrs of Iran.

In defense of Iran, women, too, made their sacrifices, though, as in any military aspect of national history, they are more often included in the iconography of the nation as wives, mothers, and daughters of fallen heroes than in their own right: "و زنانی که پابه پای مردان ایستادند."

In Lebanon, the Spectre of Peace

In Lebanon, the Spectre of Peace
by Alain Campiotti

Hezbollah is the big winner in the accord on Lebanon signed in Doha, Qatar. But everyone -- including Washington -- is welcoming this asymmetrical compromise. Why? Hard bargaining is underway. . . .

In the Middle East, neither the worst nor the best is ever certain. But what happened in Doha, the capital of Qatar, on Wednesday, at 3 o'clock in the morning, is a historic event. The accord putting an end -- for now -- to the political crisis that tore Lebanon for the past eighteen months (and many more in fact) contains a tough lesson for the West: its weakened friends in Beirut had to bend themselves to the force of Hezbollah and its allies Amal, another Shi'i party, and the Christians led by Michel Aoun. The Party of God will enter the government without laying down its arms, as a minority with veto power.

A peculiar defeat, however: it is welcomed everywhere, except in Israel, which exhausted itself in a war against Hezbollah less than two years ago. Iran under Imam Khamenei, whose politico-religious tutelage the leadership of the Lebanese Islamist party accepts, and its ally Syria welcomed the Doha accord. But France has also applauded, and US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch has endorsed "this necessary and positive step." At the same time, George Bush has continued (last week in Jerusalem again) to denounce Hezbollah as a "terrorist organization"! But the stubborn Texan is on the way out.

If the rivals in Beirut have accepted a compromise whose terms were dictated by the opposition months ago, it's because their guardians (Tehran and Damascus on one hand and Washington, and Paris in its shadow, on the other hand) have given their green light. Why this sort of unanimity?

Rami Khouri, a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut and one of the best analysts in the region, advances this hypothesis: this extraordinary development perhaps means the emergence of "the first unspoken US-Iranian condominium in the Arab world."

After the "Cedar Revolution" of 2005, the United States and its friends wanted, through the United Nations, to disarm Hezbollah. An impossible task, save surrender. And ten days ago, the Islamist party demonstrated that it could, by force, impose its will on the government that intended to deprive it of its independent telephone network.

But the Shi'i militants used their weapons. There have been roughly 80 deaths. The inter-communal tensions instantly heightened to a dangerous level. The leaders of Hezbollah are no fools. They know they cannot impose their control on Lebanon against more than a half of its population. They have therefore accepted an accord, which is very favorable, with the opponents who are in a state of weakness. A two-sided government will be established, with each side supported by the leading powers of the region: America and the Gulf states on one side, Iran and Syria on the other.

In the immediate future, the Doha arrangement will allow the election, on Sunday without doubt, of General Michel Suleiman, head of the army, who remained neutral in the recent incidents to the Presidency of the Republic. He is a Maronite Christian, he was appointed to his post when the Syrians dominated Lebanon, he gets on quite well with everyone. The general was the compromise candidate on whom all parties agreed at the end of last year. But the opposition, dominated by Hezbollah, put down a condition: before the vote of the assembly, the Party of God wanted assurances that it would control one third of ministerial portfolios, which would allow it to veto the decisions of the government that displeased it. The party laid down this demand after withdrawing its ministers in November 2006: it wanted then -- like Syria -- to oppose the formation of an international tribunal to try the assassins of former Sunni Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. And it wanted to protect its weapons.

Given the balance of power in Beirut, Arab mediators, led by Qatar, accepted Hezbollah's conditions. The current majority will have sixteen ministers, the opposition will get eleven, and the new president will appoint three. The Party of God obtains the veto power it wanted. It also demanded, in view of the elections next year, a new electoral law in an attempt to expand its representation. Fierce discussions lasted until early morning yesterday: Saad Hariri, pallid son of the assassinated head of state, wanted to save a maximum of 19 seats in the parliament in Beirut, all of which he controls today.

Is it a coincidence that the Qatar arrangement fell on the same day when Ehud Olmert announced that "indirect" negotiations with Syria (but two delegations are in Ankara) started through the good offices of Turkey? This new approach has been strongly encouraged by the United States. At the same time, serious negotiations continue in Cairo to try to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, and discreet contacts with Hamas are multiplying.

Naturally, everything can turn upside down again in a clash of arms. But hard bargaining, crisscross, is underway. And in the United States, Barack Obama (who is not the candidate of Hamas!) said, without spelling it out, while thinking hard, that all diplomatic avenues must be followed to take the edge off the game in the Middle East . . . and to exit Iraq.

---

The original article in French was published in Le Temps on 22 May 2008. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.

Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam was born in Nishapur, on 18 May 1048.

ای صاحب فتوی ز تو پر کارتریم
با این همه مستی ز تو هُشیار تریم
تو خون کسان خوری و ما خون رزان
انصاف بـده کـدام خونخوار تریم؟

O City Mufti, you go more astray
Than I do, though to wine I do give way;
I drink the blood of grapes, you that of men:
Which of us is the more bloodthirsty, pray?
          -- Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
          Trans. Edward Henry Whinfield, 1883

Answers to many of the questions in the Islamic tradition today will be found in the Islamic tradition itself if Muslims seek them there.

Picture Phones and Honor Killings

The Washington Consensus + the Project for the New American Century --> one state after another falls in the South --> more freedom for the worst men to combine the worst of feudalism and the worst of capitalism against women in a Hobbesian state of anarchy --> more grisly grist for humanitarian imperialism. Neoliberal capitalism sets this sequence of horror in an endless loop.

Here's an example reported by Patrick Cockburn in The Independent:

The United Nations estimates that at least 255 women died in honour-related killings in Kurdistan, home to one fifth of Iraqis, in the first six months of 2007 alone.

The murder of women who are deemed to have disobeyed traditional codes of morality is even more common in the rest of Iraq where government authority has broken down since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A surprising reason explaining the massive increase in the number of honour killings is the availability of cheap mobile phones able to take pictures. Men photograph themselves making love to their girlfriends and pass the pictures to their friends. This often turns out to be a lethal act of bravado in a society where premarital or extra-marital sex justifies killing.

The first known case of sex recorded on a mobile leading to murder was in 2004. Film of a boy making love with a 17-year-old girl circulated in the Kurdish capital, Arbil. Two days later she was killed by her family and a week later he was murdered by his.

Since then there has been a sharp increase in the number of women suffering violence -- it is almost always the women rather than the men who suffer retribution -- as a result of some aspect of their love life being pictured on mobile phones.

In 2007, at least 350 women, double the figure for the previous year, suffered violence as a result of mobile phone "evidence", according to Amanj Khalil of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, citing figures compiled by women's organisations and the police directorate in Sulaymaniyah. ("How Picture Phones Have Fuelled Frenzy of Honour Killing in Iraq," 17 May 2008)

Some men, freed from patriarchal¹ family obligations, reduce women to always available sexual objects through whose free exchange, now made more efficient by the latest technology, they bond. In response, other men seek to re-impose patriarchal control of sex, but mainly on women, unlike under the old patriarchy which regulated not just women's but also men's sexual behavior.

This is no clash of civilizations propagandized by Samuel P. Huntington. It is, in truth, a clash of civilization and its other, and it is the empire that is the other of civilization, the destroyer of modernity.

What is to be done on the front line of the clash between civilization and its other? Democratic centralism is the tried and true means to defend modernity on that front line, for it takes discipline to defeat the enemy outside and to check the worst inside. Whether the democratic centralists on the front line call themselves Muslims or Maoists is immaterial.


1 Many use the terms "sexism" and "patriarchy" interchangeably. Against this imprecise usage, I'd propose the following definitions:

Patriarchy subordinates not only women but also younger men to the patriarch of an extended family, in a society where the relation of hierarchical dependency and obligation is the norm.

Sexism, in contrast to patriarchy, justifies subordination of women to men -- often rationalizing it as biologically or culturally grounded exception to the rule of independent individuals with equal rights -- but not younger men to older men, and it is found in a society where kinship has contracted greatly.

Clarified thus, these terms should help us grasp the North-South sexual gap. In the global South, patriarchy tends to predominate; in the global North, sexism tends to prevail.

Politics of Disasters

A cyclone devastates Burma's Irrawaddy Delta, and an earthquake strikes China's Sichuan Province, and the empire smells blood, itching to send "aid at the point of a gun," urging the United Nations to invoke the "responsibility to protect": "France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has spoken of the possibility of an armed humanitarian intervention, and there is an increasing degree of chatter about the possibility of an American-led invasion of the Irrawaddy River Delta."¹ Why such an unseemly display of arms? Because a natural disaster can turn into a legitimation crisis, giving foreign powers a shot at regime change.

[N]othing terrifies a repressive regime quite like a natural disaster. Authoritarian states rule by fear and by projecting an aura of total control. When they suddenly seem short-staffed, absent or disorganized, their subjects can become dangerously emboldened. It's something to keep in mind as two of the most repressive regimes on the planet -- China and Burma -- struggle to respond to devastating disasters: the Sichuan earthquake and Cyclone Nargis. In both cases, the disasters have exposed grave political weaknesses within the regimes -- and both crises have the potential to ignite levels of public rage that would be difficult to control.²

A regime's failure to respond promptly and effectively to suffering caused by a natural disaster, the failure that the opposition can exploit, can indeed become a factor in its downfall. Such was the case with the Shah's regime and the earthquake of 1978 that wiped out Tabas and damaged forty other villages in Iran.

Michel Foucault reported in Corriere della sera on 28 September 1978:

Who will rebuild Tabas today? Who will rebuild Iran after the earthquake of Friday, September 8 [Black Friday, when the army massacred hundreds of protesters in Djaleh Square of Tehran], right under the treads of the tanks? The fragile political edifice has not yet fallen to the ground, but it is irreparably cracked from top to bottom.

In the torrid heat, under the only palm trees still standing, the last survivors of Tabas work away at the rubble. The dead are still stretching their arms to hold up walls that no longer exist. Men, their faces turned toward the ground, curse the Shah. The bulldozers have arrived, accompanied by the empress; she was ill received. However, mullahs rush in from the entire region; and young people in Tehran go discreetly from one friendly house to another, collecting funds before leaving for Tabas. "Help your brothers, but nothing through the government, nothing for it," is the call that Ayatollah Khomeini has just issued from exile in Iraq.³

Neither Islamic nor Marxist nor liberal revolutionaries of Iran, however, called upon the West to claim its "right to protect" and send its armies to save them from the Shah. They overthrew the Shah's regime on their own, and Iran's Islamic Revolution has grown into a republic that can survive natural disasters, such as the earthquake of 2003 that destroyed Bam, killing more than 20,000 and injuring many more.

One of the casualties of the Bam earthquake was an American man, Tobb Dell'Oro, who was vacationing with his fiancée Adele Freedman in the city. Freedman, who credits the "kindness of the Iranian people" for her survival,⁴ became the subject of an important documentary film, Bam 6.6: Humanity Has No Borders (Dir. Jahangir Golestan-Parast, 2007), which shows Iranians' solicitude for her wellbeing and gracious hospitality to her parents who initially thought Iran would be a terrible place for Jewish Americans like them to visit but have changed their minds about the Iranian people.

The Bam earthquake also moved many of the normally fractious Iranian diaspora, as well as the populace of Iran, to solidarity, holding benefits and raising funds for their countrymen and women in need back home.

Artists did their part, too. Mohammad Reza Shajarian, the finest musician in Iran, held a concert "همنوا با بم" [In Harmony with Bam] with Hossein Alizadeh, Kayhan Kalhor, and Homayoun Shajarian in remembrance of the victims of the earthquake.

Iran's Islamic government, by the way, did not reject international, including American, offers of assistance -- unlike the Bush White House who didn't let Cuba or Iran help Americans after Hurricane Katrina -- and welcomed international NGOs as well, even though well-intentioned outsiders can create as many hindrances as aids they bring:

In a recent lessons-learned meeting on the Bam earthquake in Iran, a polite and respectful colleague from the Iranian Ministry of Health related his frustration at international NGO coordination in the early days of the emergency. He said that, at the same time as he was desperately trying to set up field hospitals and bury the dead, representatives from over 100 international NGOs had individually requested meetings with him. He appreciated their help, he said, but some organisations wanted to ask him about the siting of rural clinics when he was still trying to arrange emergency medical evacuations. Was there no way, he asked, that these agencies could organise themselves better in the early days of a disaster?⁵

But Iran's government, even under President Khatami, would not have accepted international relief if it had been imposed upon it by a show of force.

1 Robert D. Kaplan, "Aid at the Point of a Gun," New York Times, 14 May 2008.

2 Naomi Klein, "Regime-Quakes in Burma and China," The Nation, 15 May 2008.

3 Michel Foucault, "The Army -- When the Earth Quakes," in Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism, U of Chicago P, 2005, p. 190. An endnote omitted from the quotation and replaced by a parenthetical editorial clarification.

4 Corey Kilgannon, "For One Earthquake Survivor, Joy Is Tempered by Sorrow," New York Times, 10 January 2004.

5 Jenty Wood, "Improving NGO Coordination: Lessons from the Bam Earthquake," Humanitarian Practice Network, 2003.

Maliki & Co. Offer US Forces "A Permanent Home on Our Doorsteps"

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 Hussein Shariatmadari, "Iraq on the Edge," Kayhan International, 11 May 2008; 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).

A Victory for Hezbollah

Washington leaned on "Lebanon's governing coalition" to disarm Hizballah, just as it pushed the "Iraqi government" to disarm the Mahdi Army. Both moves failed to achieve their goals -- more spectacularly in the case of Lebanon:

Lebanon’s governing coalition on Wednesday night formally reversed two decisions that had provoked the militant group Hezbollah, bringing the country a step closer to resolving the week-old political crisis that set off the worst factional violence since the nation's 15-year civil war.

The announcement was made after a day of intensive meetings between Lebanese leaders and an Arab diplomatic delegation led by the foreign minister of Qatar. Rescinding the decisions was a victory for Hezbollah, the Shiite group backed by Syria and Iran that has been trying to wrest more political power from the government. After it was announced, shortly after 11 p.m., loud bursts of celebratory gunfire echoed across the city for almost an hour from Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hezbollah’s stronghold.

Lebanon’s information minister, Ghazi Aridi, said the cabinet reversed the two decisions -- which challenged the militant group’s private telephone network and the job of a Hezbollah ally who directs airport security -- "in view of the higher national interest." (Robert F. Worth, Lebanon Reverses Decisions That Prompted Violence," New York Times, 15 May 2008)

Washington has trouble winning in the so-called Shia crescent, as well as in Latin America, because the nature of its imperial project compels it to ally only with the pro-American, upper-class factions against organizations based in lower classes.

Politics is more ambiguous in Brazil, India, Turkey, and South Africa, the key nations in their respective regions, whose popular classes have hitherto backed the parties that have played both sides of the game. These are the key swing votes determining the fate of socialists in Latin America and Islamo-Leninists in the Shia crescent.

Fairuz Sings Palestine

Listen to two songs by Fairuz to commemorate the Nakba of 1948.

First, زهرة المداين, "The Flower of Cities," a song about Jerusalem.

Then, سنرجع يوماً, "We Shall Return."

The Beijing Consensus

What is the Beijing Consensus? There is little consensus on the Beijing Consensus yet. Arif Dirlik put it this way: "I would like to suggest that the term derives its meaning and appeal not from some coherent economic or political position but from its suggestion of a pole in the global political economy which can serve as a gathering place for those who are opposed to Washington imperialism" ("Beijing Consensus: Beijing 'Gongshi': Who Recognizes Whom and to What End?" 17 January 2006, p. 2).

Whether China can be such a pole remains to be seen, but in contrast to Washington -- which seeks to aggressively remake other countries' political economies to conform to its vision of capitalism and to redraw the political geography of the world according to its geopolitical doctrine, by force if necessary -- Beijing mostly bases its international relations on more or less business calculations alone, leaving the internal affairs of other nations to themselves. Note the absence of "conditionality" in China's relation with Africa, for instance:

Just like other Western powers, China has used aid strategically to support its commercial and investment interventions in Africa. Aid has taken the form of financial investments in key infrastructural development projects, training programs, debt relief, technical assistance, and a program of tariff exemptions for selected products from Africa, not dissimilar to the agreements that Africa has had with Europe, the US, and other Western economies. China's aid is attractive to African governments not only because it offers favorable terms, but in particular because it doesn't come with the conditionality that has so constrained, and many would argue undermined, the development that would have the potential for bringing about social progress. (Firoze Manji, "China Still a Small Player in Africa," MRZine, 28 April 2008)

Thus Beijing deals with the West, it deals with Latin socialists, it deals with everyone with whom it pays to play. That is better than the economic Washington Consensus whose military corollary is the Project for the New American Century.

Sa'di

A Persian poet Sa'di wrote in Golestan: "Strike the head of a serpent with the hand of a foe because one of two advantages will result. If the enemy succeeds thou hast killed the snake and if the latter, thou hast been delivered from a foe." These must be among the lines that Iran's power elite have all learned by heart, making them smarter than both Ba'athists and imperialists.