redFlags

The Shock Doctrine

IntifadaNYC: Racist campaign claims Khalil Gibran principal

The resignation of Debbie Almontaser as principal of the proposed Arab language school in Brooklyn has caused a great deal of controversy. The DOE replaced her with Danielle Salzberg. There's so much stuff flying it is hard to keep track of it all. An interesting interview by Amy Goodman posted on Democracy Now can be found here. Also this piece written by Almontaser, not long after 9/11.

By Steve Quester
UFT chapter leader
P.S. 372/418K The Children’s School
from Education Notes Online

Imagine...
A veteran Latina educator, with a years-long record of service supporting Latino/a youth and building bridges between Latino/a and non-Latino/a communities, is slated to be principal of a new middle school with a focus on Hispano-Caribbean studies and Spanish language. She endures months of vitriolic attacks from right-wing hate websites and blogs, and from the Murdoch news organizations. Finally, the Murdoch media uncover that she’s on the board of an organization that shares an office with a Latina girls’ empowerment organization. The organization has produced a T-shirt with the image of Che Guevara and the words “Hasta la victoria siempre.” The Murdoch media point out (rightly) that the “victoria” to which Che referred was the violent overthrow of all capitalist governments, including the U.S. The media demand that the educator condemn the T-shirt, but instead she says that the girls’ intention was to point to the victory of tolerance and coexistence over anti-Latino/a bias in New York. The media howl. The educator quickly apologizes, admitting that she did not take into account the effect that the image of Che has on Cuban-American refugees of Castro’s oppression.

After the apology, the United Federation of Teachers president [hypothetically Randi Weingarten —JB], who had been supportive of the new middle school and its principal, is quoted condemning the educator’s initial defense of the T-shirt...

Up on the Mountain, Down on the Ground

By R. John
special to redFlags

Here's what I want to understand more deeply: this question of the "everyday" – the place, importance, meaning and political relevance of that “everyday” locus of human existence. What emerges from that vantage point for viewing and evaluating human existence? How important is specificity and how do we know that importance?

I remember during the civil rights struggle when white racists insisted that “outsiders” didn’t “understand” Mississippi, and had no right to denounce its long evolved local “ways.” Their slogan was seen on handcrafted signs as marchers came. “We live here, you suck,” one read. “States rights” after all defended jim crow (and before it slavery) under the banner of local rights (and even “self-determination”!)

 

I think it is the larger material coherence of society, that makes politics possible. You don’t have to know all the many particularities of each county or township, or else a Red Army couldn’t march through on a Long March liberating people, or enter Tibet with profound insights into the transformations needed there.

   

I start here: Some things can only be known well by direct experience. All knowledge has its roots in experience (however removed the specific practice and practitioners may be from those synthesizing that knowledge). But intimate contact with everyday life (and especially a close personal focus on the everyday in life) does not at all automatically or directly breed insight to the problems and solutions of that life.

"I do not recognize myself anymore"

Found poem.

"Actually, everything is quite clear if one thinks it over and reaches the conclusion that indirect democracy is a hoax.  Ostensibly, the elected Assembly is the one which reflects public opinion most faithfully.  But there is only one sort of public opinion, and it is serial. 

"The imbecility of the mass media, the government pronouncements, the biased or incomplete reporting in the newspapers -- all this comes to seek us out in our serial solitude and load us down with wooden ideas, formed out of what we think others will think.  Deep within us there are undoubtedly demands and protests, but because they are not echoed by others, they wither away and leave us with a 'bruised spirit' and a feeling of frustration.  So when we are called to vote, I, the Other, have my head stuffed with petrified ideas which the press or television has piled up there.  They are serial ideas which are expressed through my vote, but they are not my ideas. 

"The institutions of bourgeois democracy have split me apart:  there is me and there are all the Others they tell me I am (a Frenchman, a soldier, a worker, a taxpayer, a citizen, and so on).  This splitting-up forces us to live with what psychiatrists call a perpetual identity crisis.  Who am I, in the end?  An Other identical with all the others, inhabited by these impotent thoughts which come into being everywhere and are not actually thought anywhere?  Or am I myself?  And who is voting?  I do not recognize myself any more."

• —Jean-Paul Sartre's Elections, A Trap for Fools

U.S. Imperialism, Islamic Fundamentalism… and the Need for Another Way

by Sunsara Taylor, Revolution

As the U.S.'s crimes against humanity in the Middle East mount, it is of tremendous importance for people in the U.S. to honestly confront and rise to the profound challenges and responsibilities before us in bringing this to a halt. In this spirit, I welcomed the argument made by Hadas Thier and Aaron Hess in the Socialist Worker on April 20, 2007 entitled Standing up to Islamophobia, even while I find their central arguments to not only be wrong, but harmful.

I do not doubt that Thier and Hess want to oppose U.S. wars of aggression and their accompanying assault on Muslims, Arabs and South Asians living in the U. S. But they end up arguing for an approach that will neither meet the actual challenges of opposing the U.S. “crusade,” nor bring forward new, truly liberating possibilities here and around the world. They end up in this unfortunate place through the use of bad logic, flawed methodology, and a duck-from-unpleasant-realities epistemology (method for arriving at what is true).

Carl Dix: 50 Reasons

Denmark riots: Youth House Vs. Father House

Riots and repression have rocked Copenhagen for three days and nights. In what's been billed as the "final conflict" of the Scandanavian autonomous scene, the Danish state has moved to sell off and shut down Youth House, the last remaining political squat outside of Cristiana, Copenhagen's famed semi-autonomous zone in the center of the city. Over 600 people have been brutally arrested attempting to block the transfer of Youth House to a Christian sect that has slated this vibrant social center for demolition. Supporters from around Scandanavia and Germany traveled to assist the Danes, with the government responding by raiding anti-authoritarian offices and movement centers in round-ups. UK Indymedia has an update page with timelines, pictures and tons of information.

David Rovics wrote a short report on some of the back story:

The 1980’s was the heyday of the autonomous movement in Denmark, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Thousands of mostly young people squatted hundreds of abandoned buildings in dozens of urban centers, creating alternative societies that embraced community, art, music, and a culture of resistance that rejected consumerism and empire. A community was formed that rejected the domination of the world by multinational corporations and the governments that supported them, whether they be outright militarist states like the US or more watered-down NATO members like Denmark. They defended their squats in pitched battles with police, and at the same time debated sexism within their movement and organized protests in support of refugees and against nuclear power. The movement existed in a near-constant state of siege. Many squats were ultimately taken by force by the police, and others were legalized.

With that in mind: Either we fight for the world, or fight for our own turf. They are not the same thing. There is no as autonomy in this world and there never will be. The retreat into socio-political ghettos in Europe was a surrender to the permanence of the capitalist (welfare) state while playing at war against it. It is people in their millions who will take down European capitalism. In the difference between the suburban riots in France last year and the subcultural resistance of the long-waned autonomous scene – we can see the outlines of new European left that no longer sees itself flowering in the cracks and margins – but which pushes to the very centers of power through the rebellion of working people and their allies, both native born and immigrant.

These social centers are exciting places, particularly for Americans with little experience in strong, radical institutions (as Rovics ably reports). Understood in context, the squats and social centers were a retreat by movements past, not simply something to defend. When radicals gave up on a better world, they settled for a better apartment.

What sees itself as autonomy could be seen through another lens as containment.

That said, they take their autonomy seriously – and they fight for it. You have to respect people who refuse to be governed. In Texas, the fetish of private property means you legally get shot for walking on somebody's lawn. In Copenhagen for these days, what people were willing to wage a violent defense of is their right to a social existence outside of capitalism, with mutual aid and solidarity outside of the exploitative hierarchies of capitalism.

In the ferocity of their battle is the measure of their hope.

Iranian Women Call for International Women’s Day Actions

Received from A World to Win News Service: The Women’s Campaign for the Abolition of all Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws in Iran is preparing for actions on March 3 and March 8, on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

The Campaign, known by its Farsi name Karzar, in 2006 organised a successful series of marches over five days from Frankfurt, Germany to The Hague in the Netherlands. Approximately 1,000 people took part on the last day, mostly Iranian women but also women and men from Europe and around the world, some travelling long distances to give their solemn support to women in Iran whose oppression is legitimised by the legal system set up by that country’s rulers.

Educate your parents

I can't believe I just saw this.

For Bill O'Reilly

Wild mobs and lunatics are the mother of democracy.

History is a funny thing.

We — featuring the words of Arundhati Roy

       

This is a public service announcement... Some anonymous pirates took Arundhati Roy's historic Come September speech and adapted it for the web with video and music to illustrate her plea for our common humanity. We is not about Roy so much as all of us, and the place we find ourselves at the start of this century. We is the future of agit/prop. Words of genuine wisdom, song and movement — anonymous and catalytic. Undeniable. This is our one and only life.

Free for distribution as a stream or download,(100mb, wmv), a $5 DVD is also available at WeRoy.org

Cell phones – Even worse for security than you thought

RedFlags is syndicated on the Indyblogs roll, and I check in from time to time to see what other Indymedia-identified bloggers are up to. Delete the Border, one of the more active sites, had a post that confirmed every paranoid assumption I ever had about cell phones (before a job with Indymedia, ironically enough, compelled me to buy one).

Not only are cell phones effective positioning devices, that say where you are and where you have been, but the feds (and likely largely police departments like the NYPD) have the ability to turn on your microphone and listen to you even when you aren't making a call.

This auto-bugging is amazing. Even if you power your phone down, that doesn't turn the microphone or broadcasting off. The only way to deal with it is by taking out your phone battery. Even then... who knows. Read the original article.

Battle Cry For Theocracy! Meet the Shock Troops of the Christian Right

Sunsara Taylor is sounding the cavalry bugle, and you better listen! In today's CounterPunch, the New York-based initiator of World Can't Wait lays out what is happening with BattleCry, the Christian Fascist youth movement led by the Pharisees from on high... She already debated Battle Cry leader Ron Luce on Fox, but this isn't a debate. It's war.

If you've been waiting until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in "God's army" to get alarmed, wait no longer.

In recent weeks, Battle Cry, a Christian fundamentalist youth movement, has attracted more than 25,000 to mega-rally rock concerts in San Francisco and Detroit and this weekend they plan to fill Wachovia Stadium in Philadelphia.

They claim their religion and values are under attack but, amidst spectacular lightshows, hummers, Navy Seals, and military imagery on stage, it is Battle Cry that has declared war on everyone else! Their leader, Ron Luce, insists: "This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent--the 'forceful' ones--will lay hold of the kingdom."

No joke, people. Read the full piece on the link.

      

Afghanistan Maoists on the clashes between Sunnis and Shiites

A World To Win News Service writes:

There have been many indications that the US occupation forces have worked to encourage the sectarian fighting between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq. They have organized a puppet government along religious ad ethnic lines.  Most basically, the occupiers have revived and allied themselves with feudal warlords, tribal sheiks and religious authorities, each fighting for supremacy. The following article analyses how the American-led occupation of Afghanistan is having similarly disastrous effects on that country. It is edited and excerpted from the March 2006 issue (no. 11) of Sholeh, newspaper of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan.

The Shia religious holiday Ashura (9 February) this year saw a kind of religious warfare Afghanistan has never known before. It is estimated that in the three days of bloody clashes between Shiites and Sunnis in the northwest province of Herat, more than 50 people were killed, mostly Sunnis, and more than 300 injured, some by security forces.

The Revolution is here in Nepal

I'm currently working on a short article about the rapid developments in Nepal. It will be up soon in place of this. For now, I've posted an open thread where any reporting/comments on the unfolding revolution can be posted.

The Royal army has encircled the king's palace with barbed wire. Democratic protests in the cities defy shoot-on-sight curfews. The People's War proceeds virtually unchallenged in the countryside. Prachanda warned on the eve of these protests that King Gyanendra faces "exile or death" for his crimes.

The Communist Party of Nepal has risen above Stalinophilic nostalgia and seeks a 21st Century communism, and sees the liberation of Nepal in both a regional and global context of revolution.

Will red flags fly from Katmandu? Have we finally kicked the end-of-history shroud? Is a secular, popular and revolutionary communist force pointed a way beyond the "clash of barbarisms?"

News & Views on Unfolding Revolution in Nepal
On the Scene in Katmandu: Revolution interviews Nepal expert and anthropologist Stephen Mikesell | Li Onesto's digest of breaking events: Mass Upsurge Against the King | Sudhanva  Deshpande: Nepal on the Verge of Bastille | International Nepal Solidarity Network -- tons of articles | Maoist Information Bulletin from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) | The Royal Regression and the Question of a Democratic Republic by Baburam Bhattarai

UK Guardian: Protesters Plan Final Heave to Rid Nepal of Monarchy

And, like anyone asked, according to (boo, hiss) Bloomberg: US Demands Nepal's King Relinquish Power

And... word from the fierce one...
CPN(M) Chairman Prachanda:
Constituent Assembly Now!
Prachanda, the political and military leader of the revolutionary forces demands an "unconditional constituent assembly."

The tried ceasefires, they tried to negotiate -- but the people are done with all of it and will not wait for permission to proceed. The King's statues are being torn down and the monarchy is in fact over on the ground. The King is now the mayor of his own palace, hiding behind barbed wire and (if he's smart) checking if JetBlue has any specials to Dehli.

Bella Ciaos for the Red Rebels of Nepal!

Bella Ciao is a song of revolution. Its anonymous composer fought in the hills of Italy against the fascist Mussolini, who thought himself a Caesar and ended hung from a street post by the people he sought to rule.

They say you are East and we are West, but we, together, know the world is round. The hope and solidarity of millions are with the brave protesters in Nepal and the People's Liberation Army. For land and liberty, for communism! For a new world.

Bella Ciao (Rita Pavone)

Bella Ciao (Manu Chao)

Bella Ciao (Punkreas)

Bella Ciao (Spanish Revolution)

Bella Ciao (Tryo y Zebda)

Bella Ciao (Yves Montand)

Bella Ciao (PL)

And I"m looking for Chumbawumba's english remix...

Translations from the original Italian on the link...

More fellow travelers...

There is something of a flurry of communist blogs popping up. I've been swamped and unable to find a long day to make all the necessary updates, but one new blog from the Bronx Boshevik has one of the best personal introductions ever. From Freddy Bastone in the boogie down:

I'm an 18 year old revolutionary from the Bronx. Have been a Maoist for the past 3 years. I try to get my HS a little bit more political and try to organize some of my brothers and sisters. I also like Mod and Skin culture. I love Britpop kind of stuff. All my friends believe I'm some kind of nut-case orator who went pyscho because I read Mao. Now I tell them that revolution with guns is the only solution.

Conditions of the Working Class in China

The SLAM X panels and celebration brought Old Heads from around the country back to New York. One old comrade came, and over a heated game of Risk (that he won!), he argued that China was essentially socialist. Why? Because they claim to be. Because state ownership plays a significant (determining?) role in the economy, regardless of foreign capital penetration (WalMart) or planning mechanisms — and because he saw no fundamental difference between the triumph of the "capitalist road" politically with the (appaulingly evident) changes in the "mode of production."

If we want to know where the sharpest argument is brewing in the International Communist Movement -- the questions of state capitalism, revisionism and popular agency are the key points of disagreement. After a year of profound growth in all camps, the bases of unification and advancement are upon us. And I'm concerned that if revolutionary, MLM advancements are not made far beyond their current fractional status, we won't be able to sum up the last century to advance towards communism. Revisionism can win. How do we know? Because it already did win everywhere socialism was established.

So read on. And let's get into it.

Here understanding China is key. And rather than just say "but the Chinese bourgeois dictatorship is creating the world's largest proletariat," we might all gain from some more serious analysis. The argument was not so much over whether China was something to emulate, as what was the bottom line basis of unity. My argument was that China was essentially fascist: state capitalism, dictatorship over the proletariat and with no possibility of popular agency within the confines of the capitalist state. In other words, we cannot accomodate with revisionism, as the range of an imagined possible, and build a liberation movement.

Red Cat, White Cat is an essential introduction to the "contradictions of market socialism," and its author, Robert Weil, has just written an extensive class analysis of contemporary China. What follows is Conditions of the Working Class in China and an attached Word version of the entire document at the very end. An abridged version will also be appearing in the forthcoming issue of Monthly Review.

We are the beating heart and nimble hands of our poets

I keep coming back to Roque Dalton. Where Neruda was the poet of the people in all, Dalton is a tangible breath of communists and rebels. He was critical without cynicism, advanced without detachment. As I'm just poetic, I turn to the poets.

FOR A BETTER LOVE
By Roque Dalton
Trans. Richard Schaaf

"Sex is a political category."
—Kate Millet

Everyone agrees that sex
is a category in the world of lovers:
hence tenderness and its wild branches.

Chinese Gov't Shuts Down Leftist Workers Website

Stephon Phillon conducted this interview with Yan Yuanzhang for MR Zine:

On February 22nd, the Chinese government shut down the China Workers' Website and Discussion Lists because, according to the order of closure, the owner of such a website must make a 10,000,000 Yuan (US $1.2 million) deposit to register it as a legal one.  The editorial collective responded that they would not be able to pay the fee since they were mostly farmers and employed and  unemployed workers without access to such a huge sum.  Thus the first leftist-run website in China that enabled workers and farmers to talk about their struggles to defend socialism in today's China was shut down. 

Below is an interview I conducted on February 26th with one of the administrators of the China Workers Website editorial collective in Beijing.  He, as well as other members of the collective, is evidence of a new generation of leftists in China who are actively involved in struggles of workers and farmers, stepping into the role that the Party rejected long ago.

Q: Now, why would the Chinese government, a socialist government in name, be concerned about a website run by leftists discussing the kinds of things that were discussed on the China Workers Website?

A: Well, because the government is not making socialism.   

Q: Of course.  I'm asking because outside China there are still some leftists who see China as a socialist country.

A: Well, hearing such nonsense would reduce a pig to tearful fits of laughter!

Our web discussion is designed for workers and farmers to discuss their issues and struggles.  This is the kind of thing a socialist democracy would want, for workers to have the kind of democracy that capitalism couldn't provide.

A National People's Congress will be convened soon, and the government knows that workers and farmers' voices will be heard by representatives and might even make way into the speeches made at the Congress.  The government doesn't want that -- it actually fears even the possibility of it.  So, when the national representatives speak, workers are supposed to keep their mouths shut. [continued]

French youth protest: "Police everywhere, justice nowhere"

Someone better start building the next French left. Damn already. Millions of people, descendents of immigrants and long-timers better figure out how to bring this all together and forward. Suburban riots and an occupied Sorbonne. The French have been too impressed with not being Americaine for a bit too long.

Please post text or links to the best coverage you've seen in the comments. I'm too busy tonight to feign clever or informed.

New York Times: French Protests Over Youth Labor Law Spread to 150 cities and towns

To be fair, we're entering the fourth year of forever war and while French youth are disrupting the nation to defend rights we can't even demand -- I think, what is going to obstruct their march. How can we stop shouting and obstruct their march?

Chicago in the house! 100,000+ March Against Anti-Immigrant Hysteria and For Dignity

Chicago Indymedia's coverage of the historic immigrant march in Chicago started with the observation that "it looks like someone went and kicked the sleeping giant."

On Friday, March 10, 2006 Chicago’s downtown was paralyzed by an immigrant march estimated at more than 100,000 people. They carried hand-lettered signs saying: “We are America,” “My Mexican immigrant son died in Iraq,” “I’m a dishwasher—not a criminal,” and “Don’t deport my parents.” The peaceful crowd stretched two and half miles, from Union Park on the West Side to their destination in Federal Plaza. No immigrant justice march like this has happened in Illinois history since some 80,000 immigrants marched down State Street demanding an 8-hour workday in 1886. [link added]

Mexicans in America are indeed a sleeping giant. With a proletariat increasingly illegalized as a matter of everyday life, this response is right on time. The spark that lit this fire is the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. This law overturns "two Supreme Court rulings mandating fair treatment and due process for immigrants held indefinitely by the Dept. of Homeland Security [cough]... even more of these "indefinite detainees" would be held in legal limbo for long periods of time."

Democracy Now! talks with Abel Nunez, one of the protest organizers

Revolution: Chicago Immigrants—A Defiant Show of Strength (includes an excellent discussion of what it means to be (North) American and who we are in this land.

Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee RIghts

Pre-Histories of 911 -- Or, What did they know (and did they do it)?

"Bay" proposal for Ground Zero by Magic Propaganda Mill

First things first. I was at Ground Zero the day the planes hit the World Trade Center. I lived there in a cheap apartment on the Hudson River a few blocks north of the towers. Debates about the planes and "base charges," etc are of no interest to me as I saw what happened and, on general principle despise conspiracy theories. I've been embroiled in several "911 Truth" debates, and I think it very unfortunate that real interrogation of the offical story has been left to, how can I say it... unreliable elements.

All that said, I'm with the half of New Yorkers who believe the official 911 report is a "conspiracy theory" and do not accept the simple story we've been told. There are just too many loose ends, conflicting accounts and political expediency in how Bush has spun the whole story.

Browsing the internet, I found a new blog called DW Vents, an apparently communist blog from right here in the city that took on the Pre-Histories of 911. Because I think this piece avoids the more dubious lines of thought that define dissent of the official 911 story (in particular, the strange alleged conspiracy between a New York real estate magnate and the secret government crowd, anti-Semitic and racist bullshit, right-wing "Illuminati" kookiness), I've posted DW's piece here in its entirety for discussion and debate.

NYC: Solidarity March with 'Great Walk against Anti-women Laws in Iran's Islamic Republic

From NYC Indymedia, links added: In New York on International Women's Day, March 8, we will bring together a multinational gathering of women, men and young people in solidarity with the Great Walk in Europe.

A future of Islamic Fundamentalism vs. the Bush regime's "McCrusades" is a brutal disaster for the world's women and people, and we cannot and will not accept it. Support those risking their lives to oppose barbaric Islamic fundamentalist laws and practices against women -- be part of bringing forward movements of women and people the world over to reject both deadly and crushing ruling orders, instead fighting for relations of equality between women and men, and against domination and plunder of the world's nations and countries by a handful of imperialist powers.

To those who still wonder whether George Bush and his regime can deliver some kind of liberation to the women and people of the Middle East or any corner of the globe -- as one of the Great Walk statements says: "The American government has declared that it seeks to liberate the women of the Middle East from the yoke of Islamic fundamentalism. This is a ridiculous claim that makes a mockery of real liberation and is an insult to the women of the Middle East. The march of events in Afghanistan and Iraq should have helped those who were taken in by these self-styled liberators of Middle Eastern women to realize how badly they were fooled. If anyone still believes that George Bush and his ilk are liberators of women, please talk to American women fighting to prevent him from taking away their right to abortion as well as against the efforts of the Christian fascists to dominate every aspect of the lives of women in the U.S. What George Bush is taking away from the women in the USA he will not deliver to women in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or any other country."

Join with us in supporting the Great Walk in Europe. As their material states: "In this rally there is a place for all freedom-loving women and men, all political and progressive and revolutionary forces, who want equality between men and women in every aspect of life, a place for all those who oppose gender discrimination in any form." And: "Celebrate 8 March 2006 with us and help us to build the independent ranks of women against U.S. imperialism as well as the reactionary states governing these countries."

Wed, March 8th, 2006 — NYC
March: 5:00 PM Starts at 83rd and Roosevelt Ave.
(7 train to 82st St.)
Rally: 6:30 PM 73th Street and Broadway
(7, E, F, R, G trains to 74th St/ Roosevelt)

Colorado Students Walk-Out to Defend Radical Teacher

Overland Students Walk Out in Support of Jay Bennish
[Click on any of the images to watch the CBS 4 Denver video of the student walkout.]

Michael Yates writes for MR Zine: A high school geography teacher here in Colorado -- Jay Bennish who teaches at Overland High School in Aurora -- is in trouble, attacked by the right, for things he said in an honors geography class after Bush's State of the Union address.  A student in the class taped the teacher's comments (about twenty minutes of a fifty-minute class) without the teacher's knowledge.  His parents complained to the school administration, and, after nothing came of this, they gave the tape to radio station KOA (850 AM), a 50,000-watt outlet for far-right shock jocks like "Gunny Bob" Newman (Gunny Bob is a retired Marine gunnery sergeant.  On a recent show, he gave graphic descriptions of torture and argued that it was necessary and desirable for U.S. forces to use such torture) and Dave and Lois, the "drive home' team.  During each of the past two days, Dave and Lois devoted their entire four-hour show to Mr. Bennish.  On most shows, these two sound brain-challenged, but on these they presumed to know all there is to know about what makes a good teacher and what should be taught in any and all classes.

The Real Dick Cheney (Shady Motherfucker)

The Real Dick Cheney based on The Real Slim Shady by Eminem, lyrics by Mark Silverman || High Quality Graphic by the Burningman

Goodbye, Christ - a poem by Langston Hughes you probably never read

When you see that copy of Langston Hughes Selected Poems at the bookstore, know that the "selection" had more to do with meeting the ideological needs of the McCarthy era than sharing the full power and popular grace of his collected work. Faith Berry  did the great service in 1973 of assembling his uncollected radical poems and writings from the Soviet Union in Good Morning Revolution. With all the talk about religion, and so many leftists allergic to telling the truth about the God racket, I'm just loving Langton's love of the people and not their illusions. He writes:

Listen, Chirst,
You did alright in your day, I reckon—
But that day's gone now.
They ghosted you up a swell story, too,
Called it Bible—
But it's dead now.

European March for Women's Liberation in Iran

Too much dissembling from the liberals and the mullahs has distorted international solidarity around the women's liberation struggle against the semi-feudal Islamicist regime of Iran. In the still boiling atmosphere around the anti-Islamic cartoons, the call by Campaign for the Abolition of All Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation & Islamic Punaitive Laws in Iran to stage a continental, mulit-national march throughout Europe is right on time.

This campaign has united a core group of hundreds of Iranian and international women activists and personalities who have long been fighting for women’s rights, including some who have spent many years in the dungeons of the Islamic Republic. More than a hundred women and men fighting for women’s rights in Europe and elsewhere in the world have signed the call. Iranian women’s groups and individual activists, academicians and artists in exile, among them the 8 March Women’s Organization (Iran-Afghanistan), have been the backbone of this effort. So far it has been able to unite a broad array of Iranian opposition movement in exile, from communist and labor movement activists to progressive democrats.

For the last 27 years these Islamic laws have deprived women of their most basic rights as human beings and intensified the marginalization of women, creating a gender segregation that has made society a hell for all and forcing many women into suicide, prostitution, and drug addiction. Women are setting fire to themselves in increasing numbers. These laws represent and impose a state of semi-slave social relations on women. They have strengthened the already brutal patriarchal and male supremacist relations in the country. A vast apparatus of morality police has been set up to keep an eye on women and punish them if they violate these medieval moral codes of conduct. This is the dark ages in the 21st century.

Read the entire call: European March for Women's Liberation in Iran

Also see Doug Ireland's reporting on the wave of anti-gay persecution the Iranian mullahs seem to enjoy much like their American counter-parts: Kidnapped: Another Gay Iranian Torture Victim Speaks

The Tyranny of Structurelessness

Sticking my finger to the wind, the wave of anti-authoritarian social movements that picked up steam from the late-90s through the September 11 attacks is exhausted. A fascination with meeting norms, immediatism, "affinity" based tactical organizations as the limit of what can be organized, and a party-line anti-communism have not born the promised fruit. Anti-vanguardism has fostered a subcultural milieu far weaker than the sum of its parts, which boasts strengths it doesn't possess by ideologically claiming cooperation, resistance and solidarity as "everyday" examples of their "all the good things, none of the bad shit" philosophy. Aesthetics and ethics, no time for politics... too cool for school.

Thousands of activists are still limited by self-imposed methodological constraints. None of these is more pernicious than the substitution of "space" for "movement." As if we could create private né pirate utopias in the midst of raging war and the darkening shadow of domestic fascism. Many of the best activists -- and those most enamored of "the new New NEW" return to 19th century anarchish sophistry -- are more disoriented and demobilized than challenged and learning. Some have even embraced this haplessness as a strategic virtue.

In place of this somatic boosterism, I'd offer that there's nothing wrong with getting disillusioned. Who needs utopia when revolution manifests in hand, when politics isn't a personalized moral commitment -- but is a living force that we can help bring to fruition.

Poltics is back on the agenda for resistance movements. Recent breakthroughs in Latin America, including the Zapatista re-orientation towards the left and Hugo Chavez's proclamation of "21st Century Socialism," and the stunning resurgence of revolutionary communism in Asia are locally accented by the fervent activism of several distinct left parties in the USA. This actual left turn has all combined to give what had become meta-narrative arguments some running legs to race,

How will social movements relate to political revolution in the coming days?

One place to start that discussion is by turning to an older feminist text, and a penetrating look directly at (some of) the everyday processes of New Left activism, The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman. It was mimeographed before it was photocopied. Here it is, again.

Often floated around by exasperated, movement-centered activists seeking to develop politics (and healthy accountability) amid the misconceptions of anti-authoritarianism, Freeman directly challenges the primative egalitarian myths of democratic fetishism as they manifested in the early women's liberation movement -- and in particular the ways that anarchist dogmas (unnamed as such) hobble what they intend to unleash. While Freeman's essay orients towards the horizontal organizing methods as demonstrated by women's consciousness-raising, she can't help but see the foibles in plain sight. The full text follows.

This Is Your Motherfucking Party

Everything by The Coup  ||  Illustration found at Marxist Community Journal|| Mutilage by the Burningman

The anti-Islam cartoons controversy – Not about “freedom of speech”

Editorial from A World to Win News Service: Last September the editor of a rightwing Danish newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten, commissioned cartoonists to draw pictures of Muhammad, and published a dozen of them. As he has explained in interviews, he deliberately set out to affront observant Muslims, many of whom believe that it is wrong to depict the face of those they consider prophets. But more than that, some of these drawings are very deliberately insulting to Islam as a religion and to those who believe in it, depicting it as the faith of mad bombers and bloodthirsty barbarians. Taken as a whole, they are meant to humiliate and demean a large part of the earth’s population.

Busy Weekend in DC: NCOR and the World Can't Wait

The annual National Conference on Organized Resistance is happening this weekend in Washington DC. It is by far the largest annual gathering of activists and a wide range of strategies, philosophies and intentions will be meeting each other in this massive participatory gathering. Check out the NCOR workshops -- this year the debates are going to be fast and furious.

World Can't Wait is also going to be protesting to drive Bush out, with buses coming from all over the country. There's an 11 am rally at 17th & Constitution and a 2 pm March around the White House.

Call me silly, but when these forces find unity of action -- that's when we're going to start winning. I very much hope there's some cross-pollination. We have a lot to teach each other. These events haven't cross-endorsed each other as that is not their nature -- but the hot mix will be on the streets of DC. We're starting from here.

Jailbreak: Palestinians Tear Down Section of the Gaza Wall

B&S writes: GAZA Palestine - Renegade members of the militant al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commandeered a bulldozer and destroyed a section of a wall separating Palestine from Egypt. Hundreds of Palestinians, who usually have a very difficult time crossing the border, swarmed across a no-man's land into Egypt. Egyptian police fired warning shots into the air and captured about 100 Palestinians. Some of those who managed to evade capture returned later in the day with discounted merchandise.

Mao's Legacy in China's Current Development

Pao-Yu Ching writes:

A Chinese worker said,”This is not socialism with Chinese characteristics as Deng Xiaoping told us. Instead, what we have here is capitalism with Chinese characteristics.”

A Chinese peasant said, “When Chairman Mao warned us about the restoration of capitalism, we really did not understand what he was talking about. Now we do.”

In China & Socialism -- Market Reforms and Class Struggle[i], Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett argued successfully why the so-called “market socialism” in China is in fact the restoration of capitalism, and that China’s economic Reform of the past twenty-five years can not serve as a socialist model of development for other less developed countries. Hart-Landsberg and Burkett’s research on this topic in current literature (in English) is very thorough and includes perspectives from