Never solidarity before criticism!!!!

A Forgotten History

In 1932, a young woman named Rashid Jahan was denounced by some clerics and threatened with disfigurement and death. A doctor by training like Taslima Nasreen, she too had written about seclusion, sexual oppression and female suffering in a patriarchal society...

PRIYAMVADA GOPAL

In 1932, a young woman named Rashid Jahan was denounced by some clerics and threatened with disfigurement and death. She and three others had just published a collection of Urdu short stories called Angarey in which they had robustly criticized obscurantist customs in their own community and the sexual hypocrisies of some feudal landowners and men of religion. The colonial state, always zealous in its support of authoritarian religious chauvinists over dissenting voices, promptly banned the book and confiscated all copies under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code. Rashid Jahan, as a woman, became a particular focus of ire. A doctor by training like Taslima Nasreen, she too had written about seclusion, sexual oppression and female suffering in a patriarchal society.

What has changed in three quarters of a century? Periodically, we witness zealots of all faiths shouting hysterically about 'insults' to religious sentiments and being backed by the state while little is done to address more serious material injustices that affect members of their community.

But in the light of the Taslima Nasreen controversy, the Angarey story has particularly ironic resonances. For Rashid Jahan and two of her co-contributors, Mahmuduzzafar and Sajjad Zaheer, were members of the Communist Party of India who would go on to help found the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) in 1936. The PWA was to be a loose coalition of radical litterateurs, both party members and 'fellow travelers', who would challenge all manner of orthodoxies and put social transformation on the literary map of India. Unsurprisingly, many PWA-linked writers had run-ins with the law, constantly fending off charges of obscenity, blasphemy and disturbing the peace. Challenging these attacks with brave eloquence, they defended the task of the writer as one of pushing social and imaginative boundaries. The then beleaguered undivided CPI too faced constant attacks, including censorship, trials and an outright ban.

Today, heirs of that same Communist party, the CPI(M), find themselves on the same side with the state and religious orthodoxies whose excesses they once challenged. Their actions shore up anti-democratic authoritarianism, whether this takes the form of corporate land-grabbing, the suppression of popular protest, or religious chauvinism. In response to criticism from progressive quarters, they invoke the subterfuge of 'left unity' which forbids criticism because this will provide grist for the opposition's mills. A pro-CPI(M) statement signed by the likes of Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali (with, one can only presume, the airy historical carelessness that even the best intellectuals in the West are sometimes prone to) warns against 'splitting the left'. With the unmistakable timbre of a Party pamphlet, it goes on to suggest that all is now well in Nandigram and 'reconciliation' with the dispossessed is fast being effected. (How do they know?). Meanwhile, many CPI(M) leaders parrot the conservative statist line that Taslima is free to stay in India if she behaves herself and refrains from 'hurting religious sentiments'. But those oppressed by religious orthodoxies, like women and Dalits, often have no choice but to speak of how those very sentiments are used against them.

Although laden with irony, this sorry state of affairs is not an altogether unexpected development in the cultural history of the official left in India even if it is less shocking than the thuggish assistance provided to big global corporations in Singur and Nandigram by the leaders of the proletariat.As the PWA gained strength and became one of the most influential cultural movements of its day, a rift developed between increasingly authoritarian Party members like Sajjad Zaheer and writers like the doughty Ismat Chughtai and maverick, Saadat Hasan Manto, neither of whom would ever agree to have their imagination and critique constrained by a party line.

Both Chughtai and Manto insisted on intellectual independence and the continuing need to address gender and sexuality, subjects which the Party began to frown upon. Accordingly, they found themselves attacked not only by the state but also by hardliners in the PWA who dutifully denounced the 'perversions' of writing about the body and its desires as well as prostitution and sexual violence. Justifiably annoyed, Manto (who fought five cases on 'obscenity' charges) wrote an essay sharply titled 'Taraqqi-Pasand Socha Nahin Karte' [Progressives Don't Think] in which he deplored the unthinking adherence to prudish literary categories which allowed him and others to be denounced as 'individualists' and 'pornographers.'

Of obscenity charges Chughtai asks: 'Don't you see that the writer himself is trembling fearfully and is terrified of the world's obscenity? All he's doing is converting events that are taking place in the world into words.'

Today, this unwillingness to examine received ideas emerges in party leader Sitaram Yechury's firm endorsement of 'certain conditions' on Taslima if she is to stay, including 'refraining from…activities and expressions that may hurt the sentiments of our people', whatever 'our' means in a remarkably heterogeneous society that can take pride in allowing dissent. The obviously opportunistic attack from the BJP allows more relevant criticism of the CPI(M) from progressive people and the broad, non-party left to be ignored, all of it thrown into the same basket of 'belittling…the present-influence of the Left in the country.' Used in this self-exculpatory way, 'anti-communist prejudice' is no more meaningful a mantra than 'anti-American' enabling all criticism to be dismissed as malicious. This denigrates not only those on the left who are unwilling to countenance the CPI(M)'s recent betrayals of humane values and social justice goals, but also older communists like Rashid Jahan who came under vicious attack precisely for speaking their mind against injustices, including those inflicted by religion. However much we may deplore the BJP's obvious hypocrisies in denouncing 'pseudo-secularism', the fact remains that the actions of the CPI(M) serve to undermine the credibility of those who have stood up more consistently for pluralism and secularism. Moreover, the depredations of the right-wing should not serve as an alibi for misconduct by those who rightly oppose them.

These are difficult times for progressive people who are aware of the ways in which Islam and Muslims are under siege both from Hindu majoritarianism and Bush's 'War on Terror'. Confronted with a similar colonial situation and accused of betraying their community, Rashid Jahan and her comrades maintained that criticism and self-criticism could not be shunted aside in the name of battling a greater enemy; the two are not mutually exclusive. Mahmuduzzafar, another communist and contributor to Angarey, refused to apologise for the book and wrote that he and his co-authors, all Muslim, chose Islam 'not because they bear it any 'special' malice, but because, being born into that particular society, they felt themselves better qualified to speak for that alone.' Taslima Nasreen is exercising a similar privilege.There's an odd kind of condescension in maintaining that some sentiments are more fragile than others and that some forms of belief are less resilient and, therefore, beyond questioning. Critique and dissent are essential, particularly when they come from those most affected by particular forms of religious and political practice.

When CPI(M) leaders commend the withdrawal of passages from Taslima's book and insist on the objectionable nature of some of her writing, they would do well do remember that a good many people in this world claim to find communism profoundly objectionable, even deeply offensive to their most cherished sentiments. The right of the left more generally to articulate critique and opposition has been hard won and remains under siege in many parts of the world.

India needs nothing more than a genuine and strong left. But this will not be forged by dishonouring one's own more radical past, covering up mistakes and rewriting recent history. In a second, modified statement, Chomsky et al have qualified their support for the CPI(M) and indicate that they were simply exhorting the left in India to 'unite and focus on the more fundamental issues that confront the Left as a whole'. In theory, this is a goal devoutly to be wished for. And yet, it is not one that can be accomplished at the cost of self-criticism and silence. We can do no better than to follow the principle always advocated by the late Edward Said, a left intellectual and activist of the highest integrity in these matters: 'Never solidarity before criticism.' It is only in so doing so that we honour the history of genuinely oppositional movements in India and elsewhere.

Priyamvada Gopal, the author of Literary Radicalism in India, is Senior Lecturer of English, University of Cambridge

Ten Reasons Why “Save Darfur” Is A PR Scam

 

By Bruce Dixon
30 November, 2007
Black Agenda Report

The regular manufacture and the constant maintenance of false realities in the service of American empire is a core function of the public relations profession and the corporate news media. Whether it's fake news stories about wonder drugs and how toxic chemicals are good for you, bribed commentators and journalists discoursing on the benefits of No Child Left Behind, Hollywood stars advocating military intervention to save African orphans, or slick propaganda campaigns employing viral marketing techniques to reach out to college students, bloggers, churches and ordinary citizens, it pays to take a close look behind the facade.

Among the latest false realities being pushed upon the American people are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, and the proposed solution: a robust US-backed or US-led military intervention in Western Sudan. Increasing scrutiny is being focused upon the "Save Darfur" lobby and the Save Darfur Coalition; upon its founders, its finances, its methods and motivations and its truthfulness. In the spirit of furthering that examination we here present ten reasons to suspect that the "Save Darfur" campaign is a PR scam to justify US intervention in Africa.

1. It wouldn't be the first Big Lie our government and media elite told us to justify a war.

Elders among us can recall the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which the US government deliberately provoked to justify initiation of the war in Vietnam. This rationale was quickly succeeded by the need to help the struggling infant "democracy" in South Vietnam, and the still useful "fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here" nonsense. More recently the bombings, invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have been variously explained by people on the public payroll as necessary to "get Bin Laden" as revenge for 9-11, as measures to take "the world's most dangerous weapons" from the hands of "the world's most dangerous regimes", as measures to enable the struggling Iraqi "democracy" stand on its own two feet, and necessary because it's still better to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here".

2. It wouldn't even be the first time the U.S. government and media elite employed "genocide prevention" as a rationale for military intervention in an oil-rich region.

The 1995 US and NATO military intervention in Kosovo was supposedly a "peacekeeping" operation to stop a genocide. The lasting result of that campaign is Camp Bondsteel, one of the largest military bases on the planet. The U.S. is practically the only country in the world that maintains military bases outside its own borders. At just under a thousand acres, Camp Bondsteel offers the US military the ability to pre-position large quantities of equipment and supplies within striking distance of Caspian oil fields, pipeline routes and relevant sea lanes. It is also widely believed to be the site of one of the US's secret prison and torture facilities.

3. If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why the focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with five million dead?

"The notion that a quarter million Darfuri dead are a genocide and five million dead Congolese are not is vicious and absurd," according to Congolese activist Nita Evele. "What's happened and what is still happening in Congo is not a tribal conflict and it's not a civil war. It is an invasion. It is a genocide with a death toll of five million, twenty times that of Darfur, conducted for the purpose of plundering Congolese mineral and natural resources."

More than anything else, the selective and cynical application of the term "genocide" to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy around the "Save Darfur" movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters, mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other Congolese resources continue undisturbed.

Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the board of Barrcik Gold, one of the largest and most active mining concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no Congolese "genocide" worth noting, much less interfering with. For their purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the bother of official U.S. boots on the ground.

4. It's all about Sudanese oil.

Sudan, and the Darfur region in particular, sit atop a lake of oil. But Sudanese oil fields are not being developed and drilled by Exxon or Chevron or British Petroleum. Chinese banks, oil and construction firms are making the loans, drilling the wells, laying the pipelines to take Sudanese oil where they intend it to go, calling far too many shots for a twenty-first century in which the U.S. aspires to control the planet's energy supplies. A U.S. and NATO military intervention will solve that problem for U.S. planners.

5. It's all about Sudanese uranium, gum arabic and other natural resources.

Uranium is vital to the nuclear weapons industry and an essential fuel for nuclear reactors. Sudan possesses high quality deposits of uranium. Gum arabic is an essential ingredient in pharmaceuticals, candies and beverages like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and Sudanese exports of this commodity are 80% of the world's supply. When comprehensive U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime were being considered in 1997, industry lobbyists stepped up and secured an exemption in the sanctions bill to guarantee their supplies of this valuable Sudanese commodity. But an in-country U.S. and NATO military presence is a more secure guarantee that the extraction of Sudanese resources, like those of the Congo, flow westward to the U.S. and the European Union.

6. It's all about Sudan's strategic location

Sudan sits opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, where a large fraction of the world's easily extracted oil will be for a few more years. Darfur borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil resources, is within striking distance of West and Central Africa, and is a likely pipeline route. The Nile River flows through Sudan before reaching Egypt, and Southern Sudan water resources of regional significance too. With the creation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command for the African continent, the U.S. has made open and explicit its intention to plant a strategic footprint on the African continent. From permanent Sudanese bases, the U.S. military could influence the politics and ecocomies of Africa for a generation to come.

7. The backers and founders of the "Save Darfur" movement are the well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite.

According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer

"The "Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country – the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum…

"The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year…

"Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars."

Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manfacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.

8. None of the funds raised by the "Save Darfur Coalition", the flagship of the "Save Darfur Movement" go to help needy Africans on the ground in Darfur, according to stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times.

None of the money collected by Save Darfur goes to help the victims and their families. Instead, the coalition pours its proceeds into advocacy efforts that are primarily designed to persuade governments to act.

9. "Save Darfur" partisans in the U.S. are not interested in political negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur President Bush has openly and repeatedly attempted to throw monkey wrenches at peace negotiations to end the war in Darfur.

Even pro-intervention scholars and humanitarian organizations active on the ground have criticized the U.S. for endangering humanitarian relief workers, and for effectively urging rebel parties in Darfur to refuse peace talks and hold out for U.S. and NATO intervention on their behalf.

The PR campaign which depicts the conflict as strictly a racial affair, in which Arabs, who are generally despised in the US media anyway, are exterminating the black population of Sudan, is slick, seamless and attractive, and seems to leave no room for negotiation. But in fact, many of Sudan's 'Arabs", even the Janjiweed, are also black. In any case, they were armed and unleashed by a government which has the power to disarm them if it chooses, and refusing to talk to that government's negotiators is a sure way to avoid any settlement.

10. Blackwater and other U.S. mercenary contractors, the unofficial armed wings of the Republican party and the Pentagon are eagerly pitching their services as part of the solution to the Darfur crisis.

"Chris Taylor, head of strategy for Blackwater, says his company has a database of thousands of former police and military officers for security assignments. He says Blackwater personnel could set up perimeters and guard Darfurian villages and refugee camp in support of the U.N. Blackwater officials say it would not take many men to fend off the Janjaweed, a militia that is supported by the Sudanese government and attacks villages on camelback."

Apparently Blackwater doesn't need to come to the Congo, where hunger and malnutrition, depopulation, mass rape and the disappearance of schools, hospitals and civil society into vast law free zones ruled by an ever-changing cast of African proxies (like the son of the late and unlamented Idi Amin), all under a veil of complicit media silence already constitute the perfect business-friendly environment for siphoning off the vast wealth of that country at minimal cost.

Look for the adoption of the Congolese model across the wide areas of Africa that U.S. strategic planners call "ungoverned spaces". Just don't look expect to see details on the evening news, or hear about them from Oprah, George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.

Bruce Dixon is the managing editor of the Black Agenda Report, where this article first appeared.

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How the super-rich just get richer

By Helen Williamson
BBC Money Programme

Britain has more rich people than ever before, and it is not just footballers like David Beckham and Wayne Rooney.

With a global economy, successful people in all sorts of professions can now command global-scale pay packets.

The mega-successful at the top of their profession are taking advantage of a phenomenon known as the "Superstar Premium".

Advances in multi-media technology mean that today's superstars operate in a global marketplace.

By being the best in their field, they attract a disproportionate amount of business compared to less successful competitors.

Global exposure

Economist Sherwin Rosen developed the idea of the Superstar Premium in the early 1980's to explain why some musicians were earning so much money.

Before recording technology, even the most popular artists had their earnings limited by the number of people who could hear them perform live.

When I was about seven, I said to my mother 'how much money do I have to earn to be able to eat caviar every day?'
Vanessa Mae

But with the advent of records, CDs and now the internet, the most popular artists can reach a much wider audience, and therefore earn much more money from doing the same amount of work.

Vanessa-Mae is the world's most popular violinist, but unlike violinists 50 years ago, she has a global fan base.

She has been able to take advantage of the Superstar Premium and is aware how the life of a musician has changed.

"The exposure that you get around the world is only thanks to technology," she says.

"If I had to flog my albums 50 years ago by taking a boat, I mean, it would have taken me five years to promote one album."

It has allowed her to sell more than 10 million records world-wide and has subsidised the super-rich lifestyle she dreamed of as a child.

"When I was about seven, I said to my mother 'how much money do I have to earn to be able to eat caviar every day?'"

Television means that today's top footballers are also economic superstars.

When England captain Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup in 1966 he earned £100 a week.

Today's England captain, John Terry, holds the same position, but reportedly earns over £130,000 a week.

As economist Prof Danny Quah, from the London School of Economics points out the English Premier League is "a global franchise".

"It is watched by half a billion people in the world, more people than we've lifted out of poverty in the last 20 years," he says.

And the top players don't just get huge salaries for their performance on the pitch. Their famous faces are found on advertising billboards across the globe - adding even more to their incomes.

David Beckham earned over £11m from endorsements alone last year.

It is not just the famous who are affected by the superstar premium.

Demand for luxury

Technology has enabled humble bookies to become financial superstars.

By setting up an online betting agency, the founders of Betfair serve punters around the world and co-founder Edward Wray is aware of the superstar premium:

"It's very important for us to be number one," he says. "I mean, ours is a model that in many ways the bigger you are, the more efficient the model becomes."

And because they are number one they pull in the most punters - earning Wray and his partner Andrew Black superstar fortunes.

With personal fortunes of tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of pounds, economic superstars have plenty of cash to splash.

Superstars are boosting the luxury goods market, with worldwide sales in the sector topping £75bn last year.

"Aston Martin has gone from a cottage industry to a global one. We've gone from selling 200 cars a year to 7,000" says Craig Davison, from Broughton's Aston Martin in Cheltenham.

Similarly, private jet firm NetJets, whose cheapest deal is £85,000 for 25 hours flying time, has seen its business expand rapidly.

"Five years ago we had 18 aircraft and 89 customers, whereas today we have 135 aircraft and 1500 customers," says its marketing executive Robert Dranitzke.

"If you compare us to the airlines, we have the 7th largest fleet in Europe and we're growing faster than anybody else."

'Trickling down?'

But what is the impact of all this wealth on the rest us?

Not all of these fortunes are being spent or invested in Britain, says Peter Charrington, head of Citi's UK private banking arm.

"Although these are people who will clearly have significant interests here in the UK and invest here in the UK, they're also looking to place their money around the world," he says.

Mr Charrington says the super-rich are looking for opportunities in China, India and Latin America "whether that be in private equity or hedge fund businesses".

In the US, 1% of the population control almost 40% of wealth

"That's particularly important to our types of clients."

There are some who think the Superstar Premium does benefit society thanks to the "trickle down effect".

"Big spenders will have to spend their money on the things that the rest of society provides," says Professor Quah.

"So almost mechanically, the marketplace disseminates that wealth."

So whether we love them or hate them, the fortunes of the superstars are only set to increase as the opportunities of the global marketplace grow and grow.

Money Programme: "Superstar, Super-rich": Friday 30 November at 7pm on BBC2
Story from BBC NEWS:

The Cancer Of Economic Growth

 

 

By Gustavo Esteva

23 Novembe, 2007
La Jorna

It has become possible, only after tragedies such as the one that took place in Tabasco, to publicly debate a central precept of the dominant religion: the goal of accelerated economic growth. Fifty years of propaganda have converted the economists' dogma into a general prejudice. Without discussion, we accept that accelerated economic growth is desirable. Now the time has come to abandon this pernicious obsession.

To get as much growth as possible from the economy as well as growth in population appears to be a common sense principle. But it is not. Many things should grow until they reach their correct proportion: plants, animals, people. When something reaches its correct size, and then continues to grow, the resulting protuberance is called a cancer. Much of what increases when formal economy continues to grow is a type of social cancer. Speculation grows, irrational or destructive production grows, corruption and waste grow – all at the cost of what really should increase: social justice and the well-being of the majority.

In every country there are things that have grown too much, things which should be made smaller – and others that have not grown enough or need to continue growing for the greater good. A high rate of economic growth, measured through the gross national product, habitually reflects a growth in what is already large, an authentic social cancer, and a diminishing of what should continue growing.

Economic growth produces the opposite of what it promises. It does not imply greater well-being or employment for the people, or greater efficiency in the use of resources. Quite the opposite: it generates poverty, inefficiency and injustice. There is an abundant historical record to support this argument. To continue to propose a high rate of economic growth as a social goal is pure nonsense. It can only be attributed to the ignorance of a simple soul, cynicism or a combination of the two.

Almost forty years ago, Paul Streeten rigorously documented for the ILO the perverse connection between economic growth and injustice. He demonstrated that greater growth corresponded to greater poverty, and that there is a relation of cause and effect between one and the other. He demonstrated as well that the famous "trickle down effect" – the idea that concentrated riches spill out onto the majority generating well-being in their wake – is a perverse and unfounded illusion.

To concentrate social efforts on economic growth disguises the real goal: greater opulence for a few, at the expense of generalized poverty and the destruction of the natural patrimony. This result is hardly logical, as the economist's obsession does nothing more than apply to the whole of society a strict capital necessity that applies only to him: capital that does not grow, dies; and so it follows indefinitely. For this reason, cultivating the obsession implies writing a blank check to the market leaders or the State, so that they do their thing in the name of the well-being of the majority, a well-being that doesn't appear, and following that path, will never appear.

We need to recover a sense of proportion that is simply another form of common sense: that sense that exists in community. To struggle against a culture of waste, disposability, destruction and injustice, and the culture that has produced global warming to which disasters caused by irresponsibility are now attributed, we can reclaim the sensible and responsible rejection of what is unnecessary in the name of socially viable goals, and discard forever the idolatry of economic growth.

The time has arrived to seriously propose the advantages of a negative growth rate, clearly specifying what we would continue to stimulate. For example, the support of highly efficient, productive and sensible sectors, such as those that make up the majority of the persecuted "informal sector." This will imply a focus on strengthening the productive capacity of the majority, instead of supporting the inefficient giants. The economists' nightmare, a drop in the gross national product, could be a blessing for the majority.

It is time to stop the dominant insanity. Some things need to grow, and others need to contract. Let our capacity to sustain ourselves and our vital autonomy grow. Let our expressions and spaces for exercising liberty and initiative grow. Let the opportunities for a good life multiply, according to the way in which each individual and culture defines that good life. And, to make that possible, let us reduce the weight of a formal economy that oppresses us and wears us down, through everything that contradicts a good life for everyone or destroys nature.

Gustavo Esteva is a grassroots activist and deprofessionalized intelectual. He received the National Award of Economics in 1978, the Mexican Pulitzer in 2006, as well as an honorary degree, honoris causa, from the University of Vermont. He was Chairman of the Board of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and advisor to the Zapatistas. Author of more than 30 books and many essays. He can be contacted at gustavoesteva@gmail.com

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A French lesson about the poverty of rich countries

 

Mark Steel: 

Published: 21 November 2007

One impact of these strikes in France is that it's confused some of the people who write about such events. Which is why you get articles that seem to go "In a modern globalised economy, old-fashioned militancy simply has no power. That's what these train drivers must realise as they bring the entire country to a stand-still, their powerless union wrecking the economy, not just of France but of Europe and most of outer space. And now loads of other workforces are coming out on strike as well! Haven't they read my book explaining how this can't happen any more? So now, because of them, to get to my lecture entitled, 'The utter futile pointlessness of ever imagining a strike these days could have the tiddliest impact' I've got to bloody well walk!"
Also, being French, the strikes have been carried off with a certain panache. For example, opera singers joined in the dispute, which must have made for the most imaginative picket lines, the soprano and alto alternating lines of "You are a scaaaaab" – "I'm going to work" – "You are a scaaaaaaab" – "I'm going to work" – "Then I must cast this rubble at your face, sir."
And now, in protest at the proposed closure of 200 courts, the legal profession and even judges have voted to strike. Perhaps the judges will have a demonstration, where they shout "What do we want?" – "In answering that chant I want you to consider carefully the evidence provided."
The case against the strikes is the genuinely old-fashioned one, that the workforces involved are defending privileges, such as pensions after 30 years of work, which can no longer be afforded. So an economics lecture supporting the French government would say, "It was one thing having these pensions back in the 1960s when we were much poorer, but now society is much richer they'll have to be scrapped. Because as everyone knows, the richer you get, the less you can afford things."
This is why lottery winners, as soon as they collect their cheque, sell all their records and turn the heating off, aware they'll no longer be able to wallow in their old privileges. And it's well known that when the plough was invented, all the peasants were gathered together and told, "This little beauty will do the work in half the time. And that's marvellous because it means now we've all got to work five hours extra every day".
The argument to scrap these "privileges" goes on to explain that they cripple the economy, making everyone worse off. So presumably the French should be more like the British, because we've been far-sighted enough to have much worse pension schemes, and our working week is on average 2.63 hours longer than the French one. So obviously that makes us better off. But even we're lagging behind truly modern economies, like Burma, where there are no pensions and people are forced to work all day and night or be whacked with a stick. They're rolling in it, the jammy bastards.
Seeing as the new government in France is determined to smash the culture of unearned privilege, Nicolas Sarkozy must be familiar with the characters at the top of the French rich-list. The No.1 spot in this list is a surprise, as you would imagine it must be occupied by a train driver from Lille with lots of stubble, but it turns out that it's Bernard Arnault, chairman of Christian d'Or, who's worth $21bn. He must be in a really outdated union.
It can appear to be a miracle that anyone in France could get that rich, because the place is often presented as a basket-case in which businessmen can't set up the slightest project without provoking a demonstration involving 10,000 burning pigs being dumped in their garden. But the French economy has grown at a similar rate to the rest of the Western world over the last 10 years, with one main difference, that the richest one per cent haven't become three times richer in real terms over the last 10 years, as they have in America and Britain.
This boom for the super-wealthy might be connected to the attitude of Labour's John McFall, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, who was asked this week whether Northern Rock should be nationalised. And he replied: "I've spoken to no one in the City who feels that's the way to go." So that's how economic decisions are taken. The Government rings up the City and says, "Who do you think should pay for this latest crisis? Should it be you, who caused it, or everyone else, who didn't cause it? I see – everyone else it is then. Thanks for your expert analysis."
Sarkozy represents the frustrated wing of French business that wants their country to be handed to the same City types, their one per cent. Whereas some of the strikers appear to have grasped that when a government proposes cutting pensions, closing 200 courts, cutting 11,000 primary school teachers and privatising parts of the university system, these aren't random flights of madness but part of a pattern. And surely any policy that says, "The way we run our railways is outdated – let's run them more like the system they have in Britain", can't be allowed to succeed.

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Chavez and Venezuela

Johann Hari: Chavez must avoid the trap of dictatorship
Venezuela's leader has transformed his country for the better. But he can't afford to feed his enemies' prejudices
Published: 19 November 2007

Hugo Chavez touches down in London this week, to a blaze of slander and lies about his record so far. The Venezuelan President will be dubbed "a military dictator", a "caudillo", a "murderer" and worse. Ah well – at least on this trip Elizabeth Windsor is unlikely to tell him to "shut up", as the Spanish king did during a summit in Chile last week.

So before the misrepresentations begin, let's establish some facts. Before Chavez was elected president in 1998, the country's oil wealth was used exclusively to enrich a tiny white-skinned elite. The forgotten, darker-skinned majority were left to fester in barrios made of mud and rusting tin in the high hills that ring Venezuela's cities. They could only peer down at a marble-white world they would never enter, except as cleaners and skivvies.

Chavez ran for office promising to spend the petro-dollars on them – and he kept his promise. In 2003, two distinguished consulting firms conducted the most detailed study of economic change under Chavez in Venezuela. The results were astonishing. The poorest half of the country has seen their incomes soar by 130 per cent after inflation. Access to clean water is up from 79 per cent to 91 per cent. Access to medical care is at unprecedented levels. In 1998, there were 1,628 primary care doctors in the country. Today, there are 19,571 – an increase by a factor of 10.

I have seen the human stories that lie behind these sterile-sounding statistics. Last year, in the collapsing old barrios, I met women who had been drinking stale water out of barrels all their lives, and now giggled with glee to have fresh running water in their homes. I went to clean, new clinics where tens of thousands of poor people were seeing a doctor for the first time. I spoke to an old man who had been blind for 20 years. He had been given a cataract operation for free – and now he could see again. The oil wealth was suddenly being used to lift up these people, rather than keep them down – just as they demanded at the ballot box.

That's why Venezuelans think their country has become more democratic under Chavez. According to Latinobarometro, the gold standard for Latin American opinion polling, some 32 per cent of people felt satisfied with their democratic process in 1998. Today, it is 58 per cent – more than 20 points ahead of the Latin American average.

But is there a danger Chavez will play into the hands of his critics, and become dictatorial after all? This suggestion will intensify over the next month, as we approach 2 December – the date on which Venezuelans vote on his new proposals to amend the constitution. There are dozens of clauses: the working week will be shortened to 36 hours, extremely popular in a country where most work is back-breaking and tedious.

There will be legal guarantees that private homes can never be expropriated by the government. Much more power will be devolved to elected local councils. But the most controversial clause is an end to the two-term limits on the presidency. This means that Chavez will be able to run again and again for the presidency, for as long as the people want him. There are cries that this will make him a dictator – but using this logic, Britain, France and Germany are dictatorships too.

So why the persistent claims that Chavez is a strongman? There are many bogus reasons to say this – and a few real reasons to worry. Chavez is in a difficult position for any leader in a democracy: his country contains a vociferously, violently anti-democratic minority who are determined to overturn the will of the majority. Venezuela's white elite have been astonished by their sudden loss of power and privilege. They were accustomed to seeing the country's petro-wealth as their private preserve. They are supported by the US government, who are appalled that their corporations suddenly have been asked by Chavez to pay their fair share – and by his attempts to spread this model abroad. From the moment Chavez was elected, they have fought to topple him.

First, they tried an economic siege: the Venezuelan rich went on strike. They locked the workers out of their factories and firms in an attempt to bring the country's economy crashing down. It failed. So next they tried a recall referendum, gathering millions of signatures to rerun the election. Chavez prevailed again, with a bigger majority.

Then came their most dramatic move. In April 2002, they seized the Presidential Palace and kidnapped Chavez. Backed by the Bush administration, they immediately dissolved the parliament, the constitution, and the supreme court, and declared martial law. But the Venezuelan poor refused to watch their democracy die. They came out on to the streets in their millions – risking being gunned down – to demand Chavez's return. The newspapers and TV channels refused to cover this, because their owners helped plan the coup. But the soldiers holding Chavez felt ashamed, and released him.

What do you do in a democracy when the owners of a free press militate to overthrow the democratic process itself? It's a genuinely difficult question, and I don't know the answer. I do know that if it happened in Britain – if Gordon Brown was kidnapped by a foreign-backed minority determined to end democracy, and ITV and Channel 4 helped plan it – we would react in a much more stringent way than Chavez. He waited two years to deny a terrestrial licence to just one of the channels that backed the coup. Almost none of the coup plotters has been jailed. The newspapers are still free to be violently against Chavez, as they are almost all the time.

And yet ... and yet ... being kidnapped and nearly killed with the support of the US government has indeed had a radicalising influence on Chavez. At his best, Chavez cites social democratic thinkers like J K Galbraith. At his worst, he praises communists like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. When I met up with Chavez last year, I was alarmed when he told me: "I don't think in Cuba there is a lack of freedom of speech. There is no repression in Cuba ... Is it true that by electing a president or prime minister every five years you have democracy? Is it because you have press and TV channels that you have freedom of speech?"

It wasn't a rousing defence of liberal freedoms. Yet there has been only one hint so far that he could act on these thoughts: last year, he asked the parliament to vote to allow him to rule by decree on a dozen issues, for 18 months. These Castroite instincts plainly struggle within his chest against much more impressive ones.

Up to now, Chavez has offered a shimmering model of pro-poor democratic development, at the tip of the most unequal continent on earth. It would be a tragedy if – after extending real freedom, and saving hundreds of thousands of lives among the poor – Chavez did turn into the dictator that his enemies have painted him as.

America's Invisible Empire

by David Ludden

The American imperial empire has remained largely invisible: only
very recently have Americans just begun to learn about their imperial
history. But information about empire is fragmented and extensively
filtered and the American public remains by and large unaware of the
reality and costs of empire. Until empire is placed on the public
agenda, it can never be effectively criticised or made an object of
basic policy change.
David Ludden


In the old days of imperialism, before 1945, citizens of imperial
nations learned about their empires in school; they imbibed imperial
anxiety and pride, and discussed and debated empire publicly. It was
never thus in America, where US empire remains mostly invisible.
Americans are just now starting to learn about their imperial
history, amidst its current crisis, but there is pervasive resistance
to such learning, which contradicts patriotic truths about American
national character. Resistance to learning supports a national denial
of reality that keeps Americans ignorant of the empire built,
maintained, and defended in their name. This ignorance helps explain
the cognitive shock - as distinct from the emotional and ethical
horror - of events on September 11, 2001. For most Americans, the
animosity in those planes appeared literally out of nowhere.

National ideology only begins to explain the gap between America's
identity in the world and its self-understanding. In the world of
national states that emerged after 1945, the old meaning of 'empire'
became archaic, because no country could then legitimately administer
another country. In addition, America itself emerged from an
anti-imperial struggle; and it supported national movements
elsewhere, from 19th century Latin America to 20th century Africa,
Asia, and west Asia. Support for nationalist struggles could not
be offered to communists, however; they had to be constructed as
aliens in their own lands, no matter how indigenous their roots, most
notably, in Vietnam, where France and America drew a line between
north and south that made liberation forces in the north seem alien
invaders, while Americans backed 'native' nationalists in the south.
Embracing this kind of ideological history, Americans can never admit
to being imperialists.

After 1945, imperialism acquired a new format under American
leadership. First, the cold war allowed the US to expand military,
economic, and political power around the world, posing as a crusader
against communism, committed to liberal modernisation. In 1989, the
cold war ended; then economic globalisation, global security, and a
war on terrorism came to justify more US expansion. Since 1945, US
power has expanded steadily and dramatically; it now covers the world
of nations, but does not deploy the formal discourse of imperialism.
Rather, the US sees itself as the world's leader. Americans lead
global progress, facing enemies and obstacles everywhere. In this
guise, America uses its power inside international institutions, like
the UN, but strikes on its own when necessary. America refuses to
allow international laws to operate inside US borders unless they
conform to US law. Thus, US power projects itself onto the world, but
the world cannot respond; this imbalance is typical of the imperial
settings, but Americans think of it instead as a natural state for
the 'world's only superpower'.

A flurry of books has appeared recently in America using the term
'empire' to describe US power. The term is beginning to appear
flattering in some circles. The growth of an American empire built on
the old repertoire of 'indirect rule' had been obvious outside
America for decades before 'empire' began to appear in US public
discourse, after the conquest of Iraq without international
legitimacy. Nevertheless, the idea that the US is an imperial power
is not popular among Americans. Journalists, scholars, teachers,
students, analysts, and politicians prefer to depict the US as a
nation pursuing its own interests and ideals. The phrase 'American
empire' will not appear in 2004 election debates, where voters will
focus on domestic and foreign policy issues. The war in Iraq is a
bigger issue with each passing day, not because of Iraqi suffering,
but because of American deaths. Wars come home when bright young
people return dead; and to make matters worse, people do not
understand the war in Iraq, which most people supported out of
patriotic fervour, trusting their president to lead. Now, US
'intelligence' is under scrutiny. Everyone knows Bush lied about
'weapons of mass destruction.' The war in Iraq appears now to have
been a mistake, but the US cannot simply back out, and Kerry along
with all but one US Senator voted for the war, and Kerry says the US
must stay to see the job done.

Living conditions in Iraq are not a political issue in America. Few
people even know what they are. Only bombing and death are in the
news, sometimes called features of 'resistance' to a US occupation
that must seem to most Americans not as popular in Iraq as US
propaganda once portrayed it. No one in the US could now believe that
ordinary Iraqis want Americans there, based on reading or watching
the news. US voters will never see in the news the vast suffering in
Iraq caused by American empire; instead they will see security
threats and policy options. The cost of empire at home is not open
for discussion. The war budget is called a 'defence budget' and
continues to soar, without protest. The empire continues to operate
out of public view. A tiny proportion of decisions that sustain the
empire ever come under public scrutiny.

Fears, Then and Now

This imperial condition contrasts sharply with that of Britain in the
old days. US taxpayers and voters pay the entire cost of the America
empire, and so must be kept in the dark about its operations. The
British people never paid for the empire that so many loved because
it was funded by Asians and Africans. If Americans ever engaged in a
cost-benefit analysis of the US empire, who knows what would happen.
But you can be sure, that will not happen soon, because Americans do
not see their empire; what they see is an ever-more-pressing,
ever-more-expensive need for national security. Global threats to
America must be magnified as much as possible to keep the empire
going despite its rapidly rising cost and surely diminishing returns.
Bill Clinton began scaring Americans about terrorism. But 9/11 was
the biggest gift imaginable for American imperialists: it buried the
empire out of sight under the iconic rubble and dust of the Twin
Towers.

Once upon a time, Americans believed that Soviets would attack them
with nuclear missiles. In the 1950s, we as school children hid under
our desks for air raid drills once a week. Families built bomb
shelters in their basements. In classrooms, cinema halls, and TV
cartoons, Americans learned that a 'communist menace' roamed the
world and that only strong, brave American soldiers could defend the
world against the 'Soviet threat'. America was like Superman, called
to duty when evil reared its head, and otherwise living as a
'mild-mannered reporter', Clark Kent. The idea that America is
essentially good, caring, innocent, even naïve, like Clark Kent, has
managed to survive inside US popular culture despite virtually
continuous US imperial warfare since 1945.

Not only do Americans wear ideological blinders, they daily imbibe
information filtered and fed by media barons, politicians, scholars,
and educators who collaborate in imperialism for different reasons,
typically unknowingly. Individualism combined with expert
specialisation creates incoherently fragmented images of an imperial
reality that looks like an elephant groped by four blind men: one
feels the feet and calls it a tree; another feels the trunk and calls
it a snake; and each in turn is convinced by his own palpable facts,
but as a group they cannot describe what is there. In the same way,
some Americans focus on Islamic ideology; some, on nuclear threats;
some, on evil rulers; some, on the ghostly al-Qaeda; some, on
military options; and others, on civilian and economic issues. Many
Americans are humanitarians concerned with suffering. But each group
having gathered its own data on its specialised topic, and each
struggling daily with work and family - 'just making a living,' as we
say - their understandings do not add up to a coherent picture.
Empire appears to be a piecemeal scattering of individual facts and
events, never a coherent product of a democratic political system
where many people might oppose empire, if they could, but where
voting against it is not an option.

The ideological composition of American knowledge also leads
Americans into raging debates among blind men, instead of into a
serious search for better information. Foreign information and
opinions are discounted, as in other countries. Non-nationals are
always kept away from the levers of public opinion. Because the US
has such a heavy impact on so many countries, this nationalist
resistance to foreign opinion might be usefully compared to a father
discounting cries of pain from his family and neighbours. A US
national structure of intellectual work and debate sets firm limits
on factual input and applies appropriate filters. Most Americans
never learn anything about any other country except what is deemed
relevant to the American national context by American experts and
defenders. Americans learn a lot about the world, but not what people
in other countries want Americans to learn. Rather, Americans learn
how every country fits into the American scheme. Some fit better than
others, and those that do not fit need fixing. The world appears to
be a collection of countries where people emulate America, and where
people who can migrate come to America to thrive inside an absorbent
American culture that seems to provide a workable model of the world,
a much better model, indeed, than the United Nations. In the American
model, all cultural diversity fits neatly inside a politics of
identity that revolves around the white elites who prescribed the US
constitution, assay US values, and dominate all major US
institutions. Most Americans believe that people everywhere would be
better off adopting the American model of cultural and political
stability and economic progress.

The confidence with which American feminists promoted the
criminalisation of the Taliban and conquest of Afghanistan is a good
indication of how liberal Americans support imperial expansion.
Liberal democrats led the fight against communism at home and abroad.
Liberals and conservatives equally support the US empire, whose name
they dare not speak in public. The empire will not be undone until
its reality and costs become visible to Americans who might think
about dismantling it, if they could only see it. Until empire is on
the public agenda in America, it can never be effectively criticised
or made an object of basic policy change. Effective challenges will
not appear on the battlefield, let alone among the rubble of suicide
bombers; they will begin in newspapers, magazines, books, schools,
email, blogs, chat rooms, drinking halls, churches, and dinner
parties; then they will move into the streets and finally into
election campaigns.

Americans can eventually imbibe the wisdom of the world and engage in
dialogue with people who experience US empire from the other side. It
is critically important to write books based on experience outside
America to sell in America; to get citizens of the world and foreign
students in America to bear witness in public to the US empire at
work in the world at large; and to organise programmes for action
around the world that make sense in America yet change the way
Americans think. Obstacles to all these critical endeavours are
formidable and mounting under the paranoid national security regime
in America today.

© Copyright 2001