American v Chinese Presidents

 

Samir Amin 2006: "US Economy lives as a parasite off its partners with virtually no national savings of its own"

 

Israel signed the Genocide Convention in 1950

Israel signed the Genocide Convention in 1950.

Israel ratified the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1991.

And, others which Israel has and has not signed: https://hrlibrary.umn.edu/research/ratification-israel.html

Indian Elections 2024

Indian Elections 2024

India has shown that even a liberal democracy with its limitations can serve as a voice of the people against fascism. At least India has something to save : a secular socialist Constitution that was forged by anti colonial freedom fighters. We in Pakistan should know this!

All eyes on Rafah

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Genocide Joe

More and more are quitting Genocide Joe's government. May the whole house fall down and a people’s era dawn!

Support for the struggle will never come from international organizations, which have no interest in real democracy that serves the popular will.

 1) This Weekend’s DC Protest Was Largest Pro-Palestine Mobilization in US History on November 5, 2023 in Truthout. 

The event was organized by a coalition that included the Palestinian Youth Movement, ANSWER Coalition, American Muslim Alliance, The People’s Forum, National Students for Justice in Palestine, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), and Maryland2PalestineOrganizers. Organizers said in a statement that the march was “the culmination of weeks of protests in cities across the country.”  

Mass marches and direct actions in the U.S., including large scale blockades and sit-ins, have drawn historic levels of participation in recent days, as Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has continued to intensify.

2) There Can Be No Peace in Sudan Without the Democratic Empowerment of Its People BY MUZAN ALNEEL in https://jacobin.com

The US and other Western governments cozied up to the Sudanese coup leaders who have now plunged the country into violent chaos. The only true hope for peace and democracy in Sudan lies with the popular resistance committees that are organizing against war.

Popular PowerFor more than a year since the coup on October 25 2021 the Sudanese resistance front has organized weekly protests led by neighborhood resistance committees. The demonstrators chant slogans calling for free education and health care public safety the army’s return to barracks and the dissolution of the RSF (in Arabic: صحة تعليم مجان والشعب يعيش في امان والعسكر للثكنات والجنجويد ينحل).

The international diplomats who invested their efforts in advocating and facilitating talks and agreements with the coup perpetrators judged these demands to be unrealistic and immature. 

More than eight thousand neighborhood resistance committees engaged in the process that produced the Revolutionary Charter for the Establishment of People’s Power. This was a document that included a road map for rebuilding the government from the bottom up starting from local councils all the way to a national legislative body that would select and oversee the executive.

When the fighting broke out it was the experiences and tools of popular organizing that came to the rescue of the Sudanese people. Khartoum’s neighborhood resistance committees issued a joint statement on the second day clarifying their position: “We are not impartial as we are engaged in peaceful struggle against the militarization of our country.” 

On the ground neighborhood groups were created on messaging apps such as WhatsApp focusing on the provision of services for the residents of their neighborhoods. This work included providing updates on what shops and bakeries were open and the availability of water and electricity sources as well as information on safe routes and assistance with evacuations from high-risk areas.

Support for the Sudanese people in this struggle will never come from the existing international organizations, which have no interest in real democracy that serves the popular will. 

3) Government of Kerala declares May 17 as Kudumbashree Day

Kudumbashree, which started working in the state in 1998 with the aim of absolute poverty eradication and economic-social empowerment of women, will complete twenty-five years on 17 May 2023. 

See more on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudumbashree. 

4) Imran Khan’s Arrest Has Brought Pakistan One Step Closer to the Brink BY AYYAZ MALLICK on 05.19.2023 in Jacobin.

The Pakistani authorities arrested former PM Imran Khan earlier this month, provoking a violent backlash from his supporters. Pakistan is going through a profoundly dangerous crisis where miscalculation by the main political actors could result in disaster.

In response for at least a few days in central Pakistan the military faced a measure of comeuppance that was long overdue. Over the last seventy years the Pakistani ruling bloc —especially its militarized core — has consistently instrumentalized forces and discourses of the conservative right to suppress every progressive stirring in Pakistani society in the name of national security. Pakistan’s ruling bloc has crushed every popular movement for freedom and self-determination in the name of national security.

The bloc has choked every democratic impulse in the name of religion and crushed every popular movement for freedom and self-determination in the name of national security. It has invaded and destroyed the privacy of homes and violated the sanctity of life and body through forced disappearances.

Now however a popular force has emerged — to be sure a popular force of the Right — that has invaded and looted the extraordinarily ornate homes of Pakistan’s generals.

Every major faction party and institution of the Pakistani ruling bloc was thus involved in this brazen robbery of the public. From the PML-N and the PPP to Khan’s reigning PTI government and the military establishment all have benefitted from their cozy relationship with the real estate monopolies. Hence the extraordinary nimbleness of state and polity in minimizing Riaz’s losses when the Supreme Court and UK NCA judgements appeared.

In Pakistan networks of patronage and graft function to keep unreliable allies onside. They also help tie contractors middlemen and capitalists both large and small to the Pakistani state and its mainstream parties through highly personalized linkages.

The narrow social base and modus operandi of the ruling bloc also conditions the populist insurgency represented by Khan and his PTI movement. On the one hand limited opportunities for the accumulation of wealth and the diminishing scale of imperial patronage available over the last decade especially from the United States has driven different fractions of the ruling elite to engage in fratricidal conflict over what’s left.

The PTI has no systematic program or vehicle of terror on the model of the Nazi Brownshirts or the Hindutva right’s Bajrang Dal in India. Nor do Khan and the PTI possess the organized social base, especially among the popular classes, that has characterized fascisms, both historical and contemporary.

Khan’s right-wing populism represents neither anti-imperialism nor fascism. It derives from the historical failings of Pakistan’s ruling bloc and its reliance on theological and patriotic obfuscations to legitimize itself. Khan himself has emerged as an alternative focus of attraction and devotion to the military in central Pakistan.

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7) Death by a Thousand Small Cuts: The Problem with Low Quality Oppression by Christine Mungai and Dan Aceda on April 11, 2019 in The Elephant. 

The problem with this low-quality oppression is the way it clouds your mind and robs you of language, precision and analytical power. And it keeps you busy dealing with it so that you cannot even properly engage with more systemic problems.  

This “colonial mental disorder” as Fanon would call it is in our view a broader problem that we call “low quality oppression” whose insidious effects are more serious than you might imagine. And yes it’s odd that we have reached the stage where we can rank and rate oppression the same way we give stars to online products. But this is the reality of living in this country at this time. Our reality can be so dire sometimes that with all manner of oppression attacking from all sides we must prioritise. Do we first deal with nepotism profligate spending and outright theft in government or do we pause a little and first push through the application for a birth certificate?

You see, in this part of the world, it is common for extremely important but low-level government services to get stuck in a bureaucratic process because “mkubwa hayuko” (the Important Person is not around).

“Corruption” is one such dominant political vernacular that houses all our collective anger and anxiety of living under a political system where outright theft is the order of the day. “Development” is another political vernacular that is the repository of all our dreams and what we want to be. These two act in concert with each other, disciplining our minds and tethering our freedom dreams, taking them down the same, predictable path.

“Development captures ­imaginations—one is not permitted to think beyond, against, or beside development,” Macharia writes. “But the failure of development projects – often through corruption – only leads to demands for more development projects, and quite often the same ones.”

8) Dismantling Of PTI And Lessons Unlearned by Pervez Hoodbhoy  on May 24, 2023 in https://dissenttoday.net/opinion/dismantling-of-pti-and-lessons-unlearned/. 

The military establishment has learned no lessons from the failure of Project Imran. The army is too powerful too entrenched and too deeply imbued with the notion that it is the only savior of Pakistan. The retreat we are presently seeing is purely temporary and the offence posture is coming back. Yes Project Imran crashed and therefore last November we had outgoing General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s famous mea culpa where he confessed that for seven decades the army had “unconstitutionally interfered in politics”.

9) “I write with the same hands that carried shit”: Reading Pandiyakannan’s ‘Salavaan’ by Ashik Kahina in https://www.himalmag.com.  25 May 2023. 

The Tamil writer Pandiyakannan the first novelist from the Kuravar community offers an intimate portrait of the lives of manual scavengers. 

The five landscapes into which the Tamil country has been classified since the Sangam age are common knowledge: kurinci (hills), mullai (forest), marutam (fields), neytal (coast) and palai (wasteland). 

The Kuravars are the indigenous people of kurinci land. The earliest Sangam poems describe the men as hunters of honey and game and the women as soothsayers. The description of Kuravars in the classic Tamil poem Kuttrala Kuravanci – made popular through modern-day versions by the Dravidian leader M Karunanidhi and the Bharatanatyam dancer Rukmini Devi Arundale – shows some consistency with descriptions of them from the Sangam age, suggesting that the Kuravars were engaged in their traditional vocations as late as the 18th century, when the Kuravanci was written. 

The 19th century brought seismic changes. The British colonial government razed vast swathes of forest in the hills to make way for plantations, railways and towns. The Kuravars, like many other indigenous communities, were displaced and made nomads, living off any work they could get.

Resisting encroachment landed them on the government's list of "criminal tribes" and behind the bars of its multiplying prisons.

That first edition, published by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-affiliated Bharathi Puthakalayam, was riddled with errors and barely readable. 

"Salavaan" means male pig. In addition to doing sanitation work, the Kuravars in the novel raise, butcher and sell pigs for a living. Pigs are central to the special events in their lives: funerals are incomplete without pork, pigs are given as dowry. 

In Pandiyakannan's telling of history, the Cholas, who ruled one of the three great empires in Tamil history, kept battalions of pigs in their army. When they invaded the lands of other kingdoms, they would send the pig battalions first to wreck their fields and plantations.

It is common for works of fiction to disavow their relation to real people or events, but Pandiyakannan proudly avows that every person and every event in the novel is real, drawn from his own life or the lives of those close to him.

Critics like Raj Gauthaman have written about how a lack of intimacy or concern with Dalit life led even the greatest of modern Tamil writers – Pudumaipithan, for example – to rely on stereotypes when depicting Dalits in their work. There is now a consensus, consolidated and affirmed by Dalit cultural organisations such as the film director Pa Ranjith's Neelam, that since the 1990s, when Dalits took charge of their own stories, a true picture of Dalit life in all its dimensions has emerged in the Tamil literary mainstream.

Salavaan is a novel in this tradition. It is not as coherent or powerful as Gorky's novel of proletarian uprising, but, unlike Mother, it has close descriptions of work, and the dialogue is not redolent of the stage. It possesses a greater intimacy and objectivity than Gorky's work, plunging the reader deep into the everyday world of its characters without interpreting it for them. Readers are unlikely to find anywhere else such intricate accounts of sanitation work – which, in conversation, Pandiyakannan called "a permanent war, a daily battle with death."

It was and remains usual to reward a party's most loyal and effective workers with high posts in government, but the DMK was, and still is, selective about the castes it gives power to. Pandiyakannan's father was rewarded with a government job, but only as a sanitation worker: a job deemed suitable for a Kuravar. Pandiyakannan's father accepted the post and remained a supporter of the DMK, as well as a thorn in its side, for as long as he lived, organising and leading a sanitation workers' union in Virudhunagar.

One of Pandiyakannan's favourite novels is the Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov's Farewell Gulsary!, published in 1966. Its protagonists are Tanabai, now an old man but once a hero of the Russian Revolution, and the equally old and frail Gulsary, once a decorated racehorse. Stalin's regime pushes them into poverty, homelessness and obscurity. The novel consists of Tanabai recounting his life story to his horse as they wander in search of a home. Aitmatov's attempt to preserve the history of the Russian Revolution against Stalinist erasure inspired the final section of Salavaan, where Pandi tells Balan how he led a historic sanitation workers' strike.

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“They are getting richer and building empires over our bodies”

 1) Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda:

“They are getting richer and building empires over our bodies”

“Dear brothers and sisters in humanity, we are living in a dirty, ugly unfortunate world and in its worst era, I have never seen all of you or hear your stories, life struggles and hopes but I truly believe that standing for Gaza - Palestine is also standing for your lives and families, the devil is the same, capitalism and capitals.. colonialism and colonisers and their belief that they own us and our world.. and that it’s ok to plan everything related to us and our children years before we find out the disaster (NAKBA) we are all in!!! Hhhh when the real designers die then the next colonisers start apologising and condemning, and continue to fool us.. Colonisers are not creative." 

From: https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1796954144139317516. Sunday 2 June 

2) Lines of grief: 

3) Zionism was a...flower grown from European nationalism, anti-Semitism and colonialism, while Palestinian nationalism, derived from the great wave of Arab and Islamic anti-colonial sentiment.

—Edward Said

4)  “Israel burned men, women and children alive. And the world stands by.”

“It’s unbelievable the genocide that is happening. A child with no head! And Israel says it’s a mistake.” “I hope that Netanyahu burns in hell!”

See the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H21edCN3Q7c. 

5) Whoever thought Trump was/is isolationist, his legacy is here. Abraham Accords.

The American DEMOCRACY is a sham. It's a 1-party imperialist system.

6) So what's really hurting the empire's information interests today is the fact that there was widespread social consciousness about Palestine already in place before the Gaza assault began, combined with the consciousness-expanding effects of social media and the ease with which ordinary people can now circulate raw video footage. Which really goes to illustrate the fact that consciousness and dysfunction cannot coexist, whether you're talking about humans as individuals or as a collective. If we can really see something and deeply understand it, it's much harder for depravity to function. Caitlin Johnstone@caitoz

Twitter post: https://x.com/caitoz/status/1797026945668190609 1 June 2024

7) Bombed by US and UK warplanes just last night, yet here they are in their MILLIONS for the 33rd consecutive week, mobilising for Gaza: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeHnJmm_fNo. 

1 June 2024

6) Understanding South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel by Sohela Surajpal and  Justin Winchester in Africa is a Country on 01.10.2024:

First South Africa argues that Israel is killing Palestinians in Gaza in large numbers, with more than 21,110 Palestinians reported killed since  October 7, and an estimated 7,780 people missing presumed dead. 

Second South Africa argues that Israel is causing serious bodily and mental harm to Palestinians in Gaza with an estimated 55243 Palestinians already wounded by Israel since October 7  many with serious burns amputations and suffering the effects of banned chemical weapons. 

Third Israel is inflicting on Palestinians conditions of life intended to bring about their destruction as a group.

Fourth Israel is destroying the life of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel has destroyed homes hospitals schools university campuses museums historical archives and ancient cultural sites approximately 318 Christian and Muslim religious sites courts parliamentary buildings libraries agricultural land bakeries and electricity water and sewage infrastructure. In doing so Israel has targeted “life-sustaining infrastructure” the “infrastructure and foundations of Palestinian life”.

Finally by killing and injuring a disproportionate number of women and children including pregnant women and denying them access to healthcare South Africa argues that Israel is imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births.

On genocidal intent (usually the most difficult requirement to prove) South Africa quotes what it calls “significant and overt” statements of genocidal intent.  

Why does South Africa get to appoint a Judge?  Both Israel and South Africa have been allowed to appoint ad hoc judges to the bench that will consider this matter. The governing statute of the ICJ provides that a party to a case before the ICJ with no judge of its nationality on the bench may choose a person to sit as a judge in that specific case under specific conditions. These ad hoc judges are likely to be more familiar with the context and views of the state that has appointed them, which can be useful to the ICJ when considering complex matters.

Regardless of the outcome South Africa’s application creates a public record of Israel’s actions and forces Israel to publicly account for its conduct in a legal forum relying on evidence rather than bad-faith hysterics. This can only help the Palestinian cause.

7) Artists for Palestinians. 29 May 2024 

8) We too are culpable by Enver Motala in Africa is a Country on 11.02.2023. 

We are witnessing the genocidal violence being perpetrated against the largely defenseless population of  Gaza. It is a unilateral war of annihilation conducted through the criminal collusion between some of the most powerful militarized states allied with the Zionist apartheid Israel. The barbaric acts we witness have also given rise to global protests and mobilization against Israeli apartheid Zionism US imperial interests and the complicity of other states against human rights and the very existence of Palestinians.Against this background one hears the question about why “the world is sitting still” why “world leaders” are not demanding a stop to these brutalities and why even multilateral agencies like the United Nations equivocate about Israel’s brutality seeking to win favor with Israel by pointing to acts of violence by Hamas. And why indeed powerful national institutions like universities have chosen to remain silent on these issues except where they have openly sided with apartheid Israel.

There are some obvious reasons why Israel remains at the fulcrum of collaboration against the Palestinian people. apartheid Israel’s actions can only be understood through its collaborations with imperial interests since without that it would not be possible for Israel alone to pursue its onslaught on Palestine.

The creation and existence of Israel also assuages the guilt that Imperial states bear, treating the establishment of the state of Israel as a response to Hitler’s fascist Holocaust even though it reinforces the racism deeply entrenched in the ideas of colonial empires together with the xenophobia against people who are not of European origin. 

In effect, Zionist Israel has, from its earliest days, been a favorite child of imperialist interest and is directly implicated in its global power both as a bulwark against the rise of socialist ideas in the Middle East and for its strategic location as explained above.

I think that one of the unacknowledged reasons why Zionist Israel has been able to act with such impunity and arrogance despite many condemnatory and openly hostile statements against it, is the fact that in reality, a large swathe of the members of society have deliberately chosen to remain silent or indifferent. 

I think that this can be attributed to the deep-seated, mostly unconscious, affinity with at least some of the values contained in reactionary Zionism and other conservative socio-economic and political ideologies.

What is the basis of these value systems reflecting the rise of a new global and neo-fascistic culture that mirrors what gave rise to World War II?

Firstly, these values are built on entrenching the power of a privileged caste within societies based on ideas about its specialness. This claim is derived from some or other proclamation, historical or religio-cultural demand that justifies such privilege. Secondly, is the claim of “superiority” derived from the belief that such a group is inherently endowed with some or other characteristic that entitles it to a preeminent place in society. 

They exist in our society despite the proclaimed advances in general levels of understanding and “civilization” because they are perpetuated by those who have an interest in constructing social relations that are unequal, exploitative, discriminatory, and oppressive. Regrettably, they also conform to what is often misconstrued as one’s “culture and tradition.”

9)  SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE - A RADICAL BLACK FEMINIST MANDATE: A READING LIST

“...I was born a Black woman and now I am become a Palestinian against the relentless laughter of evil there is less and less living room and where are my loved ones? It is time to make our way home.” — JUNE JORDAN, MOVING TOWARDS HOME (1982)

Azadi ka din

The nation state construct is a failure in every possible way, a dystopian nightmare of inequality, extremism, environmental degradation, advanced and hyper propaganda and constant war. And best of all, we in the Global South have forgotten who divided us. Let's hope we find new paradigms of organising ourselves and a new vision of "progress."

Admiration for Uju Anya 's truth

I totally loved Uju Anya's Tweets during this great reckoning with Queen Elizabeth's death! What an uproar , created by liberals and Monarchists, making us believe that the Queen didn't have a racist bone in her body and, that it is bad form to celebrate someone’s death. This selective morality that only protects that power of a colonial institution is an absolute lie! 

And, see this Tweet. Please let there be no doubt about what aid is : a successor to colonialism that is funded by the same imperial powers. It does not address the problematic world order that spends trillions on war. Aid is a geopolitical tool used by the same powers to appear good but keep the Global South in permanent crisis. Aid, as small and ineffective as it is as a permanent solution, is often withheld as punishment. Aid feeds a career industry  and, perpetuates Do Gooder /Saviour morality and, defends capitalism. Aid is so shockingly apolitical in its project-based work. And, women who work in this industry, especially white women, project White Feminism in all its glory. 

Are we supposed to be happy just because we can return to the banalities of capitalism the next day?

I'm sorry even I'm not sorry but have to talk in this foolish self evident fashion but I love this article. Every paragraph is quotable! 

Are we supposed to be happy just because we can return to the banalities of capitalism the next day?

This is part of a broader pattern in countries that have regular elections. The idea is that we are supposed to enthusiastically vote for someone but what are we supposed to do when the system consistently yields candidates that generate no enthusiasm? If we opt out we invite a Trumpian moment that might generate unprecedented harm. You might vote him out after a term but what about the irreversible harm that is done in the interim? If we opt in are we endorsing a system that is designed to deliver kakistocracies? Is the solution mandatory voting or ranked choice voting?

Outsiders praise the Handshake as a moment that allowed Kenyans to return to capitalism without confronting the country’s political demons.

I fear this election result does not bode well for Kenya. At best it signifies that we’ve failed to teach our young population our contemporary histories. At worst we’ve made a devastating mistake. The next five years in Kenya were going to be difficult regardless of who won: The world is in a bad place and Kenya is not immune to the fallout. But it all feels rather more ominous when you think you have a bad captain steering the ship through the choppy waters.

The article is The Kenyan Kakistocracy by  Nanjala Nyabola in The Nation. 

Feminist Eid

Kavita and I are away from Islamabad for Aurat Azadi March but there in full spirit. My journey as a feminist includes nurturing and training of Kavita as one, too. She and I made our own posters showing mother and daughter in our own feminist space.  

Feminism doesn't trickle down

Feminism and gender justice don't trickle down when we put women in senior positions in the state or capitalist structures. Liberia is a case in point which elected the first female President in Africa and, has awarded many senior positions to women in its post war era. Liberian women still struggle against sexual violence, poverty, health, injustice, patriarchal norms, etc. It shows what's also needed to bring change: independent grassroots feminism that will challenge the status quo.

I don't know how this phrase came into my mind but I've been thinking about posting thoughts on feminism and activism as March 8 approaches us. I'm happy to be back to my life here in Monrovia (although both the office and apartment locations have changed and I'm adjusting to the new spaces and tropical heat) but I miss Islamabad and the upcoming preparations for International Women's Day.

I met new Pakistani friends at dinner on Friday night (the Pakistani community here seems to be growing fast) and, pleased to meet a fellow feminist albeit she didn't want to say she is a feminist but spoke a thoroughly feminist language. I told her the silver lining of being in Islamabad the past 3 years was the chance to join the feminist movement and learn what it is all about. And, I was inspired by how women are challenging the state, norms, the patriarchy with all their might, their brains , their analysis. That it gives me hope by seeing "kis tarha woh aur hum muqabla kar rahain hain."

I've been following conversations regarding preparations back in Islamabad and keen to see what will be organised here.

I have been thinking about devoting energy to studying independent feminist organisations and activities in Monrovia and indeed rest of Africa after my experience in Pakistan.

Liberia is an interesting case because it enjoyed so much international attention in its post war era but more than that, there was a very strong amazing female-entered narrative: that strong, famous and ordinary women banded together to help stop the civil war and encourage peace talks. And, not only that, great women leaders led the way in the new reformed state that was going to usher in a new era of justice, accountability, peace and equal development. Many women were appointed in senior positions in the Ellen government and, many NGOs sprung up to angle for Western/UN money to work in women's empowerment. Despite all that, Liberian women still suffer and, we still have a vastly underdeveloped country where basic services are still not available and, we are far away from a feminist utopia.

Wealth doesn't trickle down. Neither does feminism!