Trotsky in Mexico denouncing the Moscow trials
Stop the War, Peter Tatchell, and the malign legacy of Western liberalism
You have to feel for the Stop the War Coalition. Back in June I attended one of their conferences in London, where during one of the plenary meetings a few people voiced criticism from the floor over the organisation’s refusal to come down squarely on the side of Assad in the Syrian conflict. I have long expressed sympathy with this position, based on the concrete reality that if Assad falls Syria’s state institutions will fall, its army will disintegrate, and the country will descend into an abyss of bestial violence that would make the status quo seem like child’s play by comparison.
However I also understand that Stop the War is a coalition of disparate views on the particulars of the various conflicts that have scarred and continue to scar our world, and that therefore its focus has by necessity to remain on building consensus on the fundamental issue of opposing British military intervention in those conflicts. Without exception this military intervention has only succeeded in feeding and breeding instability and human suffering, rather than ending it.
Now STW find themselves under attack from voices accusing it of failing to take a stand against Assad and the Syrian government. A recent STW public meeting on Syria, held in the House of Commons, was loudly interrupted from the floor by Syrians opposed to Assad, and by Peter Tatchell, in what Stop the War describes on its website as an “organised disruption”. Afterwards, Tatchell shared his account of the experience on social media, accusing STW of refusing to allow those Syrians the right to speak, a claim the organisers of the meeting deny, before going on to denounce the organisation in withering terms. The story was subsequently picked up by the BBC.
I have had my share of differences with the Stop the War Coalition over the years, but I have no hesitation in crediting them with maintaining a principled opposition to wars and conflicts unleashed in the name of a status quo of injustice and might is right. Its organisers and activists have given over a decade’s service to exposing the hypocrisy and subterfuge employed to defend the indefensible, and consequently I feel duty bound to defend them now.
Peter Tatchell on the other hand is a classic example of the Western liberal whose conception of the world is akin to that of a child let loose with crayons on a blank sheet of paper, allowing said crayons to go wherever they please with no thought of the mess being made or lack of coherence being wrought.
Worse, he and his co-thinkers continue their slavish attachment to the wondrous virtues of ‘humanitarian intervention’, despite the history of the catastrophic consequences of this very concept in practice. Afghanistan is a failed state. Iraq is a failed state. Libya is a failed state. How many failed states must litter the globe, particularly the Middle East, before the penny drops? The mindset involved in continuing down this path regardless of the result is indistinguishable from the one described by Samuel Beckett, when he wrote: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.’
However in the case of Syria, as with Iraq and Libya before it, we are not talking about drawing pictures with crayons. We are instead talking about the fate of a nation and society that is engaged in an existential struggle for its very survival. Failure in such a scenario is not an option. It begs the question of whether people such as Peter Tatchell really care about Syria and the Syrian people, as they claim, or if on the contrary Syria is merely the latest in a catalogue of convenient excuses for promoting the cultural imperialism that resides deep in their hearts?
Moreover, do they stop for a moment to consider that millions of Syrians support Assad and the Syrian government? Are the views of those Syrians less worthy or legitimate than those of the Syrians opposed to Assad? Do they consider that those who do not share the view that Assad should be overthrown are not motivated by the belief that he is a benevolent leader, but rather that his government is all that currently stands between Syria’s survival as a secular state in which the rights of its minorities are protected, and it being turned into a mass grave by the modern incarnation of the Khmer Rouge?
The role of exiles, dissidents, and victims of abuse by governments across the Middle East in making the case for the West’s military interventions is nothing new. It follows a script written in the run up to previous wars, most recently Iraq and Libya, in which our bombs, missiles, and/or troops have been deployed and without exception sown disaster in the process.
But no matter, for the Western liberal one Arab country is as disposable as the next, with all that matters in their reductionist purview something they like to call ‘human rights’. In truth it is not human rights they champion but the right of the civilised, superior, and righteous West to go anywhere it pleases, bombing recalcitrant countries and lesser cultures into submission, or dictating to them how their countries and societies should be organised, blithely ignoring the particular and specific conditions out of which said countries and societies have developed and against which they are struggling to develop. No, for the Western liberal the world with all its complexity and challenges is reduced to a giant chessboard, upon which other nations are pieces to be moved around or removed as they see fit.
Western colonialism and imperialism has for centuries relied on the intellectual and ideological cover righteous and right-on liberals have provided it under the rubric of saving peoples from ‘tyrants’, whether the people concerned wish to be saved or not. In the process democracy and human rights are words chucked around like change in a millionaire’s pocket – and rendered just as meaningless. They champion the cause of justice and democracy within states, while in truth working to crush justice and democracy between states.
Just as a crayon in the hands of an unsupervised child spells havoc in the home, moralism in the breast of a liberal spells havoc in the world.
Quentin Tarantino’s stand on the side of victims of police brutality
After taking a public stance in solidarity with the victims of lethal violence in the United States, Hollywood filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is learning that free speech in the land of the free comes at a price.
The movie director recently attended a public demonstration in New York to commemorate the victims of police killings and protest against police brutality. He did so, he said, because he “stood on the side of the murdered.”
Those are undoubtedly strong words, which predictably have met with a fierce reaction in the shape of politicians, chiefs of police, and media commentators attacking him. Even more extreme has been the campaign launched by police unions across the country to boycott his movies – the latest of which, The Hateful Eight, is due for release in December.
Indeed such has been the controversy stirred up by Tarantino’s public stance and words that his own father, Tony Tarantino, has publicly distanced himself from his son’s sentiments, stating: “Cops are not murderers, they are heroes.”
However no amount of criticism of Quentin Tarantino, and no boycott campaign against his movies, can alter the fact that there is a serious and growing crisis within US law enforcement.
According to figures compiled by the website, The Counted, run by the UK Guardian newspaper, 950 people across the US have been killed by the police so far this year alone, 189 of them unarmed. Moreover, the majority of the victims, measured as a proportion of the population, have been black.
The crisis is both social and cultural in dimension. The increased militarisation of law enforcement in the US – involving the regular deployment of the kind of weaponry and equipment you would associate with a warzone – has only succeeded in feeding a macho ‘take no shit’ law enforcement culture that has long been prevalent. It underpins a ‘them or us’ outlook, one responsible for the growing polarisation between police officers and the public they are meant to be protecting and serving. Add to the mix institutional racism and mass poverty, especially within minority communities, and in the United States social cohesion is close to disintegrating completely.
Paradoxically, Quentin Tarantino was already part of the debate on the prevalence of gun violence in the US due to his movies, known for regularly portraying violence and violent characters in a flattering light, making both appear cool and sexy. However the filmmaker has always vehemently denied any connection between movies, such as his, which regularly depict gun violence and violent characters, and the real thing in wider society. In this regard he has consistently claimed that the violence in his movies is so exaggerated and outlandish, it is more akin to cartoon violence than real life.
But regardless of his movies, Quentin Tarantino is perfectly entitled to raise his voice along with others protesting the extent to which people are being gunned down by the police, and with seeming impunity. The problem, surely, is that police brutality and killings have reached the point where people feel the need to come out and protest against it. In fact it has now reached the point where people – especially minorities and from low income communities – are entitled to believe that rather than ensure their safety, police departments across America exist to intimidate, terrorize, and kill people. As Edward Snowden said: “Police officers kill more Americans than terrorism.”
One theme that comes over consistently in Tarantino’s body of work – Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django Unchained, and so on – is sympathy for those on the margins of society; its criminals, drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, killers, etc. It suggests an affinity with the ‘underclass’ that his critics will now seeks to exploit to denounce his appearance at an event on the side of the victims of police violence.
However, as well as diminishing the scope of the crisis, this misses the point entirely.
Quentin Tarantino is someone who has done very well in life. He is one of the world’s highest paid movie directors with millions of fans around the world. He is lauded as one of the greatest screenwriters and directors of all time, credited with creating a distinct oeuvre that has changed the nature of movie making. His work is even credited with having a marked impact on American culture, an achievement very few artists in any field can claim. As such, the filmmaker is someone who doesn’t need to expose himself to the kind of heat he has just generated in standing up against a law enforcement establishment that has circled the wagons in defense of the indefensible.
Much easier for someone in his position to instead remain ensconced in their Beverly Hills mansion, shut off from reality in a bubble of affluence and celebrity.
Instead he chose to come out and raise the profile of the victims and the communities most affected by the rising tide of police brutality in a country the world is continually being told is synonymous with liberty and freedom. This takes courage; the kind of moral courage that very few in his position possess.
Ultimately murder is murder, whether committed by someone carrying a gun and a badge, or whether by someone carrying a gun and no badge. Denying the connection between both is to deny justice to the victims of the former and their families.
The only problem with Quentin Tarantino’s stance is that there aren’t more like him. It is he, not those calling for a boycott of his movies, who is standing on the side justice in the land of the free.
St Crispin’s Day
Kevin Maguire backs Tim Roache for GMB general secretary
Seumas Milne appointed Labour’s Head of Strategy and Communications
Seumas Milne has been appointed as Labour’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications. Seumas joins the Labour Leader’s office on leave from the Guardian where he is a columnist and associate editor. He will take up his position on 26th October 2015.
Seumas is a former comment editor and labour editor at the Guardian. He previously worked at the Economist, is the author of books about the miners’ strike, global politics and economic policy and was for ten years an executive member of the National Union of Journalists.
The return of the Syrian Army
Robert Fisk
While the world still rages on at Russia’s presumption in the Middle East – to intervene in Syria instead of letting the Americans decide which dictators should survive or die – we’ve all been forgetting the one institution in that Arab land which continues to function and protect the state which Moscow has decided to preserve: the Syrian army. While Russia has been propagandising its missiles, the Syrian military, undermanned and undergunned a few months ago, has suddenly moved on to the offensive. Earlier this year, we may remember, this same army was being written off, the Bashar al-Assad government said to be reaching its final days.
We employed our own army of clichés to make the case for regime change. The Syrian army was losing ground – at Jisr al-Shugour and at Palmyra – and so we predicted that the whole Assad state had reached a “tipping point”.
Then along came Vladimir Putin with his air and missile fleets and suddenly the whole place is transformed. While we huffed and puffed that the Russians were bombing the “moderate” rebels – moderates who had earlier ceased to exist according to America’s top generals – we’ve been paying no attention to the military offensive which the Syrians themselves are now staging against the Nusra Front fighters around Aleppo and in the valley of the Orontes.
Syrian commanders are now setting the coordinates for almost every Russian air strike. They were originally giving between 200 and 400 coordinates a night. Now the figure sometimes reaches 800. Not that the Russians are going after every map reference, of course. The Syrians have found that the Russians do not want to fire at targets in built-up areas; they intend to leave burning hospitals and dead wedding parties to the Americans in Afghanistan. This policy could always change, of course. No air force bombs countries without killing civilians. Nor without crossing other people’s frontiers.
But the Russians are now telling the Turks – and by logical extension, this information must go to the Americans – their flight coordinates. Even more remarkable, they have set up a hotline communications system between their base on the Syrian Mediterranean coast and the Israeli ministry of defence in Tel Aviv. More incredible still is that the Israelis – who have a habit of targeting Syrian and Iranian personnel near the Golan Heights – have suddenly disappeared from the skies. In other words, the Russians are involved in a big operation, not a one-month wonder that is going on in Syria. And it is likely to continue for quite a time.
The Syrians were originally anxious to move back into Palmyra, captured by Isis last May, but the Russians have demonstrated more interest in the Aleppo region, partly because they believe their coastal bases around Lattakia are vulnerable. The Nusra Front has fired several missiles towards Lattakia and Tartous and Moscow has no desire to have its air force targeted on the ground. But the Syrian army is now deploying its four major units – the 1st and 4th Divisions, Republican Guards and Special Forces – on the battle fronts and are moving closer to the Turkish border.
Russian air strikes around the Isis “capital” of Raqqa may or may not be hurting Isis, although the Syrians like to boast that they have plenty of intelligence coming to them from the city. Interesting, if true, because Isis personnel are specialists in torturing to death “agents of the regime” and it would be a brave man to pass on information to Damascus. Yet travellers’ tales can be true. There’s a regular civilian bus route from Raqqa to Damascus – buses have an odd habit of crossing front lines in most civil wars – and if passengers prefer not to talk to journalists, they will talk of what they have seen when they get home.
All this is only the beginning of Mr Putin’s adventure. He is proving to be quite a traveller to the Middle East – and has already made firm friends of another pillar of the region, that President-Field Marshal who scored more than 96 per cent at the polls and who currently rules Egypt. But the Egyptian army, fighting its little war in Sinai, no longer has strategic experience of a major war. Nor, despite their dalliance in the air over Yemen, Libya, Syria and other targets of opportunity, do the present military authorities in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Jordan have much understanding of how a real war is fought. Libya’s own army is in bits. Iraq’s military has scarcely earned any medals against its Islamist enemies.
But there is one factor which should not be overlooked.
If it wins – and if it holds together and if its manpower, which is admittedly at a low level, can be maintained – then the Syrian military is going to come out of this current war as the most ruthless, battle-trained and battle-hardened Arab army in the entire region. Woe betide any of its neighbours who forget this.
Robert Fisk writes for the Independent, where this column originally appeared.
If this is a war then Black Lives Matter is losing
Mumia Abu-Jamal
‘Plus ça change …’ say the French; or ‘The more things change, of course, the more they stay the same.’
That thought, with all its despair and wisdom, resonates with particular power when we look at the Black Freedom Struggle, which, despite its ebbs and flows, has a sameness that seems to suspend it in its own time, akin to a Biblical narrative that exists in its own realm, strangely separate from our day-to-day immediacy, yet existing in consciousness.
But this is not a metaphysical discussion.
No.
It is existential. It is blood and bullets. It is the hard bricks and cold steel of prison. And it’s not just the sameness of things for extended spaces of time, nor its sinister intensification of repression, but the incessant nature of such repression as a bipartisan expression of American hegemony over and antipathy towards, the Black Freedom Struggle that gives it its malevolent character.
For generations, Black leaders and organizations have been in search for some solution to our oppressions, some appealing to the international community, as expressed in William Patterson’s “We Charge Genocide’ of 1951 (a charge supported by the late Malcolm X). Some 15 years later the Black Panther Party would produce a list of grievances, called the 10-Point Program, decrying the police state’s violence against Blacks, slum lords exploiting Black home renters, and the bane of Black imprisonment, among other concerns. Seven years thereafter, the Black National Political Convention convened in Gary, Indiana, where it denounced the two capitalist parties, Democrats and Republicans, the continuous police violence against Blacks, and called for the formation of a National Black Independent Political Party to give voice to the needs of Black people
The foundational documents of these Black activists and organizations, if read today, would seem to have been written today – instead of 50 or 60 years ago.
That tells us that our conditions – or real material conditions – have not changed substantially for over ½ century – over 60 years.
Indeed, in many ways, those conditions have worsened, such as the phenomenon of mass incarceration.
Why? Because the material conditions of millions of Black folk have changed due to de-industrialization, the resultant loss of the tax base, the corporatization of the public school systems, and the explosive expansion of the imprisonment industry – the creation of what I call the White Rural Jobs Program – prisons.
From the earliest days of Black arrival in what would one day become the United mumiawritingStates; Africans were seen as resources to be exploited for white profit. And despite relentless rhetoric in the mouths of the Founders of the State, there existed a nightmarish reality of un-freedom and state supported terror waged against Black life, proving the white words of freedom were little but lies.
For under the sweet nothings of liberty lived a world of repression, targeting, isolating and destroying the Black Freedom Movement and its leaders. From Dr. Martin Luther King to Malcolm X; from the Black Panther Party to Black actors and artists, agents of state power sought to weaken and neutralize Black freedom and Black Nationalist movements, using every means – fair and foul.
This wasn’t episodic meanness – random attacks on Blacks because of official distaste of Blacks.
No.
There’s method in this madness; the same madness, which animated lynchings during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Such repression served to instill fear and apprehension in the minds of millions. State terrorism turned people away from the Nationalist and self-determination road towards more acceptable and less critical roads of political acquiescence with dominant capitalist parties.
The State thus canalized Black thought into the sterile roads of the personal instead of the collective, into the parties of personality instead of the programmatic. It also de- radicalized Black response to state terrorism.
That, in a nutshell, is the essence of the governments CoInTelPro initiative, where the U.S. government functioned as both race police – and political police.
These actions of alienation of a population continued, ironically enough, under the play of Black votes (or should we say, ‘the ploy of Black votes?’) who voted overwhelmingly for Bill Clinton, who ran on ‘hope’ and ‘change’. ‘Change’ it might’ve been; but change doesn’t necessarily mean better.
Elected by a plurality of narrow percentages, Clinton, in the name of bipartisanship would prove the architect of a prison expansion boom that would be the beginnings of the mass incarceration that we see today.
This neoliberalism in politics required an operative of considerable skill, one in which Blacks, the most loyal and consistent voting bloc within the democratic coalition, voted for a candidate who would promote and vote for a series of positions against Black interests, while simultaneously voting for white anxieties, fears and longings for white supremacy.
Clinton demonstrated that expertise.
As the late historian Howard Zinn (1922 – 2010) has written in his book The Twentieth Century:
‘despite his lofty rhetoric, Clinton showed, in his eight years in office, that he, like other politicians, was more interested in electoral victory than in social change.
To get more votes, he decided he must move the party closer to the center. This meant doing just enough for Blacks, women, and working people to keep their support, while trying to win over white conservative voters with a program of toughness on crime, stern measures on welfare, and a strong military.’ (Zinn, 428)
The neoliberal Clinton regime ushered in a program of repression that included the scuttling of habeas corpus via the anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act; the closing of the courthouse doors to prisoners via the Prison Litigation Reform Act; and the notorious 1996 Crime Bill, which spent billions on new prisons, and added some 60 new death penalties to the books.
The emblems of Clintonism that emerged after two terms in power were the empty factories and the overcrowded prisons – overcrowded with Black men and increasingly, women.
We referenced earlier Patterson’s “We Charge Genocide”; not that the charges in the book were written as a petition, and filed in the U.N charging the U.S. with genocide against Negros. The UN neither acted on, nor decided the petition. Rather, the media focused on Paul Robeson, and using charges he was a communist, demonized the petition, as he was one of its authors. For, in the public mind, to be communist was akin to being crazy.
Blacks, absent an independent politically representative entity, were – and are_ voiceless in spaces like the UN.
So, after many, many years, protest again rages against the repression of the state, a fuse lit by the killing of Mike brown in Ferguson, Missouri. These protests have spread across the country like kudzu in summer.
And now you see the corporate media trying to conspire to denounce Black Lives Matter as some kind of hate group engaged in an alleged ‘war on cops!’
But, here again, there’s some method to their madness. The point that the corporate media serves the capitalist state couldn’t be clearer in this instance. For the BLM throws words at cops who’ve beaten, shot and killed almost countless Blacks, Latinos – and even poor whites!
Guess how many people cops have killed in 2015?
Over 800. Over 800!
If this be war, the BLM is losing.
Over 150 years ago one of our most revered ancestors tried to convince his fellow abolitionists to continue to struggle. You see, the Civil War had ended, and slavery was legally dead.
Frederick Douglass warned them; “.[You and I, and all of us, had better wait and see what new form this old monster will assume, in what new skin this old snake will come forth.”
He was right then. He is right now.
We must be mindful of the old snakes in new skin amongst us.
The struggle continues!
End Note
Zinn, Howard. The Twentieth Century
(New York: MJF Bks, 1980-2003
Mumia Abu-Jamal is the author of Writing on the Wall.