Alternatives International

Realitopia

Michael Ryan Wiseman — 2010-09-02T05:36:02Z

"... It speaks to the very heart of the dilemma amongst us utopians— how do you move a pile of excrement without getting any on you? At the very least, you are bound to smell of it..."

Greetings Dear Reader,

I recently read a piece by an ex-Alternatives member that was posted on the little-beaver-that-could that is the admirably plucky rabble.ca website. Entitled “The term ‘NGO' is a misnomer”, the article explores the clout of government in the non-governmental world. And while those remaining at Alternatives would presumably disagree with the cut, thrust, and construction of the argumentation and its conclusions, the NGO nomenclature debate is important. It speaks to the very heart of the dilemma amongst us utopians— how do you move a pile of excrement without getting any on you? At the very least, you are bound to smell of it.

We unhappy few, we band of utopians, must acknowledge our world as it is: messy, relative, and awash with competing claims to power. If we decide to take our toys and go home because life on the playground can be filled with meanies and, frankly, doo-doo heads, all we will have done is abandoned their prey, i.e. those we were trying to help in the first place. Must we leave? Where should we go? What should we do? What anywhere is beyond the taint of anything?

The debate is larger than the appropriateness of the term NGO, or the ethical quagmire of whether one can do good even after having accepted money from a dubious source and/or money obtained by dubious means— here a duplicitous government, there private capital a la Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.

Money is necessary. Sigh. Most of us probably regret that this is the case, we may say, “The capitalist system is imperfect and it needs money, so all money is imperfect. We are all culpable just for using it. But what am I to do right now, with money in my pocket, family and friends with empty stomachs, and a baker around the corner.”

The fundamental question is not what should utopian NGOs call themselves, but can they exist? For, to exist is to engage and exchange. If they are to make any progress, they will have to make peace with an oft-putrid process. To wish power-relations away is not to define them out of existence; it is to render yourself impotent.

Would the world be any better off had Alternatives, following yet another thrashing of civil society by Canada's increasingly intolerant-of-questions-let-alone-dissent Harper-government, committed financial hara-kiri with an impetuous blade of self-righteousness?

With the little that NGOs possess, they try to affect what they consider to be positive change by using the aforementioned excrement as fertilizer. The discerning reader will, of course, have noticed the hedge-cum-labyrinth that is “what they consider”. Here we go, I hear you scream into your fair-trade/ local-grown/ organic/ sustainable/ co-operative/ carbon neutral/ vegan/ bartered product, another dollop of relativist gruel. Hey, it ain't easy being a utopian and a realist— a realitopian ™©®(Dibbs), while we're mincing words.

It all boils down to the fracture that has plagued do-gooders and best-intenders since time immemorial: old souls versus young souls. Both are necessary. Both want the same things. Both find the other utterly incomprehensible. If there weren't any old souls, nothing good would ever remain; if there weren't any young souls, nothing bad would ever change. Welcome to realitopia, where we look beyond both our indignation of the lesser-of-two-evils and our condescension of the normative. Sure, humanity is its own— and its own planet's— worst enemy. Sure, we have the ability to live in harmony with each other— and with our world— if only we would begin. But we will not sacrifice tomorrow's dream on the altar of yesterday's nightmare, and we will not let today's reality stop us from getting to sleep tonight and out of bed in the morning.

Ecosocialism as Holistic Earth Care

Cy Gonick — 2010-09-02T05:35:58Z

Legendary lefty Cy Gonick speaks to ecosocialism founder Joel Kovel about creating global resistance movements; ecosocialist activism that moves beyond pressing for direct caps on polluters; and his take on the Dark Mountain Project, the UN biodiversity report and the implications of Deepwater Horizon.

Cy Gonick: There are lots of serious struggles around the world against instances of environmental destruction, privatization of water and other resources, etc. Yet these efforts are almost always isolated, fragmented, one-off events even within national boundaries, let alone the globe. What needs to be done to create resistance movements at a national and global level? Where will the leadership come from?

Joel Kovel: Of key importance is the notion of “environmentalism” itself. The environment is by definition what is outside us rather than something in which we participate and to which we are connected. Environmental thinking conduces to seeing everything in terms of resources and not as an interconnected manifold of ecosystems. Note that this reproduces the economic logic of capitalism itself. At a deep level, capital creates the ecological crisis by monetizing everything in its relentless effort to commodify the world. Isolation and fragmentation is an essential feature of the breakdown of ecosystems; this extends to ways of thinking and seeing for those ecosystems in which we take part. Thus mainstream environmentalism can be said to be part of the problem rather than a move to solve it.

This is why it is essential to emphasize the role of capitalism as the “efficient cause” of the ecological crisis. People are more ready to understand this than appears at first glance; once encouraged, they get the idea readily, and then the whole world opens up for them. The ecological perspective is inherently anti-capitalist, insofar as capital destabilizes ecosystems. This is also a way of saying that we need eco-socialism, not environmentalism! Since ecosocialism focuses on empowering human agency rather than technocratic tinkering around the edges, leadership will come from those activists who directly resist capital's destabilization of ecosystems through building community: people like Lois Gibbs and Chico Mendes.

Making Moves For Change

CG: Beyond pressing for direct caps on polluters through regulation, what actions should ecosocialists be taking to keep the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole and tar sand in the land?

JK: Ecosocialist activism is a kind of guerrilla warfare against an occupier. Its means may be nonviolent, but it is a struggle to the death — and for life. Capital is as much an invader as any army: it breaks down boundaries, takes over communities as well as bodies like a parasite, insinuates its commodified relations into life-worlds, and introduces alienating institutions and forms of reason. All of these points have to be contested.

There is no way that frontal assault can win such a war. We need, rather, to employ multiple campaigns, coordinated in ways that weaken and demoralize the adversary while building zones of ecosocialist production. We might schematically sort these into three categories:

... at the level of the state or trans-statal organization, like the Copenhagen or G-20 meetings;

... against the corporation, the bank, etc: for example, suing Chevron in Ecuador; taking on BP in Houston while drawing on radically feminist strategies;

... at the point of extraction — the “soil,” the “hole” etc. — Niger Delta, West Virginia, Alberta.

Needless to add, there is no fixed plan, and campaigns have to be creatively adaptive. For instance, activists did what they could to directly block mountain-top demolition in West Virginia; but also took some of the debris back to the metropolis and dumped it in the ATM vestibules of Morgan-Chase bank.

Successful people's war (think, say, of Cuba) takes place throughout a land: in the mountains, the universities, the plantations, the city streets. It always starts small, not through big invasions. Nor can it possibly succeed through any one of these zones, especially the parliamentary. The ultimate source of strength is whatever is closest to popular struggle at the point of life's resistance to capital. This is where small beginnings can germinate into transformative movements. Mere spontaneity will never work if the points of struggle cannot connect each with the other, and equally important, if they do not become conscious of what it is that they are undertaking and where it can lead them.

Here is where the matter of an ecosocialist vision to break out of the traps of fragmentation enters. As this grows, it does so within the struggle for life and against capital, and also connects with international movements, because it is the earth itself that “global capital” has invaded and occupied. In no sense, except the narrowest immediacy, can an ecosocialist movement be restricted within national boundaries. Hopefully, as the international ecosocialist movement matures, it can provide a forum for a conscious planning of such campaigns.

CD: What are the implications of Deepwater Horizon?

JK: In itself, the oil spill (this is being written in the first half of July) is hideous, a concoction of corporate crime and government corruption/incompetence. But without diminishing its significance one bit, we should consider the BP spill not in itself but as part of a larger aggregate of the lesions inflicted on Mother Earth by the capitalist energy barons, not limited to but including:

... spills elsewhere, for example, the Niger River delta, which dwarf Deepwater Horizon in scale, and have driven life expectancy in the delta down to about 40 years;

... “dead zones” in the Gulf from Mississippi River run-off of nitrogen generated by ethanol production (as fuel additive) upstream. These are quite comparable in scale to the release of crude petroleum from Deepwater Horizon;

... studies of large marine mammals throughout the seven seas, including sperm whales, disclose such a burden of toxics, chiefly deriving from petroleum that was “successfully” extracted, as to guarantee the extinction of these great creatures within a century;

There are 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico. If you study the frequency of drilling over time, you will see the all-too-familiar “hockey-stick,” or exponential curve as “peak oil” and economic depression drive the oil barons mad.

CG: The Dark Mountain Project argues that it's too late to save industrial civilization and that it is futile to try to reduce its impact by way of green technology, regulation, and renewable energy. Rather, we should be thinking about how we are going to live through its fall and what we can learn from its collapse. What is your take on the Dark Mountain Project?

JK: As capital inexorably destroys its own conditions of production, our so-called civilization is undergoing a process of devolution leading to collapse. Gramsci famously saw this as the time when the old order is dying and the new one cannot yet be born, and he foresaw that under such grim circumstances a great deal of weird behavior would emerge. The Dark Mountain project is one such piece of weirdness, to be classified with survivalists and various militias as different kinds of primitivist reversion. Its class base, however, is not drawn from right-wing backwoods types and the dispossessed, but from intellectuals and artistes seeking fulfillment through romantic rejection of the world. This is an illusion, nor can it go very far.

The Project's virtue lies in a slogan much favoured on its website: “Giving up on Environmentalism.” As I noted, environmentalism is very much part of the problem. But instead of confronting the issue where it is actually located, namely, society and the way it transforms nature, the Project simply evades social relations, or rather, continues existing tendencies to the point of extermination. On the contrary, I see capitalism as a society so hollowed out by processes of alienation as to have become radically de-sociated. So, in its later (i.e., present) stages, capitalism turns into a collection of ego-particles agitated by the forces of the market into desperate and fearful searches for individualized sensation: living in gated communities, traveling about in mutually isolated cars, and plugged into remote forces of mass cultural manipulation. This is both a sign of the ecological crisis and a way it is perpetuated, for individual egos can do nothing to mend our relations with nature.

The only rational way of overcoming the crisis and of restoring society and nature is through the recovery of ways of as-sociation, that is, through forms of “commoning” capable of resisting the inroads of capital and building solidarity with others. Only in society can the human animal fulfill its “nature” and do justice to nature. Organized from below into a new society we can prevail in the struggle for life that marks this epoch. The Dark Mountain Project offers instead, further isolation, further self-centeredness, and further disintegration.

Climate Change is Bad, But Not Our Only Problem

CG: The UN biodiversity report coming out this summer says that the case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world is even more important than the argument for tackling climate change. Do you concur with this importance attached to protecting biodiversity?

JK: Climate change is a menace without parallel in the whole history of humanity. Its spectacular and dramatic character can generate narratives capable of arousing general concern and thus provide a stimulus to build movements of resistance. But climate change is not the sole problem we face, even if this property makes it seem as such. Hopefully, the UN's forthcoming report about the stupendous die-off now underway can have the salutary effect of disabusing people of this illusion.

I'm not happy with prioritizing either of these massive processes of eco-disintegration, because to do so becomes part of the artificial separation noted above. Better to realize that we are part of one ecosphere suffering from a planetary disease — a kind of cancer produced by Homo sapiens who has blighted nature with the accumulation of capital. Within the myriad disorders set forth, there arise configurations affecting various “tissues” of the planetary body, with innumerable secondary and tertiary interactions, many of them unpredictable and chaotic. Climate change is one such, species loss another. They need to be seen in relation to each other, and to the cancer of which they are symptoms.

As the chief driving factor in species loss is habitat alteration, climate change is most definitely implicated in the great die-off, whether by heat, drought or flooding. But the two threats are not structurally identical, nor can dealing with the one be considered ipso facto adequate for dealing with the other.

Consider the laudable goal of diminishing concentrations of atmospheric CO2, for example, Bill McKibben's “350” campaign to bring greenhouse gas concentrations below the current level of about 390 parts per million. Now it's possible to imagine this being done, though fantastically difficult. But there are two logical strategies toward this end — either lowering carbon emissions and/or augmenting carbon sequestration — and these can have drastically different implications for species loss. Sequestering carbon, say, in the ocean, might alleviate the greenhouse effect — at the cost, however, of worsening the lot of countless creatures through acidification of the seas, which destroys shelled sea-life including the corals that provide the dwelling places for innumerable aquatic species. Similarly, some of the technical fixes now being considered to directly lower temperature, as by injecting Sulfur Dioxide into the atmosphere, are obviously reckless of the integrity of living beings. Just so are the strategies of biofuel development that require monocropping, thereby sacrificing biodiversity. Thus there can be a real contradiction between dealing with these two threats if they are regarded in isolation.

The rational way, then, to contend with any and all ecological menaces is by developing a vision of sufficient universality that regards them as aspects of a common ecosphere undergoing a common assault. This returns us to the overarching question developed in The Enemy of Nature (Zed Books, 2002), of capital accumulation as the “efficient cause” of the ecological crisis. Only within the framework of a revolutionary ecosocialist society can we deal with the twinned crises of climate change and species loss — and others as well — within a coherent program centered around the flourishing of life.

Here I would add one aspect of the great extermination now underway: the “un-flourishing of life.” Nothing so indicts Homo sapiens (subspecies: capitalisticus) as the mass murder of species at a rate far greater than anything done over the last 70 million years. The fact that so much of this happens unspectacularly, indeed, silently and with the elimination of life forms that we have never bothered to know about, much less appreciate for their intrinsic value, only deepens the indictment. May this realization spur our awakening.

This interview is reproduced with the kind permission of Cy Gonick and the fine people at Canadian Dimension

Canadian Dimension is an independent forum for Left-wing political thought and discussion, “a magazine for people who want to change the world”.

Image: Angel Boligan/caglecartoons.com

The Sunrise of the Damned

Mireille Fanon-Mendès France — 2010-09-02T05:35:56Z

Franz Fanon only got to see the first fires that were the false dawn of African independence. Sickness took him before the hope forged through liberation struggles dissolved into the neocolonial night, itself only marginally less intolerable than the darkness of imperial domination.

Would he have been surprised at the state of Africa? We can be so bold as to say no! In fact, nothing of this story of fraud and betrayal would have surprised he that understood and explained the ravages of domination, the complexities of subjugation, and the culture of a colonized residual elite.

The reality of African independence enunciates itself thusly: the liberators, more or less legitimate, transformed themselves into their people's jailers, into dictators in the service of the old colonial power. Their heirs are in essence elements of predator networks of black skins with white masks, to borrow Fanon's oh-so explicit terms.

Fifty years later, the judgment is incontrovertible: the independences did not end in the liberation of the oppressed peoples. From presidents for life to military pronuncimientos, and from putsches to civil wars, Africa North or South of the Sahara is, with precious few exceptions, a continuum of tyrannies. Societies remain orphans of states that were never born: the neocolonial networks imposed potentates that they changed to suit the whim of their interests. Nothing really changed even if, fall of the Berlin wall oblige, one-party rule gave way to a façade of democracy.

If neocolonial structures do not alone explain the failures of the independences, this half-century has been an unpitying demonstration of the effectiveness of the time-bombs left behind by the colonial powers.

Territorial demarcations were thought up to deeply poison relations between newborn states, military elite – like in Algeria or Angola – and civilian eilte – as in West Africa – were made responsible for the administration of their former master's legacies for the latter's benefit, and for that of the former metropoles. Ethnic separations maintained or else deliberately created – as in the case of the Great Lakes region of Africa – prevented the creation of states deserving of the name in the service of their populations.

The colonial violence was followed by an indirect violence - that inflicted by Africans. The imposed and maintained tyrannies served to free a paternalist and racist discourse in the style of “it was better during the colonial era”. It is no accident that a law glorifying colonialism could be tabled in a country with a dark colonial past, almost fifty years after the independences. A compulsion for non-repentance, or the justification of a bloody past, is the stark manifestation of the vitality of a colonial ideology that claimed millions of victims.

The colonial order contaminated the colonizer's territory. Through a paradox which history holds the secret to, “the natives” are ubiquitous today. Not only in their area of origin, but equally also in what Fanon used to call the “forbidden cities”— European citadels where new forms of discrimination are practiced. European descendants of colonized peoples, those French “from diversity” are accorded inferior status.

So Fanon appears more current than ever today, both in Africa and in Europe. He makes sense to African freedom activists and human rights activists, he makes sense as well to so many Africans and Arabs of Europe against whom uninhibited racism is currently expressed in the media.

He makes sense since emancipation remains the first objective of generations that today have achieved political maturity. Many Africans have learned that the fight for liberty, democracy and human rights is led not only against local potentates, but equally against the neocolonial tenants that protect them, use them to pillage resources, and eject them when they have done their time. Many young intellectuals were able to measure the currency of Fanon's analysis during the infamous speech in Dakar where a French head of state, speaking somewhere between abhorrence and approximation, delivered a fantastic version of the black man's place in history, absurdly, sterilely turning in circles.

These fifty first years of formal independence are definitely but the sunrise of the damned, a painful and tragic sunrise. Fanon announced the end of the atrocious colonial night and the fights to come. The road to liberation remains long…

Mireille Fanon-Mendès France is President of the Frantz-Fanon Foundation, and a Member of the Bureau of the French Jewish Union for Peace

Translation courtesy of Vanessa Gordon, AIJ Editorial Board

Photo: Pacha J. Willka

Kashmir Burning

Tapan Bose — 2010-09-02T05:35:53Z

From the ramparts of the Red Fort, celebrating the 64th anniversary of India's Independence, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, offered to hold dialogue with the agitating youth of Kashmir if they “abjured violence”. Since June 11, the youth of Kashmir have been agitating for Azaadi (freedom, self-determination).

All over Kashmir, people defying curfew orders are holding rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins, mass meetings and hartals (general strikes). They are willing to hold a dialogue, however they want New Delhi to immediately repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, remove all central security forces, and release all political prisoners. Those who visited the valley in the early nineties, when the movement for self-determination began, might see glimpses of the past in today's struggle. However there are two major differences.

Unlike the earlier movement, which was dominated by armed groups, the current movement for Azaadi has rejected guns. The Jihadis, the Mujahideens or the militants, who are classified as terrorists by the Indian government, are nowhere in the picture. This movement was launched by the local youth. It is being led by locals and, in fact, has made the so-called Separatist leaders virtually irrelevant. 

In the early 90's the movement began as a popular struggle. Hundreds of thousand of Kashmiris— men, women and children— were on the streets demanding Azaadi. India sent its army and a mixed-bag of paramilitary forces to carry out a valley-wide campaign of cordon and search, abduction, torture, killing, rape and burning of religious shrines, houses, bazaars, and buildings. The campaign spread across the valley; shooting people on suspicion, setting-up bunkers on almost every road junction, erecting roadblocks and check points, forcing passengers to get down from buses and private vehicles and frisking them on the roads. The civilians retreated to their homes— they were terrorized.

Today, the movement for Azaadi is led by the youth who grew-up seeing their parents thrashed by soldiers. They trembled and hid under their beds when soldiers broke into their homes in the dead of the night. They saw their neighbours and relatives marched to the outskirts of their villages, and they shivered when the sound of gunfire pierced their ears. When their fathers, uncles, and elder brothers did not return home, they understood. They learned of rape as their mothers, aunts, and sisters cried quietly to cover their shame. Today's youth, unlike their elders, do not know what peace is. They never played games, they grew old far too young.

They identify India with army and paramilitary forces. Their worldview is overshadowed by their experience of death, depredation and degradation. They have been robbed of their dignity and humanity. They are not afraid of the guns. They are ready to make the supreme sacrifice.

They shout— “We want freedom! Go India, go back!” When stopped by the security forces or pushed back, they throw stones. They know the security forces will kill them. During the last 70 days, 61 persons have died in the streets of Kashmir.  The agitation intensified in the beginning of August. In the first week of the month, 21 Kashmiris had fallen to the bullets of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Kashmir police.

New Delhi woke up to the deepening crisis in Kashmir. Prime Minister Dr. Monmohan Singh held a meeting with representatives of the mainstream political parties. He addressed the people of Kashmir on 10 August. Singh regretted the killings and called for dialogue with all sections of the society to put an end to the unrest. Ironically, during the ten days that followed New Delhi and the State government intensified their efforts to bring peace in Kashmir, and another 14 persons— including a nine-year-old boy— were killed by the CRPF and police. 

Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in India's Lower House of Parliament and President of the Congress party, has joined Singh in the government's efforts to bring peace to the valley. In a recent statement, she expressed anguish “at what has been happening in the Valley.” India's Chief Minister of Jammu and Kahsmir, Omar Abdullah, and Home Minister Chidambaram have refused to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The latter claimed that he could not amend certain sections without first consulting all the stakeholders. Evidently the people of Kashmir who are out on the streets demanding its immediate repeal are not considered to be a “stakeholder”.

New Delhi demands that Kashmiri youth “abjure violence”, and asserts that Kashmir is an “integral part” of India, that the solution has to be within the framework of India's constitution. But what good comes from a precondition like “abjuring violence”— the ongoing mass movement in Kashmir is non-violent. There are no militants or terrorists lurking behind the agitators. There are but youth that have only ever seen the brute face of India, and see themselves as the victim of the Indian constitution upholding the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. New Delhi's terms are difficult to envision, Azaadi remains a mirage.

Tapan Bose is a noted human rights activist and the Secretary General of the South Asia Forum for Human Rights.

Photo: Flickr/ Joe Athialy

In the Shadow of Sandino

Michael Bramadat-Willcock — 2010-09-02T05:35:51Z

“The election looms in the coming days; it is an amazing scene of lies and manipulations. If Ortega wins there may be a civil war here. It is quite tense,” my father warned me before my last visit to Nicaragua in 2006.

Nicaraguans struggle to make ends meet in the wake of political upheaval and natural disaster in what remains second only to Haiti among the poorest countries in the western hemisphere.

After my father picked me up at the airport we drove to his home in Masatepe, a small town in the Nicaraguan highlands near Managua that I had not seen since I had visited him four years earlier. “There are more and more North Americans coming here,” he said. “ Nicaragua is being toted as the place to be. Funny, I hope someone is telling them that we don't have water or electricity these days. ”

After a week in Masatepe I went to stay with my friend Ronaldo in the small jungle town of Escalante, when I had visited in 2002 it had been inaccessible to cars and the only way to get there was by ox cart or horse. Now there was a road leading up to the village.

On our way, my father and I stopped in at a garage in the outskirts of town. The mechanic asked me if I spoke Spanish, I said I did, he laughed, “I know sixteen year old girls who can put together an AK47 faster than you can count to ten in Spanish.” I laughed; this was exactly the kind of humour I remembered.

Ronaldo's father is missing an arm, “It was cut off by the contras,” he told me. Stories of senseless killing abound, “During the conflict, night curfews were imposed and if we left our homes we would be shot.” He explained how men and women were forced to fight for whatever side controlled the area where they lived, “families were torn apart and sons were made to kill their own fathers, mothers and daughters were raped by both sides.”

The day after I arrived, a neighbour of Ronaldo's asked if I wanted to see something uniquely Nicaraguan. Although it's illegal in most countries, the sinister sport of cock fighting was and still is a popular pastime here with old men betting on the outcome of every match. Curiosity got the better of me. I went to visit the roosters who would be fighting in the next day's tournament. Opening a small box, the man showed me a set of sharp blades shaped like talons. He explained that these blades are attached to the feet of roosters before a fight. I declined to attend the match.

The gap between rich and poor in Nicaragua is remarkable. The nation was the richest in Central America prior to the revolution and American intervention, but it is now amongst the world's poorest. Maria Loaiza Arroyo works with a Latin American organization called Un Techo para mi Pais which operates 15 countries in Latin America. According to Arroyo, the number of Nicaraguans living under the poverty line is approaching 2.5 million. Almost half the population.

Many people in rural communities are disillusioned with the bitter fruits of their own blood and tears. However many still idealize Augusto Sandino, the revolutionary socialist leader who waged a guerrilla war against US occupation in the 1920s and 30s. His political descendants went on to form the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional and overthrew the government of President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, which opened another generation of conflict that has yet to heal.

Daniel Ortega, long-time leader of the FSLN, fought off an American-funded insurgency of “contras” in the 1980s, and remains a controversial figure. Ortega stands accused of sexually assaulting his adopted stepdaughter and his property redistribution program was seen by some as a giant land grab. That didn't stop him from winning the election in 2006.

Billboards reading ‘Cristiana, socialista, solidaria' in the colours of the Sandinista Party, others with Daniel Ortega's face, and many commemorating the Sandinista revolution abound in the capital, says Arroyo, “The signs that say ‘we are all sons of Sandino' show that the ideals of the revolution are very much alive, but the people who are enforcing them are as corrupt as the next politician. It is getting harder and harder everyday to remain happy with the status quo.”

Although she paints an overall picture of Nicaragua as a country with severe economic and social problems, Arroyo has some hope for the future. The hurricane in 2009 had a disastrous effect on the economy, but she believes that the country has great potential, “if it is developed in a conscientious way, which in my book means not much interference from greedy Americans and Europeans— and more government investment on small and medium local enterprises.”

A week after I left Nicaragua I was walking down a street in San Jose, Costa Rica. A construction worker stopped me and held a machete to my head. When I didn't respond, he broke out into fits of insane laughter. I was terrified. Only after did I realize how close I had come to death, but my then-girlfriend's reaction made me uneasy, “He must have been Nicaraguan. They are violent and dangerous people.”

My father often refers to Nicaragua as striking in its realism. He describes the Nicaraguan personality as “light and dark, but with the heart always seeking the light. It is why I am so in love with this part of the world.”

Michael Bramadat-Willcock is an activist, filmmaker, and student journalist at Concordia University.

Photo: Maria Loaiza Arroyo

Mosque Hysteria

Phyllis Bennis — 2010-09-02T05:35:38Z

At its core, the controversy surrounding the proposed Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan is not about religion. It's about war.

For some years now the fear factor that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001 and fueled public support for the “global war on terror” (or the onomatopoetic “GWOT”) has been diminishing. Along with the long and intense work of the antiwar movement and the rising levels of casualties, fear reduction has played a key role in building opposition to the wars. Part of that process has been the growing normalization of the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York. “Ground zero,” the site of the destroyed World Trade Center, is now a busy construction venue in the midst of a hectic commercial district that includes all the usual hodgepodge of convenient and useless, businesslike and tawdry aspects of Manhattan street life: Office buildings and food vendor carts, coffee shops and strip joints. There's nothing hallowed about it.

That normalization hasn't yet made possible the kind of serious national debate this country so desperately needs. That debate is not about September 11, but about September 12 – the day George Bush launched a war our country was now going to wage anywhere he chose against whomever he designated for as long as he wanted without any restrictions. The whole world – though most especially the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as those of Yemen, Somalia, Palestine and Kenya, and so many more places – as well as those of us here in the U.S. continue to pay the price.

But the “mosque at ground zero” controversy (which of course we know is not actually about ground zero or an actual mosque at all) erupted in a very specific place in a very specific context for a very specific purpose. It wasn't launched by New Yorkers because it was never about New York. It's not insignificant that as the New Yorker has pointed out, opposition appears “roughly proportional to distance” from New York: 31 percent of Manhattan residents oppose the planned Islamic center; but 53 percent of all New York City residents disapprove, and at the national level, opposition spikes to a dangerous 68 percent.

The controversy isn't only about religious bigotry in general and Islamophobia in particular. It isn't only about claiming the U.S. as a country that belongs just to Jews and Christians. It isn't only about xenophobia running rampant and fueling a bitterly racist anti-immigrant hysteria. It isn't only about blaming all Muslims for the horrors of 9/11.

The controversy certainly is about all those things. And all of those are dangers that must be fought – passionately and powerfully – with a clear understanding that this most recent attack on equality is part of this country's legacy of racism and intolerance. Andrew Sullivan, the right-wing iconoclast, of all people, had it mostly right when he said the campaign against construction of the Cordoba House project in lower Manhattan was “so dangerous in its assumptions, so pernicious in its bigotry …that it needs to be repudiated as swiftly and as powerfully as possible.”

Article courtesy of the fine people at AlterNet

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author with David Wildman of the new Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan: A Primer.

Photo: flickr/ David Shankbone

Alternatives Days

Marine Begault — 2010-09-02T05:35:34Z

Sitting on one of the packed yellow school buses on the way to the Journées Des Alternatives, my expectations were dim. After all, I was spending my first weekend in Canada at a no-frills summer camp… with strangers. However the experience proved to be not only fun, but also a great introduction to Canada.

I was surprised by the diversity of the participants and panels. On the bus I sat next to a man from Cameroon who shared his experiences as an African in Canada. Around the bonfire that evening, there was a child beginning to fall asleep on my right, a stately Peruvian lady debating with a student on my left, and across from me a Canadian storyteller recounting an old tale about the origins of men and women.

Alain Deneault and Laura Lopez Handal discuss the Mining Industry

The atmosphere and participants were friendly, which created an interesting contrast with the engaging and spirited debates that took place during and after the workshops and panels. In fact it was specifically this aspect of the weekend that I loved: the ease with which people met and spoke, observed and listened.

The myriad discussions offered an analysis of the issues and politics that build and transform Canada, but as a foreigner I found specifically motivating the fact that all the participants there, whatever their age, sex, religion or origins, felt responsible for and concerned by the questions and issues that shape their greater society and our world. This was a complete new experience— I had never witnessed such a large sample of society mobilize before.

Cesar Caceres cleanses our spirits

To name but two of the dozen or so panels on topics ranging from Ecosocialism to Hip Hop as Social Change, from the up-coming Palestinian World Education Forum to the history of Third World Debt, ‘No democracy without a voice' emphasized the necessity for open dialogue and public debate, as well as the fact that the exercise of dissent is the very essence of democracy. While ‘Mining enterprises and the public good' proclaimed that as citizens it is our duty to protest against a government that encourages an industry that is harmful to the environment, to indigenous peoples, and to state coffers. Most importantly and fundamentally however, all of these workshops and panels reminded me of the culture and values we all hold dear— engagement, justice, equality, and the responsibility we hold as citizens of a shared world.

Marine Begault is an Alternatives intern and student of politics and history at the University of Manchester.

ART THREAT !!!

Ezra Winton — 2010-09-02T05:35:26Z

A Conversation with Return to El Salvador director Jamie Moffett; Video installation infiltrates 6000 NYC taxis; Artist Profile: Nicholas Hlobo

A Conversation with Return to El Salvador director Jamie Moffett

by EZRA WINTON

Return to El Salvador is an intimate documentary that tells—mainly through candid interview—the story of the individuals and communities effected by El Salvador's brutal civil war that ended nearly two decades ago. While a little heavy-handed on narration (which isn't to say Martin Sheen's usual talented presentation of context isn't well-executed, but that there is too much explaining/describing as we see things on the screen) the film is beautifully shot and a commitment and compassion shines through in every scene.

The film picks through the complicated layers of geo-politics, resistance, and torn communities to piece together an important (and overlooked in the West) story from America's so-called “back yard.” Art Threat had a chance to chat with director Jamie Moffett during the usual juggling act that occurs after an indy doc is completed and its makers seek out an audience. Read more...

Video installation infiltrates 6000 NYC taxis

by ROB MAGUIRE

In the wake of the recent racist attack on a Muslim cab driver in NYC, I'm particularly interested in the public reaction to the latest project by Tehran-born, Big Apple-based artist Amir Baradaran. For one week beginning September 9, Baradaran will debut Transient, a series of 40-second video installations infiltrating New York's taxicabs. Read more...

Artist Profile: Nicholas Hlobo

by AMANDA MCCUAIG

South African visual artist Nicholas Hlobo creates large sculptural works that are expansive masses which at once feel oozey, voluptuous and highly structured. The contrast of femininity and masculinity is created by his use of dissimilar materials such as rubber inner tubes, ribbon, organza, lace and found objects.

Hlobo has accumulated an impressive portfolio since graduating from Wits Technikon in 2002. Born in Cape Town in 1975, he is now based in Johannesburg and is represented by Michael Stevenson Gallery.

“Through my works I attempt to create conversations that explore certain issues within my culture as a South African,” says Hlobo of his work in his Artist Statement. “The conversations become a way of questioning people's perceptions around issues of masculinity, gender, race and ethnicity.” Read more...

Art Threat is a leading media outlet devoted solely to political art and cultural policy.

The Essence of Islam

Yasser Shoukry — 2010-09-02T05:35:14Z

Islam, like other religions, is a religion that began as a message to ensure better material and spiritual conditions for human beings. Movements of political Islam however, refer to the interpretation of Islam by a particular group of Muslims. The same applies to the political Christian and Jewish movements in the world.

There has always been religion based on its original revelation-related sources, just as there has always been a subsequent political interpretation. The latter has proven a significant breeding ground for social conflict; religion is selectively re-interpreted according to the will and interests of competing powers.

Two concepts help shed light on the political manifestations of religion: ‘form' and ‘essence'. ‘Form' considers a change in society to be dependent upon a change in the ethics of the individual to a given dogma. For example, there are religious groups in Egypt that believe that solving corruption requires a purification of the conduct of civil servants by, say, ensuring they carry out their daily prayers and fast during Ramadan.

On the other hand, ‘essence' stipulates that the mind must be used as well as the text. In Islam, we could here quote the Prophet Mohammed, "You are more knowledgeable in your worldly affairs". It is the ‘essence' that calls for justice as a foundation of ruling, "And when you judge among men, that you judge with justice" or "Give the labourer his wage before his sweat dries out".

Solutions to the aforementioned corruption problem might therefore include the implementation of public monitoring, generalization of the principles of transparency and accountability, and giving the worker a just wage. In order to solve the crisis of corruption, the ‘essence' of Islam could perhaps provide basic living conditions, including clothing and food, as both humane and practical. It may also broaden the scope of democracy and the rights of civil society to monitor and combat the parasitic systems of monopolization and domination. This would be infinitely more helpful than asking human beings to be angels.

It is the same ‘essence' that promotes the freedom of thought within Islam, "The Truth has come from your Lord. Let him who will, believe it, and let him who will, reject it" or, and even more emphatically, "No compulsion in religion". The ‘essence' of Islam also enhances the values of equality, "God does not see your faces, but your hearts".

Unfortunately, the ‘form' of Islam is today in the ascendancy and it is not asking itself questions about gender equality, killing people from other religions, the extent of conformity of the sponsorship system (Kafil system) with the Sharia, and the application of legal punishments (Hudud). As a result, hands of the poor in Saudi Arabia are cut off in the name of religion, women are stoned, and the robbery of oil revenues by princes is justified, while Islam is disseminated on the basis of fear of dying from torture and not on the basis of love of justice and freedom.

The power of Islam lies in the fact that it set the stage for the liberation of slaves. It is no surprise, then, that a great number of slaves found in Islam a power of liberation that set them free from slavery. Abyssinia (Ethiopia) was the first refuge for Muslims escaping from their former masters of the Arabian Peninsula, who had rejected Islam because it would cost them their slaves.

The king of Abyssinia was Christian and the status of women there was little better than that of slaves. The murder of female children was socially acceptable, as they were not useful in war and there were fears they would be taken prisoner. Islam came to forbid this custom. It was a beginning of gender equality. Equality between masters and slaves, and between women and men, was not the only attempt at social change in Islam.

But as time went by, the Wahhabi form of Islam prevailed. This form includes the beard, the hijab, the sword, fatwas about human-genie intermarriages, questions about the sex of angels, and verses of intimidation by the fire of hell.

"Justice is the foundation of ruling" has been manipulated, what remains of the idea of Caliph Ali is the guardianship of the Islamic jurists (Wilayat al Faqih). And instead of the first names of God being the Merciful, the Compassionate, it has become the Avenging Compeller.

Yasser Shoukry is an editor of e-joussour.net

Towards a free Palestine!

Claire Hurtig — 2010-09-02T05:35:10Z

Join us at the historic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Conference in Montreal this October!

From 22 to 24 October 2010, Montreal-based Palestine-solidarity organizations will host an historic 3-day conference which aims to move forward the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid.

In July 2005, over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, from unions to women's groups, from refugee organisations to cultural groups, came together to issue a plea for BDS. In launching this movement, Palestinians have called upon people of conscience the world over to boycott Israeli products, divest from Israeli companies, and encourage their governments to impose sanctions on Israel until the latter respects international law and Palestinian human rights.

The BDS campaign focuses on three basic demands:

1. That Israel end its illegal occupation and colonization of all Palestinian lands— including East Jerusalem— and dismantle the apartheid wall around the West Bank;

2. That Israel respect the right of return of Palestinian refugees;

3. That Israel grant full equality to the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who currently make up 20% of its population.

BDS: A strategy to end Israeli apartheid

Created and guided by Palestinians, the BDS campaign opposes all forms of racism— including anti-Semitism— and is anchored in the universal principles of freedom, justice and equal rights that motivated the struggles for civil rights in the United States and apartheid-era South Africa. Israel's granting of rights and privileges according to ethnic and religious criteria fits the UN-adopted definition of apartheid, indeed South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former US-president Jimmy Carter, and many prominent legal experts agree that Israel is an apartheid state.

Though there are differences between the situation of blacks in apartheid-era South Africa and that of Palestinians today, the BDS campaign takes its inspiration from the grassroots global movement for the boycott of South Africa that helped bring down the apartheid regime in the 1990s. As Nelson Mandela has said, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

The international movement for BDS has grown substantially since it was launched only five years ago. Now, in the wake of Israel's assault on Gaza in 2009 and its recent attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla en route to Gaza, more and more people are joining the movement to end Israeli impunity and Western complicity. Every year, increasing numbers of trade unions, universities, civil society groups, churches, and governments are taking a stand.

About the Conference

The 2010 conference is being organized by the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (CJPP), Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU), Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), Tadamon! Montreal, and the UQAM Coalition for Justice in Palestine (CJP-UQAM), in collaboration with the Boycott National Committee (BNC) in Palestine (www.bdsmovement.net).

Omar Barghouti, a renowned Palestinian political and cultural analyst, will be one of the keynote speakers at the conference. He is a human rights activist involved in the struggle to end oppression and conflict in Palestine. Barghouti is a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI – www.pacbi.org) and the BNC.

Also speaking at the conference is Bongani Masuku, International Relations Secretary of the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) from Johannesburg, South Africa. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) was launched in December 1985 after four years of unity talks between unions opposed to apartheid and committed to a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa. COSATU has been a key supporter of the movement for BDS against Israeli apartheid.

The BDS 2010 Conference has 4 main objectives:

1. To bring together individuals and organizations from all sectors within civil society who are working to support of the Palestinian call for BDS, in order to expand the campaign;

2. To consolidate and carry forward the BDS work already underway in trade union, academic, cultural, and consumer sectors;

3. To facilitate communication between different campaigns and organizations in order to coordinate existing and future BDS campaigns and actions;

4. To raise public awareness and engage in popular education about the BDS campaign, its history, and its goals.

Join us this October – everyone is welcome!

Get more info and register for the conference at www.bdsquebec.org

Find us on facebook under “BDS Quebec”

www.twitter.com/bdsquebec

Fight the power, turn the tide! End Israeli apartheid!

Claire Hurtig is an organizer of the up-coming BDS 2010 Conference.

Photo: flickr/ Magne Hagesæter