Alternatives International

After Syriza's Victory, Confrontation or Capitulation

Stathis Kouvelakis — 2015-02-01T17:43:34Z

Syriza's Stathis Kouvelakis on why his party fell short of an absolute majority and the choices that lie ahead.

Syriza's electoral triumph has brought hope to the European radical left and workers' movement, offering it an immense opportunity. We can also put that the other way around — for Syriza to fail this test could have incalculable consequences.

A few quick remarks on the first difficulties and problems we face:

First of all, Syriza came close to winning an overall majority, but ultimately just fell short. Its final score (36.3 percent) was at the lower end of what the exit polls had suggested, while New Democracy's result was towards the upper end of its exit poll prediction.

In this sense there was a tinge of disappointment in the campaign offices and in front of the Propylaea last night. Moreover, having been in central Athens on a number of election nights, I have to say that this time there were fewer people in the streets than after the Pasok victories of the 1980s and 1990s.

Even if beating New Democracy by 8.5 percent is an important victory, we have to explain why the dynamic behind Syriza was not as great as we had hoped. One striking aspect of the results is that, while nationally Syriza improved on its June 2012 and European elections score by almost 10 percent, it made much less progress in the main urban centers (particularly Athens and Thessaloniki), where it only gained 6 percent.

So while in June 2012 its best result was in the very working-class, emblematically “Red” Second Piraeus constituency (if we don't include Xanthi, where it enjoyed massive support from the Turkish-speaking minority), this time around it did better in seven other areas (including former Pasok bastions like Crete and the northern Peloponnese) than in the Piraeus industrial belt — though here too it went from 37 to 42 percent.

Thus Syriza made advances above all in rural and semi-urban areas and middling provincial towns: in a Greece whose political behavior is more conservative and “legitimist.” Its influence in the country is thus now more homogeneous, as it makes its appearance as a legitimate “party of government”; but it lacked the dynamic to be able to increase its advantage in the major cities and get the extra seats it needed in the mega-constituencies of Athens and Thessaloniki.

Its electoral profile is now that of a more “cross-class” party, without the “unevenness” of 2012: its support is less distinctly rooted among the wage-earners of the main urban centers, even if its influence among this population is significant and they do make up a major part of its vote.

This fact ought to be seen in parallel with the Communist Party making (albeit limited) gains of 1 percent relative to June 2012, as well as Antarsya going from 0.33 to 0.64 percent. Their progress was largely in the main urban centers. So Syriza certainly suffered some small losses “to its left” and above all was unable to mobilize major reserves of abstaining voters (there was a weak turnout nationally, at just 64 percent).

The new government (whose composition was unknown at the time of writing) will have to deal with truly staggering obstacles. The coffers are empty, and the state's revenues are collapsing quicker than expected. It will very soon become apparent that the financing plan set out in the “Thessaloniki program” was based on very over-optimistic estimates (or even simply wrong ones).

The goal, here, was to give the impression that the program could be realized half by redirecting the European credits (which are earmarked, some of them already allocated, and whose payment is entirely dependent on European Union agreement) and half through a more effective collection of tax receipts, without tax reform and without a need for increased budget deficits.

The government's strategic orientation toward the EU is also rather unclear. After the win, Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras was keen to reassure the EU and the markets, speaking of a “sincere dialogue” and “mutually advantageous solution.” He didn't mention the word “debt.”

Yesterday, I was alarmed to hear comrades praising European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, presenting him as some sort of great adversary of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, and almost as an ally of Syriza. Today, the only European leader whose smiling face adorns the homepage of the party's official website is that of Martin Schulz, president of the EU parliament and member of the German Social Democrats, who has asked for an immediate meeting with Tsipras.

It seems that some circles in the party have gone so far as to convince themselves of the truth of campaign slogans like “Europe's changing,” in the sense that “the EU is prepared to make an honorable compromise with us.” But the outlook on that front, in the best-case scenario, would be to bypass the troika and “negotiate” (that magic word!) a mildly blunted version of the Memorandums directly with the EU institutions.

Last but not least, while Panos Kammenos and his sovereignist right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL) are certainly a lesser evil compared to formations like To Potami (whose stated goal was to force Syriza to stay within the narrow boundaries set by the EU and the Memorandums), they are nonetheless an evil. Their participation in the government, even with just one minister, would symbolize the end of the idea of an “anti-austerity government of the Left.”

Moreover, this is a party of the Right, one that is particularly concerned to protect the “hard core” of the state apparatus (it will be important to keep a watchful eye over whatever cabinet portfolio it might get). It will be no surprise if its first demands are for the ministry of defense or public order, though it seems that it will not get them.

Syriza has a very narrow margin of maneuver — but these ambiguities must soon be resolved. Society remains passive for the moment, yet the hopes placed in Syriza are very great and very concrete. Hugely important tasks lie ahead for those forces that are conscious of the coming dangers and determined to defend the key points of the party's program of breaking with austerity.

More than ever we must be clear that there is no middle course between confrontation and capitulation. The moment of truth is at hand.

Source: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/syriza-greece-victory-kouvelakis-left/

Free Speech for Western Apologists Only

Glenn Greenwald — 2015-02-01T17:40:58Z

France Arrests a Comedian For His Facebook Comments, Showing the Sham of the West's “Free Speech” Celebration

Forty-eight hours after hosting a massive march under the banner of free expression, France opened a criminal investigation of a controversial French comedian for a Facebook post he wrote about the Charlie Hebdo attack, and then this morning, arrested him for that post on charges of “defending terrorism.” The comedian, Dieudonné, previously sought elective office in France on what he called an “anti-Zionist” platform, has had his show banned by numerous government officials in cities throughout France, and has been criminally prosecuted several times before for expressing ideas banned in that country.

The apparently criminal viewpoint he posted on Facebook declared: “Tonight, as far as I'm concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly.” Investigators concluded that this was intended to mock the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan and express support for the perpetrator of the Paris supermarket killings (whose last name was “Coulibaly”). Expressing that opinion is evidently a crime in the Republic of Liberté, which prides itself on a line of 20th Century intellectuals – from Sartre and Genet to Foucault and Derrida – whose hallmark was leaving no orthodoxy or convention unmolested, no matter how sacred.

Since that glorious “free speech” march, France has reportedly opened 54 criminal cases for “condoning terrorism.” APreported this morning that “France ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism.”

As pernicious as this arrest and related “crackdown” on some speech obviously is, it provides a critical value: namely, it underscores the utter scam that was this week's celebration of free speech in the west. The day before the Charlie Hebdo attack, I coincidentally documented the multiple cases in the west – including in the U.S. – where Muslims have been prosecuted and even imprisoned for their political speech. Vanishingly few of this week's bold free expression mavens have ever uttered a peep of protest about any of those cases – either before the Charlie Hebdo attack or since. That's because “free speech,” in the hands of many westerners, actually means: it is vital that the ideas I like be protected, and the right to offend groups I dislike be cherished; anything else is fair game.

It is certainly true that many of Dieudonné's views and statements are noxious, although he and his supporters insist that they are “satire” and all in good humor. In that regard, the controversy they provoke is similar to the now-much-beloved Charlie Hebdo cartoons (one French leftist insists the cartoonists were mocking rather than adopting racism and bigotry, but Olivier Cyran, a former writer at the magazine who resigned in 2001, wrote a powerful 2013 letter with ample documentation condemning Charlie Hebdo for descending in the post-9/11 era into full-scale, obsessive anti-Muslim bigotry).

Despite the obvious threat to free speech posed by this arrest, it is inconceivable that any mainstream western media figures would start tweeting “#JeSuisDieudonné” or would upload photographs of themselves performing his ugly Nazi-evoking arm gesture in “solidarity” with his free speech rights. That's true even if he were murdered for his ideas rather than “merely” arrested and prosecuted for them. That's because last week's celebration of the Hebdo cartoonists (well beyond mourning their horrifically unjust murders) was at least as much about approval for their anti-Muslim messages as it was about the free speech rights that were invoked in their support - at least as much.

The vast bulk of the stirring “free speech” tributes over the last week have been little more than an attempt to protect and venerate speech that degrades disfavored groups while rendering off-limits speech that does the same to favored groups, all deceitfully masquerading as lofty principles of liberty. In response to my article containing anti-Jewish cartoons on Monday - which I posted to demonstrate the utter selectivity and inauthenticity of this newfound adoration of offensive speech - I was subjected to endless contortions justifying why anti-Muslim speech is perfectly great and noble while anti-Jewish speech is hideously offensive and evil (the most frequently invoked distinction – “Jews are a race/ethnicity while Muslims aren't” – would come as a huge surprise to the world's Asian, black, Latino and white Jews, as well as to those who identify as “Muslim” as part of their cultural identity even though they don't pray five times a day). As always: it's free speech if it involves ideas I like or attacks groups I dislike, but it's something different when I'm the one who is offended.

Think about the “defending terrorism” criminal offense for which Dieudonné has been arrested. Should it really be acriminal offense – causing someone to be arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned – to say something along these lines: western countries like France have been bringing violence for so long to Muslims in their countries that I now believe it's justifiable to bring violence to France as a means of making them stop? If you want “terrorism defenses” like that to be criminally prosecuted (as opposed to societally shunned), how about those who justify, cheer for and glorify the invasion and destruction of Iraq, with its “Shock and Awe” slogan signifying an intent to terrorize the civilian population into submission and its monstrous tactics in Fallujah? Or how about the psychotic calls from a Fox News host, when discussing Muslims radicals, to “kill them ALL.” Why is one view permissible and the other criminally barred – other than because the force of law is being used to control political discourse and one form of terrorism (violence in the Muslim world) is done by, rather than to, the west?

For those interested, my comprehensive argument against all “hate speech” laws and other attempts to exploit the law to police political discourse is here. That essay, notably, was written to denounce a proposal by a French minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, to force Twitter to work with the French government to delete tweets which officials like this minister (and future unknown ministers) deem “hateful.” France is about as legitimate a symbol of free expression as Charlie Hebdo, which fired one of its writers in 2009 for a single supposedly anti-Semitic sentence in the midst of publishing an orgy of anti-Muslim (not just anti-Islam) content. The celebration of France – and the gaggle of tyrannical leaders who joined it – had little to do with free speech and much to do with suppressing ideas they dislike while venerating ideas they prefer.

Perhaps the most intellectually corrupted figure in this regard is, unsurprisingly, France's most celebrated (and easily the world's most overrated) public intellectual, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. He demands criminal suppression of anything smacking of anti-Jewish views (he called for Dieudonné's shows to be banned (“I don't understand why anyone even sees the need for debate”) and supported the 2009 firing of the Charlie Hebdo writer for a speech offense against Jews), while shamelessly parading around all last week as the Churchillian champion of free expression when it comes to anti-Muslim cartoons.

But that, inevitably, is precisely the goal, and the effect, of laws that criminalize certain ideas and those who support such laws: to codify a system where the views they like are sanctified and the groups to which they belong protected. The views and groups they most dislike – and only them – are fair game for oppression and degradation.

The arrest of this French comedian so soon after the epic Paris free speech march underscores this point more powerfully than anything than I could have written about the selectivity and fraud of this week's “free speech” parade. It also shows – yet again – why those who want to criminalize the ideas they most dislike are at least as dangerous and tyrannical as the ideas they target: at least.

Correction: This post originally identified Dieudonné as Muslim. That was in error, and the article has been edited to reflect that correction.

Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com

21/01/2015

Glenn Greenwald became famous for publishing the case of Edward Snowden in The Guardian. We re-produce his recent article on the western instrumental misuse of free speech as it is courageously putting the finder in the wound. The text appeared in The Intercept, a media project co-founded by Greenwald.

Source: http://www.antiimperialista.org/gleen_greenwald_dieudonne

Did Obama Legitimize Extremist Violence With His Visit to India?

Praful Bidwai — 2015-02-01T17:38:06Z

The president roped once-non-aligned India into a strategic alliance, but only by bolstering the Modi government, with its religious intolerance and pro-corporate policies.

The combination could not have been more bizarre: a Soviet-style grand military parade lasting two hours; a British-Indian imperial venue in front of the former Viceregal Lodge; jingoistic display of a range of armaments, many of heavy Russian make; stifling air pollution that exceeds Beijing's levels and is estimated to have cut Obama's expected lifespan by six hours; sorties by brand-new US-made warplanes to showcase sophistication; colorfully dressed mustachioed soldiers riding caparisoned camels; motorcycle stunts with multiple riders that would put virtuoso circus artists to shame…

Barrack Obama drank it all in as the chief guest at India's Republic Day (January 26), the first US president to have been invited thus, and also the first president to visit India twice while in office. Obama arrived in style, with a several hundred–strong business delegation, officials from numerous departments and agencies, and an entourage of 1,600, including forty sniffer dogs, some of them of officer rank and hence assigned suites with their handlers in the same five-star hotels as other high-level functionaries. The center of India's capital was taken over, scoured upside down, “sanitized” and “secured” by US Secret Service operatives days before Obama arrived.

Obama had more than half a dozen rounds of talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on economic, diplomatic and strategic relations, and signed more than fifteen agreements on military cooperation and arms sales, investment and trade, renewable energy and nuclear power, “smart cities” and visas for information technology workers, and on joint projects in defense and space technology. He signed a 5,700-word joint statement with Modi and performed at five high-profile public-speaking events over three days.

Obama left India immediately after making a town hall speech where he appealed for respect for the freedom to practice, preach and propagate religion, stressed the importance of religious pluralism, and said, “India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along lines of religious faith…”

This was Obama's only reference, albeit oblique, to the concerns aroused by the ascent of Modi's right-wing Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to national power last May, and by the campaign launched by its even more extreme associates like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS or National Volunteer Corps, an all-male Hindu-supremacist group akin to a secret society, with a history of admiration for Mussolini and Hitler) to physically attack Muslims and Christians or bully them into “reconverting” to Hinduism.

Obama was speaking not to Modi's ministers, but to a 1,500-strong audience mainly comprising students. The president made this intervention probably under pressure from US-based human rights campaigners to address the threat to religious freedom and diversity in Modi's India. Some of the campaigners were groups like Human Rights Watch, which successfully lobbied the State Department for a decade to refuse a visa to Modi on account of terrible religious violence in Gujarat in 2002 on his watch, in which more than 1,000 Muslims were butchered.

Gujarat's climate has remained vitiated ever since, allowing Modi to win three state elections as chief minister, which paved his way to national power. Modi won, despite a minority (31 percent) vote, by polarizing the electorate along religious lines in the populous North. He ran a high-octane, corporate-funded campaign, estimated to cost the equivalent of a US presidential election, and cynically exploited the weaknesses of opponents, especially Sonia Gandhi's Congress.

Obama's visit was devoted to negotiating and signing diplomatic, military, economic, trade and technology-transfer agreements. The absence of any engagement with Modi on the issue of religious pluralism and religion-driven violence in effect legitimized him as a “normal” politician elected to lead a democracy. Modi took full advantage of that absence. He ostentatiously hugged Obama several times, called him by his first name nineteen times during a joint radio broadcast—a compliment that went unreciprocated—and showcased himself as Obama's friend. The media celebrated this as US acceptance of Modi's India as a great power.

The most important agreement signed was the “Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region,” a long-term bilateral military alliance covering a huge area “from Africa to East Asia” and involving India in “safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea.” The agreement chides China for provoking tensions in the region by calling on “all parties to avoid the threat or use of force and pursue resolution of…disputes through all peaceful means.”

The document also “welcomes” India's proposed entry into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, dominated by the United States and Japan. India's entry would help APEC counter the New Silk Road economic partnership being launched by China. The idea underlying both moves is to recruit India into a partnership with the United States to contain China's growing military and economic power in the Asia-Pacific-Indian Ocean region, as part of the US “pivot” to Asia.

When this idea was first proposed in 2012 in a diluted form, India resisted it under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This is not because India then adhered to Non-Alignment. That doctrine, highly thought-of in progressive circles worldwide, was abandoned soon after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Singh resisted the alliance because there was at least a weak consensus among New Delhi's policymakers that India wouldn't become a permanent ally of any power. It would maintain friendly relations with a range of countries within a complex foreign policy agenda but would retain some autonomy in foreign and security policy. Besides, India would be on the side of the world's developing countries, and try to lead them in a fight for a better deal from the developed countries.

That consensus eroded over the years, as India became an “emerging economy” under brazenly pro-corporate economic policies, which were environmentally destructive, inequality-enhancing and did little to reduce mass poverty. A turning point was the signing in 2005 of a far-reaching US-India defense cooperation agreement, followed by the even more controversial US-India civilian nuclear cooperation deal, both under Singh.

The latter deal made a special one-time exception for India in the global nuclear commerce regime, allowing it to import nuclear materials and reactors even though India is a de facto nuclear weapons state and hasn't signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The deal was opposed—covertly by China and overtly by Pakistan—at the International Atomic Energy Agency, but it was pushed through by Washington and approved in 2008.

To win that deal, India voted twice—under “coercion,” as a US diplomat publicly said—against Iran's nuclear program, undermining India's own interest in an Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project then under negotiation. To please US business lobbies, India has from time to time compromised its own people's interests—for instance, by loosening price controls on essential medicines before Modi's US visit last September.

Now Modi has completed what Singh set out to do but couldn't—in his first term as prime minister (2004-09) because he was constrained by the left parties on whose support his minority government depended; and in his second term (2009-14) because he was seen to be far too weak to attempt a major policy shift.

Modi faces no such constraints and is naturally inclined toward the United States. This is in keeping with his long-term affiliation to the RSS-BJP, America's Cold War allies; his strongly pro-business, pro-globalization bias; and, not least, his intimate links with the non-resident Indian community in the United States, of which Gujaratis are the largest and most conservative group.

Modi's bilateral talks with Obama were dominated by China for the first forty-five minutes, to the exclusion of other issues. To the American negotiators' pleasant surprise, Modi accepted US language on China without negotiation, something uncharacteristic of Indian leaders. Like many middle-class Indians, Modi probably nurtures a deep antipathy to China on account of the Sino-Indian war of 1962, in which India was routed.

Getting into the global Big League might fulfil a dream of India's elite, which has always craved recognition. But it hasn't worked out the implications of a long-term China-containment strategic alliance with Washington. For one, in India, the United States is widely seen as a global bully whose recent interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria have left a mess worse than earlier dictatorships. American power remains deeply unpopular in countries that are important to India and Indians (for instance, those in West Asia that employ large numbers of Indian migrant workers).

For another, China has reacted negatively to Obama's visit and has accused India of being envious of “China's continuous rise.” It would be counterproductive for India to enter into a hostile relationship with China when negotiated solutions are eminently viable, as shown by recent progress in trade and talks to settle border disputes.

And third, by wantonly antagonizing Beijing, India would only facilitate an understanding between China, Pakistan and Russia; the last two have recently developed significant military relations, and China is Pakistan's “all-weather friend.” This cannot be good for the health of India's own neighborhood.

Obama could have counseled restraint on Modi, asking him to mend rapidly worsening relations with Pakistan, and respect secularism and tolerance and pursue inclusive economic policies at home. But Obama ended up sanctifying Modi's extreme-right orientation while selling arms and nuclear power projects, which the world is rejecting, especially after the disaster in Fukushima.

Source : http://www.thenation.com/article/196633/did-obama-legitimize-extremist-violence-his-visit-india#

Norman Finkelstein: Charlie Hebdo is Sadism, not Satire

Mustafa Caglayan — 2015-02-01T17:35:08Z

World renowned political science professor says he has 'no sympathy' for staff at Charlie Hebdo

In Nazi Germany, there was an anti-Semitic weekly newspaper called Der Stürmer.

Run by Julius Streicher, it was notorious for being one of the most virulent advocates of the persecution of Jews during the 1930s.

What everybody remembers about Der Stürmer was its morbid caricatures of Jews, the people who were facing widespread discrimination and persecution during the era.

Its depictions endorsed all of the common stereotypes about Jews – a hook nose, lustful, greedy.

"Let's say, ... amidst all of this death and destruction, two young Jews barged into the headquarters of the editorial offices of Der Stürmer, and they killed the staff for having humiliated them, degraded them, demeaned them, insulted them," queried Norman Finkelstein, a professor of political science and author of numerous books including “The Holocaust Industry” and “Method and Madness.”

"How would I react to that?," said Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.

Finkelstein was drawing an analogy between a hypothetical attack on the German newspaper and the deadly Jan. 7 attack at the Paris headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, that left 12 people dead, including its editor and prominent cartoonists. The weekly is known for printing controversial material, including derogatory cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and 2012.

The attack sparked a global massive outcry, with millions in France and across the world taking to the streets to support freedom of the press behind the rallying cry of "Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie.”

What the Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad achieved was "not satire," and what they provoked was not "ideas," Finkelstein said.

Satire is when one directs it either at oneself, causes his or her people to think twice about what they are doing and saying, or directs it at people who have power and privilege, he said.

"But when somebody is down and out, desperate, destitute, when you mock them, when you mock a homeless person, that is not satire," Finkelstein said.

"That is, I give you the word, sadism. There's a very big difference between satire and sadism. Charlie Hebdo is sadism. It's not satire"

The "desperate and despised people" of today are Muslims, he said, considering the number of Muslim countries racked by death and destruction as in the case of Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

"So, two despairing and desperate young men act out their despair and desperation against this political pornography no different than Der Stürmer, who in the midst of all of this death and destruction decide its somehow noble to degrade, demean, humiliate and insult the people. I'm sorry, maybe it is very politically incorrect. I have no sympathy for [the staff of Charlie Hebdo]. Should they have been killed? Of course not. But of course, Streicher shouldn't have been hung. I don't hear that from many people," said Finkelstein.

Streicher was among those who stood trial on charges at Nürnberg, following World War II. He was hung for those cartoons.

Finkelstein said some might argue that they have the right to mock even desperate and destitute people, and they probably have this right, he said, "But you also have the right to say 'I don't want to put it in my magazine ... When you put it in, you are taking responsibility for it."

Finkelstein compared the controversial Charlie Hebdo caricatures to the "fighting words," doctrine, a category of speech penalized under American jurisprudence.

The doctrine refers to certain words that would likely cause the person to whom they are directed, to commit an act of violence. They are a category of speech unprotected by the First Amendment.

"You are not allowed to utter fighting words, because they are equivalent of a smack to the face and it is asking for trouble," Finkelstein said.

"So, are the Charlie Hebdo caricatures the equivalent of fighting words? They call it satire. That is not satire. It is just epithets, there is nothing funny about it. If you find it funny, depicting Jews in big lips and (a) hook nose is also funny."

Finkelstein pointed to the contradictions in the Western world's perception of the freedom of the press by giving the example of the pornographic magazine Hustler, whose publisher, Larry Flynt, was shot and left paralyzed in 1978 by a white supremacist serial killer for printing a cartoon depicting interracial sex.

"I don't remember everyone celebrating 'We are Larry Flynt' or 'We are Hustler,'" he said. "Should he have been attacked? Of course not. But nobody suddenly turned this into a political principle of one side or the other."

The West's embrace of the Charlie Hebdo caricatures was because the drawings were directed at and ridiculed Muslims, he said.

The characterization by the French of Muslims as being barbaric is hypocritical considering the killings of thousands of people during France's colonial occupation of Algeria, and the French public's reaction to the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962, according to Finkelstein.

The first mass demonstration in Paris against the war "did not come until 1960, two years before the war was over," he said. "Everybody supported the French annihilatory war in Algeria."

He said French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre's apartment was bombed twice in 1961 and 1962, as was the office of his magazine, Les Temps Modernes, after he came out in full force against the war.

Finkelstein, who has been described as an "American radical," said the pretensions of the West about Muslim attire exposed a dramatic contradiction in the face of the West's attitude toward natives in lands they occupied during colonialism.

"When Europeans came to North America, the thing they said about the native Americans was that they were so barbaric, because they walked around naked. The European women were wearing three layers of clothes. Then they came to North America, and decided that the native Americans were backward because they all walked around naked. And now, we walk around naked, and we say that the Muslims are backward because they wear so much clothes," he said.

"Can you imagine anything more barbaric? Banning women wearing headscarves?" he asked, referring to the 2004 ban on headscarves in French public service jobs.

Finkelstein's work, accusing Jews of exploiting the memory of Holocaust for political gain and criticizing Israel for oppressing the Palestinians, has made him a controversial figure even within the Jewish community.

He was denied a tenure as a professor at DePaul University in 2007 after a highly publicized feud with fellow academic Alan Dershowitz, an ardent supporter of Israel. Dershowitz reportedly lobbied the administration of DePaul, a Roman Catholic university in Chicago, to deny him tenure.

Finkelstein, who currently teaches at Sakarya University in Turkey, said the decision was based on "transparently political grounds."

19 January 2015

Source: http://www.aa.com.tr/en/u/452396--norman-finkelstein-charlie-hebdo-is-sadism-not-satire

Hand in Hand?

Sukumar Muralidharan — 2015-02-01T17:32:15Z

India inhabits a complex part of the geopolitical map, where the simple binaries of us and them break down, especially for the US

The sole Indian journalist called on to address a question to US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during their brief press availability in Delhi, chose rather to extend congratulations on the purported new beginnings in the bilateral relationship. The US news agency journalist who got a similar opportunity addressed Obama on the crises in Ukraine and Yemen, and sought clarity from Modi on India's climate change position.

Modi responded briefly and in accordance with a practised template about India's commitment to future generations. And Obama chose to poke irony in the eye — the US had no intent to see Russia weakened, but would nonetheless uphold the “core principle that large countries don't bully smaller countries”.

India was among many holdouts when the US orchestrated global sanctions against Russia after a colour-coded revolution to bring down an elected government in Ukraine ended in insurrectionary conditions and the Crimean secession. The reasons would have been clear the day after Obama's brief encounter with the press. Aside from a newly acquired naval reconnaissance aircraft of US origin and a few transport aircraft, most of the hardware on display at the annual military pageant of the republic, he would have noted, was sourced from Russia.

According to a recent reckoning by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India was the world's largest arms importer in the four-year period ending 2013. With a share of about 14 per cent in all international transfers of military equipment, India was far ahead of Pakistan and China, which tied for second place at 5 per cent each.

India affords a substantial arms market, which the US undoubtedly would be attracted to as its economic fortunes falter. But domestic law in the US imposes a number of hurdles, including a formal requirement that all arms transacted should be used only in legitimate self-defence. This is, of course, a malleable principle. The State of Israel has been a recipient of US generosity despite its military occupation of Palestinian territories, which has nothing to do with self-defence, except in the most perverse reading.

India inhabits a more complex part of the geopolitical map, where the simple binaries of us and them break down. Bringing peace and order to Afghanistan is a US priority, and Pakistan, a vital accessory in the mission. Too strong a tilt towards India, and a heightened military relationship, would sour ties with Pakistan and potentially endanger an already delicate transition in Afghanistan.

China, yet another among India's prickly neighbours, is among the US's largest trading partners, with two-way transactions of $640 billion in 2014. With the balance running strongly in its favour, China currently sits on perhaps the largest stash of dollar assets outside the US Federal Reserve. Some of the consequences were recently evident in a cheque that China wrote to bail out Russia when its currency crumbled under the pressure of sanctions and an oil price collapse. The ability China retains to undermine US soft power is a factor in global geopolitics that cannot be ignored in the years ahead.

A vision statement adopted during Obama's visit may suggest a new resolve in the exercise of hard power. Underlining the importance of secure sea-lanes in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean, the statement spoke of “safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation and over-flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea”. All disputes in the region, it affirmed, should be settled through “peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognised principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea”.

Here again was a challenge to irony, since the US is not a signatory to the law of the sea (or UNCLOS, as it is called). Expectedly, this clause in the vision statement brought forth a heated response from Beijing. There were no impediments to free movement through the South China Sea, it said, effectively asking the US and India to butt out of a conversation that was best carried out among the littoral states.

Since taking office, Modi has had three meetings with the political leadership of major littoral States of the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions — the Chinese President and the prime ministers of Australia and Japan. This is in conformity with the reading that this region is swiftly emerging as the new hub of global power. Yet it is a tricky geometry of power, and for all the euphoria around the Obama visit, there is still a degree of scepticism about how far India can negotiate these complexities as an overt ally of the US.

As Obama touched down, talking heads in the media were warning that the nuclear cooperation deal with the US, long touted as symbolic of the new engagement between the countries, was in danger of unravelling. It will undoubtedly be deemed a notable success of his visit that a salvage operation was carried out. Details are awaited, but the insurance fund of ₹1,500 crore created to indemnify US equipment suppliers in the event of nuclear accidents, is widely seen as pitifully meagre. And the Indian Attorney-General's opinion on how best to exempt US corporations from the law that empowers groups and individuals to file tort claims is still awaited. The legal opinion, when it comes, will certainly be contested. That could be embarrassing for the BJP, which insisted when in the Opposition for the inclusion of strong corporate liability clauses in the law.

Nuclear cooperation is one among many tortuous acts within the slow-moving tableau of India's engagement with the US. Despite claims that the logjam has now been cleared, those familiar with the terrain are holding off on celebrations. Given the convolutions of the larger picture, it has been useful to focus on the nuclear domain as representative of the whole. A weapons system that will never be used and an energy source that today contributes just over 2 per cent to India's electricity mix have, in this manner, come to represent the entirety of India's engagement with the US.

(Sukumar Muralidharan is a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla)

(This article was published on January 30, 2015)

Source: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/blink/know/hand-in-hand/article6835032.ece

Women's Empowerment: The Text and the Practice

Messaoud Romdhani — 2015-02-01T17:29:02Z

Tunisia could pride itself on drafting the most advanced code of personal status in the region, forbidding polygamy, legalizing divorce, establishing equality between partners in the choice of the spouse, limiting the age of marriage…that is to say, many important rights have been acquired by Tunisian women since 1956.

Still more impressive is the recent lifting of all government reservation on the CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations against Women). It is, in fact, a landmark decision by the Tunisian government.

Unfortunately, there is still a considerable distance between nice theories and the bitter reality. The oppression of women remains a fundamental feature in everyday life and the more worrying fact is that women are now more than ever exposed to various forms of violence and abuse (verbal, economic, verbal….).

And since remembrance is mostly a memoria futuria, a lesson from the past to the future, let's just recall that after the 26 October 2011 elections , there was a new regressive political speech; a willingness to curtail women's acquired rights. Sometimes to question some of them in the name of Islam. For instance, we heard a female minister in the Troika government say, in no uncertain terms, that the customary marriage is “a personal choice.”

Preachers coming from the Gulf region have quickly taken over to spread a reactionary and misogynist speech. The deputies of the Islamist Party were not outdone; they tried desperately to substitute the notion of equality between men and women with “the complementarity” in the first drafts of the new Constitution.

Fortunately, these attempts were short-lived thanks to the mobilization of civil society and the final version of the Constitution helped reinforce the existing achievements as it's been ,mainly, stipulated that the State has to ensure equality between men and women “in all fields.”

The Code of Personal Status, the New Constitution and the ratification of the CEDAW are, in fact steps of great value that clearly mark the path to women's full empowerment. They've made of Tunisia one of the countries in the region where laws are constantly evolving towards gender equality and parity between men and women. The major challenge, however, remains the delicate adequacy between the text and its application in real life.

It is true that violations of women's rights had existed before 2011. But it is also true that since the Revolution they have experienced a steady increase. And there is no shortage of examples: a rise in a deeply ingrained misogyny, more difficulties in access to unemployment in the private sector, as has been rightly noticed by Mrs. Neila Chaabane, Secretary of State in Charge of Women and Family Affairs.

With regard to physical violence, there's been an increase in crimes against women. According to a report by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network called, “Violence against women in the context of political transformations and economic crisis in the Euro- Mediterranean region” (March 2014) there's been an unprecedented rise of violence against women in Tunisia, including sexual violence. Statistics provided by criminal police revealed that 46 women were killed in the first ten months of 2013 (34 for the same period in 2012). It should be pointed out that 90% of these crimes are committed by a male partner.

Another source of concern: women trafficking. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Tunisia is a source, destination and transit country for women who are “subjected to force labor and sex trafficking.” Jihad Al Niqah (Sexual Jihad) among Tunisian women, if proved, is another source of major concern, (same previous source).

Indeed, Jomaa's transitional government raised an alarm about the issue. The National Office for Family and Population has revealed that about 50% of Tunisian women have suffered some form of violence, knowing that 42% of them are university graduates.
Mrs. Chaabane stated that the study, that had an aggregate sample of 3000 women, showed that 31% had been victims of physical violence, 28% suffered sexual violence and 7.1% were subject to economic violence (13 August 2014).

Domestic violence remains the most common as has been shown in a study conducted by the Tunisian Democratic Women (ATFD, French acronym): 84% of women who are victims of violence are married, and 82% of cases happen in the matrimonial home.

And today there's more and more talk of economic and social violence. The paradox is that while some “women are not allowed to work outside home, others have their salaries confiscated by the husband, this is not to mention pay inequalities at the workplace between men and women,” (Radhi Meddeb, President of Action and Développement Solidaire).

Certainly, the government is working, through constitutional bodies, to implement mechanisms that combat this scourge: a framework legislation to severely punish perpetrators of violence and a law that gives victims free access to medical care. Yet, it is evident that this is not enough. Both State and civil society should step up efforts to put in place listening centers for victims, ease access to legal aid and should integrate psychological assistance for abused women.

Nevertheless, there remains much to be done, mainly on education. Schools and universities can play an important role in the long run. The idea of equality between the two sexes should be instilled in the children's and youth's minds. In order for this to be possible, misogynist and reactionary contents of some curricula should be eliminated. As a start, we shall combat the ravages brought by the proliferation of the out-of-control Koranic Schools, often hotbeds for inequalities, sexism and fanaticism.

(Committee for the Respect of Liberties and Human Rights in Tunisia)

Flogging for Blogging?

Medea Benjamin — 2015-02-01T17:24:54Z

The U.S. government continues to turn a blind eye to the medieval forms of torture meted out by its Saudi allies.

On January 9, two days after the massive Paris march condemning the brutal attack on freedom of the press, a young Saudi prisoner named Raif Badawi was removed from his cell in shackles and taken to a public square in Jeddah. There he was flogged 50 times before hundreds of spectators who had just finished midday prayers.

Those 50 lashes — labeled by Amnesty International a “vicious act of cruelty” — were the first installment on his sentence of 1,000 floggings, as well as 10 years in prison and a fine of $266,000.

Badawi's crime? Blogging.

The father of three young children, Badawi hosted the website known as Free Saudi Liberals, a forum intended to promote a lively exchange of ideas among Saudis. Badawi wrote about the advantages of separating religion and state, asserting that secularism was “the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.” He accused Saudi clerics and the government of distorting Islam to promote authoritarianism. And unlike the Saudi rulers, Badawi cheered the Egyptian uprising against Hosni Mubarak, calling it a decisive turning point not only for Egypt but “everywhere that is governed by the Arab mentality of dictatorship.”

In mid-2012, Badawi was arrested for his blogging and accused of ridiculing the kingdom's religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. He was also charged for failing to remove “offensive posts” written by others. The prosecution originally called for him to be tried for “apostasy,” or abandoning his religion, which carries the death penalty.

If nothing changes, Raif Badawi will be flogged every Friday for the next 19 weeks. And he will not see his wife or children — who were forced to flee to Canada to avoid public harassment at home — for 10 years.

Badawi's case is not unique. In 2014, Reporters Without Borders described the Saudi government as “relentless in its censorship of the Saudi media and the Internet,” ranking Saudi Arabia 164th out of 180 countries for freedom of the press.

Last year, four members of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, an organization documenting human rights abuses and calling for democratic reform, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 4 to 10 years. The fourth member sentenced was Omar al-Saeed, who was handed four years in prison and 300 lashes because he called for a constitutional monarchy.

Or look at the case of another human rights lawyer, Walid Abu al-Khair, in prison since 2012. On January 13, a Saudi court increased his prison term from 10 to 15 years after he refused to show remorse or recognize the court that handed down his original 10-year term for sedition. Al-Khair, founder of the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia (MHRSA) and legal counsel for blogger Badawi, was convicted on charges of disrespecting King Abdullah and the Saudi authorities.

Saudi Arabia also remains the only country in the world to maintain a ban on women drivers. According to this law, women are strictly restricted to the passenger seat of vehicles. This ban is so harshly imposed that two women — 25-year-old Loujain al-Hathloul and 33-year-old Maysa al-Amoudi — were not only arrested for driving to the United Arab Emirates, but they were also referred to be tried by a terrorism court. In the past, punishments for women drivers have included loss of jobs, passport revocation, and even floggings.

The U.S. government's response to these egregious and inhumane punishments from its ally usually takes the form of a State Department spokesperson expressing “concern.” But there is no major public condemnation. No threats of cutting arms sales. No sanctions against government officials. The U.S. government basically turns a blind eye to the medieval forms of torture the Saudis still mete out.

One major reason is oil. Since before World War II, the United States has viewed Saudi Arabia as a strategic source of petroleum. In 1933, the Arab American Company (ARAMCO) was established as a joint venture by both countries. Currently, Saudi Arabia is the second largest supplier of petroleum to the United States.

With the money it receives from oil, the Saudi government purchases vast amounts of weaponry from the United States. In 2010, the U.S. government announced that it had concluded a deal to sell $60 billion of military aircraft to Saudi Arabia — the largest U.S. arms sale deal in history. One use of U.S. tanks was seen in Bahrain, where the Saudis intervened to crush a democratic uprising against the Bahraini monarchy.

There's now congressional legislation being introduced to declassify a 28-page section of the 9/11 commission report that allegedly exposes the direct role of the Saudi government in the Twin Tower attacks on 9/11.

After all, Saudi Arabia supplied 15 out of the 19 9/11 hijackers and was the home of Osama bin Laden. The country exports a radical version of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, that fuels extremism throughout the Middle East. It treats its women as second-class citizens. And it's the world capital of beheadings, with the government carrying out 87 public beheadings in 2013 and at least nine already this year.

Being a top oil provider does not give a country the right to dehumanize its own people. The United States is certainly no model for respecting freedom of expression — as we saw in the streets of Ferguson, where peaceful protesters were teargassed and beaten — but it shouldn't overlook the human rights abuses carried out by an allied country that imprisons, tortures, and executes its citizens simply for speaking their minds.

So take a moment to call the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC (202-342-3800, then press “3” for the Public Affairs office) and tell them “Free speech is not, and should never be, a punishable crime. Je suis Raif!”

Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and the human rights organization Global Exchange. She is the author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

Source: http://fpif.org/flogging-blogging/

January 16, 2015. Originally published in CodePink.

Long Live Charlie Hebdo!

Harsh Kapoor — 2015-02-01T17:21:55Z

A letter to the left leaning in wake of Charlie Hebdo shootings of January 2015

The January 2015 terror attack on the Paris satirical weekly and its gross misinterpretation by people of Left liberal sensibilities in India and much of the world.

We recently witnessed a devastating terror assault by fanatics who gunned down close to 200 children in a school in Peshawar. Was this a desperate cry of the dispossessed in Pakistan? I am glad that the various tiny fractions of the left in Pakistan stood up and condemned it openly, some in India also stood up for the first time. It provoked widespread shock and disdain.

But the terrorist assassination of 12 cartoonists, journalists and workers at Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January 2015 has provoked very different reactions. Geographical location of the murder seems to drive this.

I am utterly astounded and shocked at the manner in which many in the left leaning and liberal circles in India have reacted to the devastating terror attack in Paris. Has a section of left gone mad? Why do they have to deflect a straight forward issue and start providing rationalisation for terror attacks from the Muslim fundamentalists. We are being given an endless spiel on French colonisation, the war for decolonization in Algeria, the exclusion of the so-called Muslim ‘community' in France, the blowback for France's foolish involvement in the recent wars in Libya and Syria and so on. The role of poor and dispossessed is being invoked.

Commentators from the anglo saxon world and even our desi left intelligenstsia who are waxing eloquent on the Charlie Hebdo massacre are making the most absurd amalgam between the French establishment and a truly radical far left wing magazine which shared absolutely nothing in common.

Charlie Hebdo is presented as the center of all evil that existed ever and that it had it coming, that their cartoons were racist and hurt sentiments. All this reminds me of 1989 and the Rushdie affair when this hurt sentiment industry made it big and has since become globalised. India's Picasso, M.F. Hussain, was forced to leave his country by the wrath of the Hindu Far Right, all in the name of hurt sentiments. Many of the same radicals who stood by M.F. Hussain are now shamelessly standing up with free rationalisation for the Charlie Hebdo killers. Why such different treatment for different religio-fundamentalist strands? Were the poor and dispossessed involved in going after M.F. Hussain or in the assassination of M.K. Gandhi? What about the assassination of Salman Tasseer? Poor and oppressed, any takers?

Charlie Hebdo was born in rebellious times of May1968 in France. It had been preceded by other radical magazines like Hara Kiri and Enragé and many others. But they are in many ways part of a lineage of a very long historical tradition dating back to the French revolution and Jacobins of radical caricature making and mocking the powers that be — religious or other — in every sphere of life. The French revolution was the time of incredibly powerful irreverence and it gave birth to a very incisive form of satire and lampooning. Many magazines with satirical drawing accompanying text emerged during this time and have continued since. Later a much softer version of this developed in Britain and elsewhere.

The 1968 generation Charlie Hebdo has had an even more militant libertarian non conformist view of the world, groomed by a radical antipathy to the political power of religious authority, and a deep identification with ideas of the broad left. Pungent depictions the magazine runs are devastatingly funny that poke fun at everything, just every thing that makes for daily life. This vitriolic humour has come to be vital part of French intellectual and popular culture and there is a social acceptance for it. Millions read satirical comics, satirical newspapers, and magazines. Its anti religious politics takes apart the clergy, most of all the nuns, bishops, popes, rabbis, all who represent the high and mighty and, more recently the Dalai Lama, the new cults, and also in the recent times imams, mullahs as gate keepers of religion.

Charile Hebdo has a bawdy, burlesque style of black humour. Not for the weak hearted. In 1970 Charlie Hebdo made fun of Charles de Gaulle, president and leader of the Resistance, on the day of his death, provoking demands from the Right for its ban. The publication ceased in 1981 and was revived in 1991. Charlie Hebdo and its cartoonists have faced hundreds of court cases since its creation. But it has continued to strike against powerful capitalists, bureaucratic and religious elites. The many targets of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons and journalism have been the far right extremists, police repression, war mongering, the big corporate media, anti immigrant policies, capitalist and employer wrongdoing, the big banks and the stock markets, cuts in public spending and the military industrial complex, the nuclear industry, homophobia, conservative social values, denial of climate change, the food industry, the big pharma etc etc

In the English speaking world, there is practically no tradition of satirical magazines like Charlie Hebdo or say a newspaper like Le Canard Enchainé (A Duck in chains — Canard/Duck is French slang for newspaper) that deploy sardonic cartoons with investigative journalism and opinion pieces as standard fare. The kind of fiercely brutal cartoons that appear in Charlie Hebdo and the like in France have no chance of appearing in Britain, in the United States, Canada, Australia and most of the world. This would pass as obscene bad taste, it is matter of culture as to what is obscene or distasteful. In a country like India, the Charlie style cartoons would be unacceptable to both the left and right and the non ideological and unthinking.

Thanks to the French revolution, there are no blasphemy laws in France (except for Alsace and Moselle regions which joined France after the revolution). But however, France has strict laws on hate speech, on anti Semitism and on holocaust denial, so hateful activity is under the scanner.

Blasphemy or “religious insult” and racism are two different things. But with the rise of identity politics all over the world, there has been a successful push by many to collapse these into a single block that turn's religious identity into ethnic or racial faultlines. In keeping with this, all of French of North African descent get sweepingly described in the media as Muslims (less than 5% go to mosques, 20% are atheists) or Arabs (vast majority are from Berber origins) and all of the ‘white' French get labeled as Christian, a huge mistake this — a misnomer for the French. But in this age of easy clichéd (black and white) representation who cares for complexity — just an SMS does the fixing.

The politics of Charlie Hebdo has been progressive as it gets and informed by the new left around the world. They have been anti fascist, pro-abortion, pro-contraception in solidarity with the feminists, they stood up with the anti nuclear movement unlike their own friends on the left. The main anti-racist platform in France, SOS Racisme, teamed up with Charlie for campaigns against anti immigrant policies. They denounced the Right Wing opposition to legalise gay live-in relations. During the 1990's war in Algeria when there were violent attacks from the fundamentalists on the local media and the artists, writers and cartoonists, many were forced into exile. Charlie Hebdo opened its doors to numerous Algerian journalists and cartoonists in exile. All this goes back in fact because people like Bob Siné (the anarchist celebrity cartoonist from the 1950s and 1960s, Siné one of the oldest cartoonists who worked for Charlie Hebdo magazine till 2008.) faced umpteen law suits for supporting Algeria's independence movement in the 1950's.

24 January

Source : http://www.sacw.net/article10438.html

The Greek Election

Leo Panitch — 2015-02-01T17:21:34Z

As we enter the eighth year of the long-lingering global economic crisis, it is sobering indeed that it is only in Greece that a political party putting forward a clear, radical democratic alternative to the perverse policies of neoliberal austerity stands on the doorstep of entering the state.

Emerging out of a coalescence of people from the 1980s Eurocommunist left and alter-globalization social movements at the beginning of the millennium, Syriza had at one point reached as much as 15 per cent support in opinion polls before 2010. But it came to the brink of power only when its new leader,Alexis Tsipras, in the run-up to the spring 2012 election proclaimed that it was Syriza's immediate goal and duty to enter government in coalition with anybody who would join with them to stop the economic torture of the Greek people.

The policies imposed by the European Central Bank (ECB), and above all by the German central bank acting behind it, made the term Great Depression rather than Great Recession especially apt for Greece in this crisis. Unemployment was pushed beyond 25 per cent, minimum wages were cut by a third, people were cut off the electricity grid and denied basic pharmaceuticals. The rule of law was simply thrown out in terms of labour relations.

Immediate Steps Post Election

Having clung to office for two more years, the governing coalition of the old patronage parties is about to be displaced by Syriza in next Sunday's election. What Syriza is first of all promising is that it will renege on the reactionary austerity policies. They are promising to reinstate collective bargaining and workers' basic rights, to raise the minimum wage, to reconnect people to the electricity grid. It is a sad commentary on our times that these have become radical things to do.

A good deal of this can be done without resolving the very large question of whether Greece will continue to treat as legitimate and pay all the interest on the enormous debt that was run up by previous clientalist and, in many senses, corrupt governments, who always worked hand in glove with the very small capitalist oligarchy that runs industry, trade and finance. Syriza has costed its immediate restorative policies at some 11-billion euros, equivalent to less than 20 per cent of revenues lost through tax avoidance. Its most popular proposed revenue measure involves finally requiring the big media barons to pay license fees for the use of that very basic public resource – the airwaves.

Syriza is not saying that they want to leave the euro. They don't, and wouldn't be anywhere near where they are in the polls otherwise. The question is whether they can have the breathing room to undertake basic restorative policies, and to lay the ground for a longer-term economic strategy. This would entail real structural reform of the Greek state, so there could be some real democratic involvement in what's invested and how it's invested, so that Greece might come out of the crisis in a progressive manner.

The loans Greece has had from European Union, the European Central Bank, and the IMF in exchange for introducing such terrible austerity has not removed its heavy debt burden. The loans were mainly designed to allow for paying interest due to the bondholders, so that Greece could continue to borrow, at exorbitant rates. The insistence that a newly-elected Syriza government – which would be Greece's first really honest, non-clientalist government – should first of all embrace the obligation to pay such interest rates to either wealthy Greek capitalists or to foreign bankers is nothing less than scandalous.

Overcoming the Crisis

The premise that were Syriza to succeed that somehow this would deepen the European crisis stems from looking at the world in terms of the dangers that a democratically elected government poses for domestic and international capital rather than in terms of the necessary things that a democratic government should be doing for the majority of its people.

Syriza represents the first and the strongest democratic response to the bizarre deepening of neoliberalism after the 2008 crisis. Were such a democratic government to be stymied or brought down by the hostility of its domestic capitalist class working in cahoots with international capitalists and their political representatives, this would be a tragedy for democracy. It would reinforce the notion, growing ever stronger in Europe today, that the only way to protect people from the neoliberal austerity is through supporting right-wing ethno-nationalist parties.

What Syriza stands for in this context is what Spain's newly elected Republican government stood for in the early 1930s at a time when the Nazis on the march to winning elections in Germany. For the moment – at least until Podemos reclaims the mantle at the end of this year – a democratic Greece under Syriza would represent what democratic Spain represented for the international left in the 1930s. The prospects for a different outcome are much better, provided there is strong international support for giving a Syriza government the breathing room it would need.

Leo Panitch is editor of the Socialist Register and distinguished research professor at York University, Canada. He is co-author, with Sam Gindin, of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (Verso).

Source: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1071.php#continue