Alternatives International Journal

“The People of Rojava are Staging a Social Revolution”

Sophia Reuss — 2016-03-02T20:26:13Z

Dimitri Roussopoulos, a Montreal-based political activist, writer, editor, publisher, and community organizer, was a member of an International Peace Delegation that visited Istanbul, Turkey from 14 - 17 February, 2016. The delegation, which was organized by the European Union's Turkey Civic Commission with local Kurdish lawyers and consisted of ten influential figures in politics, public life and culture, aimed to meet with Abdullah Öcalan, the Kurdish leader and President of the PKK, who is currently detained at Imrali Prison in Turkey. The Peace Delegation's ultimate objective was to seek to facilitate the restarting of dialogue between the Turkish Government and Öcalan in order to bring about a peace process. I interviewed Mr. Roussopoulous and learned about his involvement with the Delegation, the Kurdish freedom movement and the Rojava Revolution. The interview follows.

How did you become involved in the International Peace Delegation?

I was invited to be part of this delegation most likely because, last fall, I participated in a large international conference in Hamburg organized by Germans and Kurds about what kind of actions can lead to a society other than the one that we have, in other words, a post-capitalist society. It was quite a star-studded cast of speakers, people like David Graeber, David Harvey, John Holloway and Janet Biehl and others attended. I was a featured speaker at that conference, and the comments I made generated a considerable amount of interest. My name must have come up when the idea was launched of sending an International Peace Delegation to Turkey as an initiative to get the Turkish Government to be more reasonable and intelligent in its approach towards the Kurds.

What were the objectives and goals of the delegation?

Our objective was threefold. First, we wanted to meet with the Turkish Minister of Justice to learn about what we could do, as delegates from around eight countries and with a variety of skills, to facilitate a peace process whereby the Turkish Government and the leadership of the Kurdish community can engage in a discussion. We wanted to facilitate a discussion between the Kurdish community and the Turkish Government so as to work out a new accommodation, a new understanding, and a new relationship. Peace missions have a specific composition and specific way of working. For instance, a peace mission never enters into a situation with blame, a peace mission tries to find ways in which people can talk to each other. And in talking to each other, people may find some common ground upon which they can build a relationship.

The second reason why we wanted to meet the Minister of Justice is because we needed the Minister's permission in order to visit Imrali prison. We had to get his clearance to visit Abdullah Öcalan, who is recognized as the main spokesperson for the Kurdish community, and an important political thinker in redefining a new relationship between the Kurdish community and the Turkish Government and in imagining what kind of society the Kurdish freedom movement should aspire towards.

The third objective was that we wanted to meet a large variety of civil society organizations in Turkey. We met with some remarkable people, extremely well-informed and extremely articulate activists, intellectuals, and public figures. One group we met with was the Democratic Society Congress (HDK), an important three-year old association of Kurdish and Turkish civil society, who cooperate in trying to promote a more just and harmonious Turkey. Another one was the Free Öcalan Committee, run by two remarkable women, who collected 10.3 million signatures in Turkey and internationally to petition the Turkish Government to free Öcalan from jail. We also met with several groups of human rights lawyers, the Asrin Law Office, the Libertarian Lawyers Association (OHD), the Foundation for Society and Legal Studies (TOHAV) and Libertarian Democratic Lawyers (ODAV), all of whom work to help establish a negotiating relationship and to free Öcalan from jail. We met with Pervin Buldan, a member of Parliament from the HDP, the important pro-Kurdish progressive political party who participated in the Imrali committee and has visited Öcalan 33 times.

What process did the Delegation follow, and to what extent did the Delegation meet its objectives?

The process was engaged as follows: the delegation was led by Judge Essa Moussa, who is a distinguished superior court judge in South Africa. Judge Moussa helped facilitate the peace process in South Africa and also helped free Mandela. He wrote to the Turkish Minister of Justice, in a letter dated 3 February, asking to see a) how we could be helpful in restarting the peace process and b) whether we could get clearance to visit Öcalan. He did not receive a response. He wrote a second later dated 9 February, and again there was no response. He then got in touch with the South African Ambassador in Ankara, and the South African Ambassador facilitated the letter to be sent to the Minister of Justice who finally acknowledged having received our letter. In the acknowledgement, the Ministry said it would reply that day to the letter. Well, the Ministry never replied. By the time we left Turkey, we hadn't received a reply. As far as we know from Istanbul, a reply never came in.

In terms of facilitating a restart to the peace process, the mission did not obtain its objective. Nor did the mission obtain its second objective of visiting Öcalan. But, we were successful with regard to our third objective: we met at least nine different organizations in Istanbul. We were very well received, learned from and made connections with these organizations that will be important for future collaboration, and we left Turkey with a commitment to do everything we can, from abroad in our respective countries, to facilitate some kind of solution.

What does Öcalan and the PKK stand for?

The PKK was founded as a Marxist-Leninist party and went through a transformation. Not only is it no longer a Marxist-Leninist party, but now the party is no longer interested in establishing another nation state, they are not interested in this classical national liberation outcome to their struggle. What they advocate is what Öcalan terms ‘democratic confederalism', which is grassroots direct democracy at the local level, in neighborhoods, cities and villages, connected through a confederation. This is confederation very much controlled from the bottom up. Indeed, he makes this proposal not only for Kurdish society but for Turkey as a whole, proposing the decentralization of decision making to empower local communities across Turkey. This is very new for the Left, and Öcalan writes a great deal about this, another reason the Turkish state silences him.

How would you characterize, in general historical terms, the relationship between the Turkish Government and the Kurdish population living in Turkey?

What we have to appreciate in this situation is that the ethnic groups who inhabited, and who continue to inhabit, Anatolia, the great peninsula of Asia Minor, paid a very high price for the nationalism of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Atatürk created ex nihilo a country with a singular identity ('you're a Turk or you're nothing'), and the intolerance towards the Kurdish population was absolutely incredible: their language was forbidden, publications, radio, television, newspapers, forms of cultural production were forbidden. None of this was allowed in the name of "Turkishness". But the opening of a dialogue around a peace process, which began around 2005, loosened this up a bit, especially after the painful years of violent civil war in the 1990s. The Kurds were allowed to use their language, they could use it in primary schools over and above learning Turkish, they could have several cultural periodicals, etc. Moreover, there was none of the military violence seen in the past. The situation had definitely improved, and Öcalan participated in facilitating that.

And then, the analysis goes as follows. Ergodan, the current Prime Minister, was determined to provoke a situation which would lead to an election where he could win an absolute majority in parliament so he could change the constitution to create a presidential system, where he could have far more power and authority than he has now. This is especially after such ambitions were temporarily thwarted when the HDP finally achieved the 10% threshold needed to enter parliament in the June 2015 elections. The military campaign starting in the fall of last year by provoking situations in Kurdish areas via the police or even the army. Erdogan's relationship to the army was initially a very poor one: when he became Prime Minister, he arrested several dozens of generals and brought them in front of the courts, accusing them of all sorts of things and these trials went on forever. Thus the army, which is a very Kemalist army and a very powerful institution in Turkey, were not friendly at all with Ergodan. But somehow he buried the hatchet with them in order to declare war on the domestic Kurds. The elections that took place in November last year were very tense; although he still didn't win the number of seats needed to change the constitution, Erdogan nevertheless did win the absolute majority. One of the reasons he did not win the number of seats he wanted to form a super majority and change the constitution is because the new Kurdish party, the HDP, held on to the 10% threshold. Under extreme persecution and military repression, the HDP lost votes but the party held on to what they had and effectively blocked Erdogan from winning the super majority.

So the relationship is at a real impasse, and the repression is ongoing. For example, before we arrived, Cizre, a city of 120 000, was heavily attacked by police and military forces, resulting in the vast majority of its residents fleeing. Hundreds of people who remained in the town, in order to protect themselves, hid in the basements of several houses with their children. Well, this did not hold the Turkish police back. After being stranded in these basements for twenty days, often without food and water, the Turkish military and police attacked the houses through airstrikes and then firebombed the basements with petrol, and the people burned to death in those basements. 190 people were burnt alive, some with signs of decapitation. The vast majority of the bodies are unrecognizably burnt. And the Turkish Government has tried to cover up this massacre, sending the human remains to different cities for autopsies. As a matter of fact, we had one meeting, organized by the Turkish Peace Assembly of at least 80 to 90 academics, artists, activists and a range of others, in a downtown Istanbul hotel, and we were told awful stories of what was going on, as well as the harassment and imprisonment of academics who signed a petition. It continues to be a very sad situation.

How does the relationship between the Turkish Government and the Kurds living in Turkey compare to the Turkish Government's stance towards Kurds living outside of Turkey in the region?

One of the reasons why the current Turkish Government has a very internally aggressive campaign towards the Kurds within Turkey is because the government is very nervous regarding what is happening outside of Turkey in the northeast of Syria, in an area called Rojava. Because, there, some very extraordinary things are taking place. Given the Kurdish struggle has abandoned the goal of a nation-state, this national liberation struggle now aspires for a stateless post-capitalist society based on decentralism. The people of Rojava are staging a remarkable social revolution. It is organized from the grassroots through direct democracy with street and neighbourhood assemblies. Gender equality is also an important factor, with the women's movement being very influential. This is a revolution that is becoming increasingly recognized internationally. There are even volunteers going to fight with the Kurds and other ethnic minorities in Rojava.

You may recall, for example, there was a Canadian ex-soldier who had travelled to Rojava to fight, John Gallagher. He wrote an extraordinary manifesto as to why he was going to Rojava to fight alongside the people there. I was very impressed with the manifesto because it was filled with the right humanistic values, and when his body was flown back to Ottawa, not only was the body unofficially received by Canadian military members, but when the body arrived in Toronto, there was a big solidarity demonstration with his coffin; the local Kurdish community came out, other people came out and greeted the body. I found this quite extraordinary that he would be received this way.

I was a student of the Spanish civil war and social revolution, and I find some very interesting comparisons to be made between what's going on in Rojava both in terms of social experiment, but also in terms of the interest that Rojava is garnering internationally. And any society, as far as I'm concerned, that not only talks about, but actually implements, gender equality cannot be ignored. There were two international delegations that travelled to Rojava in late 2014, and again in 2015, and I know some of the people who were part of these delegations, who actually saw the various governing bodies in Rojava, be they municipal councils or local political organizations. Strict gender parity is enforced for all leadership positions and parallel women's only committees have veto power. They described how everything was done on the basis of gender equality. The other thing that those two delegations came away with is that ideology in Rojava is extremely important. They talk about social and political theory incessantly. One of the people in the delegation went into a secondary classroom, and they were being taught about social ecology. Ideology is constantly being discussed. Nothing prevents them from having long conversations about what is equality, what is gender equality, what is ethnic harmony, how do we combat illiteracy, what leadership role women have to play in this new society, and the women's organizations were quite remarkable according to these two organizations that went there.

The other very remarkable thing is that there is a practice, an ethnic coexistence, within Rojava amongst the diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, including: Kurds, Arabs, Yezidis, Aramaens and Assyrians. In other words, whatever people's ethnic background is, whatever their religion is, it is part of the fabric of the new society that is trying to be built. Those two practices alone are making the Ankara government nervous, because obviously the Kurds in Turkey are thinking and talking and debating about all that too, and it's influencing other places in the so-called Middle East. And this is an example that, as far as these interests are concerned, must not spread. And therefore, it is not surprising, in a way, that the Ankara government behaves the way it does domestically, and also that it uses its military to attack the Kurds outside of Turkey along the border. And we were sitting in a restaurant, half a dozen of us of the delegation and others, and they were showing on television a whole row of Turkish tanks just bombarding across the border. And they're supposed to be fighting ISIS, but they're not, they're trying to destroy Rojava.

How do the various foreign interventions in the region respond to Rojava?

I have no doubt at all that it is in the interest of the ruling parties and individuals in most of these pockets to isolate Rojava and to undermine it. The only 'allies' of the people in Rojava are paradoxically the Americans, because the American military has worked out a relationship of necessity with Rojava: the Kurdish fighting forces on the ground find the most efficient military force to push back ISIS and, via telecommunications, tell the American Air Force where ISIS is. This is the kind of collaboration that takes place. So the Americans have told Erdogan to downscale his violence against the Kurds, because the American military operation in the region relies on the Kurds. So even though there is this bizarre relationship with the American military, nobody wants to see this revolution spread, nobody.

Are the Kurdish communities in the region feeling the impact of Rojava?

Rojava's ideological and political developments are spilling over, in some ways, into the Kurdish community in northern Iraq, though it is still a corporate petro-government. That's a fact. How far east it goes, whether the Kurds in Iran are talking about Rojava, I can't say. And of course, within Turkey from the southeast all the way to Istanbul, the Kurds are talking about it. So there is a lot for us, in the international community, to think about — the importance of the Kurdish struggle, and the originality of Rojava.

Beyond Female Soldiers: The Feminism of Rojava

Melis — 2016-03-02T20:23:09Z

Rojava, the newly autonomous Kurdish region in Syria, became a household name in the summer of 2014, during the war between the Islamic State and the Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Units) and YPJ (Women's Protection Units) forces. At the same time, photos of the all-female YPJ units began appearing all over Western media, pitting the Kurds as a feminist alternative to other forces in the region. These media sources were not wrong when they called the revolution in Rojava a feminist revolution, however they often failed to go beyond images of female soldiers in understanding what feminism means for Rojava.

Abdullah Ocalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), is the man behind the model of democratic confederalism, which forms the basis of the governing model in Rojava. Claiming that the history of civilization is a “5000-year-old history… of the enslavement of woman”, Ocalan argues that “the depth of woman's enslavement and the intentional masking of this fact is thus closely linked to the rise within society of hierarchical and statist power.”

Framing women's liberation in this way inextricably links it with anti-statist struggles. Abandoning the gender roles that have been ascribed to men and women, what Ocalan calls a “total divorce” of the 5000-year history of civilization, goes hand in hand with the revolution that is happening in Rojava. Ocalan came up with the “total divorce theory” in 1997, however women had already begun taking up more space within the Kurdish liberation movement before then.

Within the PKK, which was founded in 1976, women began playing an important role in guerilla fighting in the early 1990s. In 1992, a woman called Berîtan sacrificed herself in warfare rather than surrender to the enemy, thus becoming a role model for many Kurdish women fighters and an important symbol for the Kurdish women's movement. The first women's congress was held on March 8th 1995, and by 1999 there was a separate women's wing of the PKK. The formation of separate women's guerilla forces in the PKK can be seen as the precedent of the all-female armed forces of Rojava, the YPJ.

YPJ

Talking about the reason behind forming an all-female military unit, YPJ commander Zozan Deniz said, “in contexts where women and men were together, women had this understanding that men would take care of things. We had to change that attitude, which is where the YPJ came in." Despite the importance of the YPJ, not all armed units in Rojava are gender segregated. Anyone can join the YPG, regardless of gender identity.

The YPJ creates a space for women to challenge internalized feelings of incompetency projected on them by society, away from the scrutiny of men. Deniz continued to say that at the beginning of the revolution, even the fact that women were driving the vans of the YPJ created a lot of excitement, as it was seen as a sign of women joining the public sphere.

Women who want to join the YPJ have to first go through a 20-day training together with YPG units. After this they work under the YPG in their local post, until they are deemed eligible to go through YPJ training. This includes training in gender studies and women's history in addition to military training, and education on gender issues continues even in the battlefield. The emphasis on women's education stems from the belief that a true women's revolution has to start with women's mindsets. Rûken Ehmed, a coordinating member of the women's organization Yekîtiya Star, stated in an interview that “some things cannot be changed merely by politics or armed resistance. They need a more comprehensive struggle.”

Women's Academies and Jineoloji

The Women's Academies, mostly founded by Yekîtiya Star, are at the forefront of this comprehensive struggle. These academies are run entirely by women and are guarded by female soldiers. Both the academy and the role of guarding it are open to women of all ages. The academies offer at least 12 sessions per year, usually around 15 days each. The topic of each session is determined according to the needs of the community that each academy belongs to. Sessions are held in a non-hierarchical manner and rely on discussions and sharing experiences rather than instruction.

The main ideology of these academies is Jineoloji, a term coined by Ocalan which can be roughly translated as “the science of women”. Jineoloji is the creation of knowledge about women, by women. Dorşîn Akîf, who is one of the coordinators at the Yekîtiya Star Academy in Rimelan, said that Jineoloji aims to “overcome women's non-existence in history” by recovering “the kind of knowledge that was stolen from women.” However, Jineoloji is not merely about constructing a history of women, it is also about an understanding how concepts, especially those related to the oppression of women, are produced and reproduced by social relationships.

Rojava is founded upon the principle of self-defence, both in a literal sense with the YPG, YPJ and local protection units, but also in a more metaphorical sense. Rûken Ehmed alludes to the fact that women's education in academies is seen as a part of their self-defence, when she says that women from Arab, Syriac and Yezidi communities are coming to Yekîtiya Star to “strengthen their self-defence.” This is an indication of the extent of the importance given to women's education.

Mala Jin or Women's Houses

Another part of the women's revolution happening in Rojava are the Mala Jin or Women's Houses, which were formed to protect women from violence and produce solutions and justice with a pro-women approach. Similar to the Women's Academies, the Mala Jin are also run entirely by women. They function both as a support mechanism for women, but also provide them with legal aid.

The legal aid process is as follows: a woman applies to the to the Mala Jin and reports a case of violence, the women working at the Mala Jin listen to and record her testimony, as well as collect evidence of visible signs of violence. They then present the case to the court and defend the woman as her lawyer. In the case of women applying for divorce, they first start a 15-day reconciliation period where the Mala Jin coordinators take care of the woman and try to reconcile the relationship between her and her husband. If the problems are not resolved by the end of this period, they present the case to the court again and act as the defence lawyer. In all cases related to women, the court appoints a female judge.

According to the coordinators of the Qamishlo Mala Jin, there has been an increase in cases since 2014, which is attributed to women feeling more comfortable with talking about domestic violence since the revolution, and the feeling of security thanks to the YPJ. Similarly Şemsê Ferhat from the Dirbêsiyê Mala Jin stated in an interview that they have solved 1151 cases in the first 6 months of the house.

Another way in which women are supported in the Rojava revolution is through the Women's Protection Houses, which are centers founded for women to stay with their children for a period of time after they leave their abusive husbands. These centers both offer protection to women from their husbands, as well as skills-based training to help them find job and be able to sustain themselves. Children also receive education in the Women's Protection Houses.

Women's Communes

The final link of the women's revolution is the women's communes founded by Yekîtiya Star. In the communes, women make decisions about economic life, self-defence and education without the interference of men. Another part of these communes are the women's coops, the first of which was founded at the end of 2014, and they aim to give women space in economic production. Each coop consists of about 13 people and the main item of production is wheat.

What has been called the feminist revolution of Rojava is not simply about women taking part in military struggles against the Islamic State. It is a much more comprehensive transformation of women's mentalities, giving them the space and support to gain enough confidence in order to join all parts of society.

SOURCES:

Ocalan, Abdullah. 2013. Liberating Life: Woman's Revolution. Cologne: International Initiative.
Marcus, Aliza. 2007. Blood and belief the PKK and the Kurdish fight for independence. New York: New York University Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10189763.
Demir, Arzu. 2015. Devrimin Rojava Hali. Istanbul: Ceylan Yayinlari.
http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/haber/140043/ozgurluk-kusagi-rojava-ix
http://jinha.com.tr/en/ALL-NEWS/content/view/26680?page=2
http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/revolutionary-education/
http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/haber/149269/rojavada-cozumun-adresi-kadin-evleri
http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/haber/139385/rojava-kadin-kooperatifleri-buyuyor

When History Repeats Itself

Messaoud Romdhani — 2016-03-02T20:20:15Z

There is no big difference between what happened in Sidi Bouzid, December 17th, 2010 when the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi self-immolated after being harassed by some officials, inspiring wide protests all over Tunisia, mainly in deprived area and, what happened this January 2016 in Kasserine, five years after the Tunisian revolution, “the revolution of dignity”. Protests were set off when an unemployed youth, Ridha Yahioui, deliberately climbed an electric pole and died electrocuted while taking part in a protest staged by a group of unemployed. And once again, social protests have been triggered, mainly by unemployed university undergraduates. And with the same slogans: employment, freedom and dignity.

What has changed in the last five years? Two years ago, the work of the Constituent Assembly ended with the adoption of a constitution that contains important human rights guarantees, stipulating, among other things, that "the State shall strive to achieve social justice, sustainable development and balance between different regions."

However, nothing much has changed on the ground. The social grievances that inspired the Tunisian revolution remain unsolved. Worse still, the gulf between the regions has widened, the unemployment problem has been aggravated, mainly among university graduates, who make up a third of the whole unemployed population (242,000 out of 620,000), with 60,000 new graduates every university year. One specific characteristic, though: most of those who are unemployed come from the underprivileged areas of Beja, Jendouba, Kasserine, Sidi Bouzid , gabes, Mednine, Tataouine , Gafsa and Kebili.

In fact, during the last decades, higher education, “Tunisia's pride” has suffered serious deficiencies: a decline in quality, lack of any strategic vision and absence of job opportunities after graduation. For instance, jobs created in the last few years have not absorbed more than 9% of the graduates, and most of them are working in small businesses along the coastal line, having a capacity of employment of no more than 120 workers.

Not only have successive governments fallen short in addressing unemployment, trying to put out the fire of social protests here and there like firefighters; without a long-term strategy, creating sometimes temporary low-waged jobs without any security or legal framework and without any significant productivity, but they have also continued with the same political orientations in line with the neoliberal policies of Ben Ali, ignoring the impact of such policies on poor and middle-classes and the constitutional social benefits enshrined in the new constitutions.

In fact, what really enrages these young protesters is the widening gap between the social urgencies of the revolution reflected later in the new constitution and the market-driven approach which has never been modified for decades, an approach that is based on unfettered liberalism, marginalization of inland regions, widespread corruption and patronage and cronyism whether in the public or private sector.

It is for these reasons that protests by unemployed youth were triggered in Kasserine and other deprived areas, repeating the same slogans chanted at the time of the revolution: as nothing has changed, these youths have nothing but continue to protest.
Adding insult to injury, the political situation is getting worse as leaders in the majority party are more engaged in a turf war about their personal ambitions than in trying to solve the acute social and economic problems, tarnishing not only their own image and that of their party, but also that of the State whose credibility and legitimate prestige are fading away and amplifying the feelings of despair and frustration.

Five years after a revolution with a social background, we, once again, insist on the need to take concrete measures that take into consideration equities between different regions, address the rising demand of employment, limit the growing corruption and rethink the role of the State as a regulator in development, supervision and planning. Without this, protests will break out again, and they will probably grow more and more violent.

Tunisia, we think, is now at the crossroads: carry on down with the path of democracy, freedoms and human rights, the ideals for which so many people of different backgrounds laid down their lives and if so, we need to enhance a national dialogue on the economic and social situation with the participation of all actors: experts, political parties, civil society organizations, unions… so as to shape a long-term strategy or, carry on ignoring the urgent demands of poor populations with all the ensuing consequences , not the least of which putting the whole transitional process and the democratic assets in jeopardy.

Crises in France: the left's response

Sophia Reuss — 2016-03-02T20:17:37Z

The people of France have been confronted with multiple challenges lately: while the migrant crisis and the situation in Calais is ongoing, Paris was a target of a terror attack in November last year. In December, the Paris Climate Conference, COP21, took place in Paris Le-Bourget while the city was under the state of emergency. To find out about how the French Left responded to the situation, I spoke with Bernard Dreano over the phone. Bernard Dreano is Chair of CEDETIM (Centre d'études et d'initiatives de solidarité internationale) and a co-founder of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly international network (HCA).

What was the French Left's response to the state of emergency declared after the Paris attacks?

First of all, we have to clarify what we mean when we speak of the French Left. There is what I term the ‘left of the left', which includes the Green Party, the Communist Party and its allies in the Front de Gauche. Then there is the ruling Socialist Party. The vast majority of the Socialist Party not only accepted the state of emergency, but promoted it. Manuel Valls and Francois Hollande's position is that France needs a state of emergency to face terrorism, and that France needs to extend this state of emergency. Valls even said that France should implement a state of emergency as a long as Daesh is a danger, which means potentially for years.

Now, the left of the left initially accepted the state of emergency, and voted for it during the first vote in the National Assembly. A few MPs abstained or voted against it, but this was a small minority. Recently, MPs in the left of the left are criticizing the prolongation of the state of emergency and its consequences. Their criticism is not only against of the state of emergency as such, but of what lies behind it: the anti-terrorist regulation, which is supposed to be very far from the Patriot Act but yet contains a lot of things which are quite problematic in terms of freedom, etc. So after some time, the left of the left criticized the new legislation and the state of emergency. And of course, they strongly criticized the developments right after the attacks, because during the pre-COP21 period, several people were put under home arrest, including 25 ecological militants.

Then we had the development of the constitutional reform which would have put the state of emergency into the constitution. The background to this is quite complicated, but to sum it up, in France, we have 3 statutes. The first is the state of siege, which means military rule (this is never applied). Then we have Article 16, which grants full power to the president and which was used only one time by De Gaulle during the Algerian War. Finally there is the state of emergency, which has existed since 1955 which was used during the struggle for liberation in Algeria. It has been used very few times in France since 1955, generally in the way of symbolic action, like in 2005 during the riots in the banlieues, and in New Caledonia, which is a long story of colonialism.

But this time, the state of emergency was extended, and alongside putting the state of emergency in the constitution, the ruling party wanted to insert an article about “decheance de nationalite” in the constitution, which would effectively suppress the nationality of someone accused of terrorist behavior and which would apply to individuals with dual citizenship. The left of the left reacted against this, as well as significant numbers of MPs from the Socialist Party and conservative MPs. But, the majority of MPs nevertheless stood for it.

All in all the political Left reacted slowly. Civil society and human rights organizations, on the other hand, reacted immediately. The Human Rights League, which is a very respected organization in France, alongside many organizations mobilizing around migrant issues, immediately criticized the state of emergency very strongly. Currently, there is a committee in France organized around fighting the promulgation of the state of emergency. This committee denounced the abuse in the name of the state of emergency, and organized a demonstration in more than 50 cities and towns in France just two weeks ago. The demonstrations were not very big by French standards, all together around 14,000 people demonstrated. But the demonstrations took place in many places, which reveals the more robust grassroots response.

What was the Left's reaction to COP21? How did the state of emergency impact the mobilizations that were planned around the conference?

There was a lot of mobilization within society around COP21— there was a movement called Alternativa, which organized 400 events all around France to discuss alternatives in terms of production, consumption, etc. In addition, there was a relatively important coalition organized to express the voice of civil society during COP21, Coalition Climat. Coalition Climat was a very broad coalition, but it was not big enough in terms of the number of people involved in activities.

No political parties were involved (formally) in the Coalition Climat. If you look carefully at who was involved in the Coalition and developing it, there were many leftist activists and people involved in the ‘alterglobalist' movement. The Coalition also involved some trade unions, including the reformist trade unions, and a lot of grassroots organizations. This made for a very interesting and broad Coalition, but the political Left did not form its backbone. For example, the Green Party, which is supposed to be at the forefront of such a subject, was not active. There was a big dispute within the Green Party about whether the party should have participated in the Coalition or not. This debate was a characteristically party politics debate, and as such, paralyzed the party when it came to the question of participation.

Right after the attacks and the declaration of the state of emergency, the government forbade all public activities and demonstrations, not only because they considered mobilizations to be possible sites for more terrorist attacks, but because they would require police to divert resources away from protecting the COP21 conference. The government was divided on this, and the Coalition Climat leaders pressured for the continuation of demonstrations. In the end, some demonstrations did take place, but not as many as were planned. If the state of emergency was not declared after the attacks, the number of people participating in initiatives parallel to COP21 would have been bigger, but not by much. While some interesting events did end up taking place in Montreuil during the Climate Forum, most of the participation was international… there was much less French participation than there should have been.

After COP21, it was decided that the Coalition Climat should not carry on. Part of its membership is already preparing for COP22: there is actually already a French committee for COP22. But the broad coalition as such, is not active.

Was the Coalition Climat successful in linking climate justice to other problems, like issues of social and economic inequity?

The Coalition Climat as such was a very broad coalition and focused primarily on COP21, but there was some attempt to mobilize on the basis of other socioeconomic issues. There were some appeals from leaders in the banlieues to mobilize, which, had the calls been more robust, would have symbolized the Coalition's linking of climate justice with French inequity in the banlieues. But practically speaking, very few things happened to demonstrate the Coalition was thinking about other social issues. Questions of social issues like unemployment were treated very abstractly, not practically.

Let's take the inequity in the banlieues as an example. COP21 took place in the northeast of Paris, in the middle of one of the most popular, prosperous neighbourhoods in Paris. And the Coalition Climat was taking place in Montreuil, which is in the same part of the city. But the local groups in Montreuil, as far as they exist, were not really involved; they were really only represented to a very small extent. Local communities were not very involved in the civil society mobilization organized in the cities. There was actually much more work done in small towns and in the countryside by the Alternativa network.

To give you one more example — we had a debate about the effects of climate change in the Climate Forum in Montreuil. Montreuil is known as the third city of Mali — many Malian migrants live in Montreuil. With thousands of Malian people in Montreuil and the Climate Forum taking place in their town, there was not much Malian representation in the debates. They were not there. That's just one example among others. This was a fault of the Coalition's lack of political backbone, but it also shows the weakness of the movement in terms of being rooted in parts of society.

What was the French Left's response to the migration crisis?

With this issue, once again, we see the weakness of the French Left today. On paper, the Left, not including the centre-left Socialist Party (the Socialist Party's leadership has a very strong anti-migrant attitude), is supposed to be pro-migrant, but there are very few mobilizations organized to demonstrate this. France has accepted 10,000 syrian refugees. 10,000 is the total for the whole five year period. But France opened its door to elites, not to the ordinary or working class people at all. And that's just an example with regard to the Syrian question. But of course it's the same thing for everything.

You have the infamous issue of Calais; all these migrants are coming to France because they want to get to the UK and they are blocked in Calais. It has been a scandal for 3 or 4 years now. The policies of the French government, both Sarkozy as well as Hollande, have categorically denied to take action in Calais. Their attitude is basically: “we cannot do anything because if we do something, if we create an official refugee camp, it will generate an appeal and more migrants will come.” It's basically just a continuing catastrophe.

Locally, there are extraordinary people mobilizing to support the migrants in Calais, but then there are more and more anti-migrant demonstrations going on as well. Nevertheless, the Calais locals are generally doing a good job, a bit like the population of Lampedusa. But the local activists are mobilizing without the support of, and actually in defiance of, the authorities, the Socialist Party, and the centre left. So while the Left has a (formally) good position on migrants, but they are not developing concrete activities.

If you take the problem with racism, there is a big division within the left of the left regarding Islamophobia. There is a big division on this issue which is paralyzing the left of the left - it is a big problem. Within each party you find the same divisions: while some politicians are able to speak about the issue of anti-Muslim racists, some people just say that there are no anti-Muslim racists and that simply invoking the concept of Islamophobia means you support the Islamists, because Islamophobia is a concept invented to protect Islamists. Even the self-proclaimed leader of the left of the left, Jean Luc Melenchon, supports this position, I mean it is his official position, for example, that Muslims cannot wear veils at school. So the Communist Party is totally divided on the question of Islamophobia (the Green Party is much more open, I would say). But this is an example of a problem that weakens the Left. And moreover, a lot of French Muslims are looking to the left of the left and are frustrated, so they vote for the centre right party — not for the Socialists. Although some still vote for the left of the left, most of them vote for the centre right, for the liberals, which is how the left lost at least ten municipalities in the last elections...because the islamophobic attitude of the left of the left is very strong.

Is there any hope for a rejuvenated, unified French left in the near future?

I think that it's going to be complicated for the French left in the coming months, and I hope that in the coming year the situation will improve. Most likely, the right wing will win the upcoming presidential election. Some people think it will be better to have a centrist right, because the liberals would be better than the current crazy social democrats. And this isn't a small phenomenon, it is a very big phenomenon. So because of this, and because a lot of people will not vote for the Socialist candidate, we can assume the traditional right will win. And during this sequence, it becomes very difficult for the left of the left to appear. What we hope is that after the 2017 elections, a new phase will really start. After the 2017 elections, we will hopefully witness the recomposition of the French left starting from the left of the left. But we still have the remains of the old parties, so it will take a few years yet.

A few notes about the French Left:

● The governmental "left" is composed of the Parti Socialiste and a few small allies (center left and ecologist dissidents)
● The "left of the left”: The Greens Europe Ecologie les Verts (EELV), the Front de Gauche (Left Front) a coalition of Parti Communiste Français PCF, Parti de Gauche PG (Left Party), Ensemble ("Together"mainly former members of PCF and NPA) and a few small groups...
● The far left: mainly Troskystes, the most important group being the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist Party/NPA) and its popular leader Olivier Besancenot

The Protection of Net Neutrality in India: Who Benefits from Free Basics?

Katrina Gibbs — 2016-03-02T20:14:33Z

As the Internet grows increasingly essential, governments must face decisions about if and how the government should regulate the Internet. Growing monopolization amongst the ‘Internet Giants' like Google and Facebook threatens to destroy the open architecture of the Internet. Countries like India, Egypt, South Africa, and others have been grappling with the question of net neutrality, as their markets continue to expand and in light of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's attempt to expand his influence in these emerging markets by offering a service called ‘Free Basic'. The aim of Free Basic is to offer access to basic websites by providing mobile data for free for specific sites. Free Basic, at first glance, permits those unable to afford cellular data with access to basic sites for free. India is Facebook's second largest potential market after the U.S.A., due to expansive mobile use and immense population. India also suffers from the fact that 30 percent of Indians live below the poverty. Mark Zuckerberg has expressed that Free Basic was designed to bring more Indians online by offering Reliance customers complimentary access to a range of Internet sites. So why did the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) pass an order that included the ban of Free Basic on February 8, 2016?

The TRAI order addressed concerns about the regulation of zero-rated services—that is, the practice where certain content providers and service providers enter into an agreement to provide subsidized access to certain content. Net neutrality activists in India mobilized against Free Basic, in order to protect plurality and neutrality with regard to Internet content. The ‘Save the Internet' movement taken up by Indian activists demonstrates a deep concern for internet freedom, and further reveals the need for net neutrality in order to develop the potential for mobilization through social media outlets.

The TRAI responded to the net neutrality activists with support by ordering that service providers should not charge different rates for accessing different types of content on the Internet and maintained that the protection of net neutrality principles are an integral part of keeping the internet as a public resource. The TRAI expressed that, “In India, given that a majority of the population are yet to be connected to the internet, allowing service providers to define the nature of access would be equivalent of letting TSPs shape the users' internet experience”.

What this means is that Free Basic would be able to design the knowledge and outlook of its users by limiting their access to the sites selected by the provider. The content that would be privileged under Free Basic by Facebook includes Bing, Wikipedia, ESPN, Accuweather, BBC News, and dictionary.com; however, major sites like YouTube, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Twitter are excluded from the service. Unsurprisingly, Google and Amazon are some of Facebook's biggest rivals as far as the ‘Internet Giants' go. As Mumbai-based venture capitalist Mahesh Murthy points out, “[Free Basic] primarily serves Facebook's interests rather than upholding the idea of connectivity as a basic human right”.

According to advocates for net neutrality and critics of the service, the motivations and effects of Free Basic will turn service providers into “gatekeepers” of the Internet—transforming the open architecture of the Internet into a private venture, in which certain content is privileged over others, and certain content is privileged for others. Zuckerberg contends that the service is meant to fulfill his goal of universal digital access. While activists for net neutrality argue that all Internet content should be treated equally, rather than privileging certain types of content over others. While a service like Free Basic provides poorer people access to low cost content, allowing differential rates perpetuates monopolies in the Internet, thereby largely benefitting Internet giants like Facebook and Google and negatively affecting smaller content providers. In this way, while Free Basic would open up access to users, it would simultaneously limit the access that those users have.

Facebook clearly has an interest in profiting from Free Basic far beyond providing universal digital access. Free Basic is a step toward homogenization of the Internet. Allowing for differential pricing, rather than protecting the principle of network neutrality, would significantly limit the different ways in which people use the Internet. Monopolization of Internet space leads to an asymmetry of information between service providers and users, and depletes the internet of a diversity of content that users have access to when the principle of net neutrality is protected.

Some have theorized that Free Basic is Facebook's economic strategy in so-called emerging markets. Tech analysts agree that gaining new users is essential for Facebook's business plan in emerging markets—and, given that India has such a large population and that China has already closed its doors to Facebook, the decision by the TRAI to protect network neutrality might mean that Zuckerberg will have to continue to work to gain millions of new Facebook users through other means than providing the service of Free Basic. Though the Free Basics model has been implemented in Colombia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Mexico, India isn't the only country that has demonstrated a desire to protect the principle of network neutrality. Egypt has also suspended the Free Basic program, and similar questions regarding the importance of maintaining net neutrality are being asked in South Africa.

Though questions about internet connectivity and access are important considerations, offering Facebook a way to expand its monopoly beyond the massive framework of Facebook itself is not the answer. The internet must be safeguarded as a space in which an endless variety of content can be accessed, and the principle of net neutrality should not be sacrificed in order to smoke screen the furthering of Facebook's monopolization. However, both sides of these issues raise important questions for the present and the future of the role of the internet in everyday society at large. How can we expand affordable access to the internet without sacrificing diversity of content and without allowing the private sector to design a public resource for its profit?

Sources:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/25/facebook-struggles-to-lift-ban-on-free-basics-in-india.html

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/1/6795/FB-Eats-Crow-TRAI-Listens-to-the-People-Upholds-Net-Neutrality

http://www.hindustantimes.com/ht-view/it-s-not-over-yet-let-s-keep-the-gears-of-net-neutrality-moving/story-iUBNBBCKLidrRnBG3lCi3L.html
http://qz.com/612159/why-trai-backed-net-neutrality-and-killed-facebooks-free-basics-in-india/

What The Nation Can(‘t) Give You

Dylan Boyko — 2016-03-02T20:12:39Z

The sheer amount of wealth in America is disturbing. The vast acres of untouched and untouchable – at least for some – resources is a quixotic kind of problem. There seems to be too much to do any good. As Hamilton Nolan notes in a short Gawker piece, come March 1st many Americans will lose access to food stamps. While the most vulnerable in America face such a massive crisis, unbelievable amounts of money pour into presidential campaigns. Failed candidate Jeb Bush raised roughly $125 million dollars from corporate donors and Political Action Committees. Something so obviously wrong is occurring in American politics, where money is callously wasted during a time of national crisis.

A Richard W. Painter New York Times op-ed reads as a summary of the greatest hits of disgruntled right-wing voters, where even the American conservative movement finds the current donation climate untenable. Campaign finance breeds big government, campaign finance increases regulation, campaign finance fails to address the faith or issues-based voter because “values don't pay for campaigns; health insurance companies, entertainment businesses, the gambling industry and its online counterparts do.” Money, wasted again, but in different ways, irks the conscientious conservative. The kinds of donations that fund campaigns don't come from individuals but conglomerates and corporations. The apparent danger exists in money not derived from the same ideological cause. Corporate money is dangerous because it literally could be foreign – the ultimate terror to individuals committed, paradoxically, to American governed by and for Americans.

Somehow mining an impactful quotation from the dark recesses of Barry Goldwater, deceased conservative extraordinaire, Painter uses Goldwater's words to underline a visible fault on both sides of the political aisle: “In order to achieve the widest possible distribution of political power, financial contributions to political campaigns should be made by individuals and individuals alone [with] no reason for labor unions — or corporations — to participate in politics.” The issue does not need a partisan connotation; the influence of large donors obscures the importance of governing for the people and obfuscates the reality of issues like Nolan's observations on the diminished access to food stamps.

Individual representation needs to be prioritized, especially in campaign finance. There needs to be an accessible and accountable way to monitor and manage campaign donations. More importantly, the vast amounts of wasted capital should, instead, funnel towards addressing social and economic inequity. While too naïve to assume a one-to-one ratio, imagine the impact of these dollars in a state or national welfare setting. No candidate, Democrat or Republican, escapes the pratfalls of abusive campaign financing.

Indian Nationalism and Execution of Afzal Guru

Tapan Bose — 2016-03-02T20:10:45Z

Afzal Guru, convicted of conspiracy to wage war against India and murder in December 2001, was hanged on February 9, 2013, has reemerged as a martyr. The Democratic Students Union (DSU) had decided to hold a cultural meeting inside the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to protest against what they called “the judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat” and in solidarity with “the struggle of Kashmiri people for their democratic right to self-determination.” The University having given permission for the event earlier, decided to withdraw it about 20 minutes before the meeting was to be held. This was done apparently, under pressure of the ABVP, the students' body of the BJP.

What happened next is well known. The police arrested the JNUSU president, Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of “sedition”. Several others have also been taken into custody and the police are still looking for more students. The prompt police action against ‘anti-national' students and its deliberate inaction in the case of assault on JNU students, teachers and journalists inside the Patiala House court and the statements by the Home Minister and other members of the government and ruling party alleging links between JNU students and Pakistani Jihadi organisations, clearly shows that the government believes that the students of the JNU were indulging in activities aimed at destroying the integrity and sovereignty of the country. Clearly, in this atmosphere of heightened indignation of the self-righteous nationalists, some of whom have said they would not hesitate to kill people who raised anti-national slogans, the JNU students have little chance of escaping being sacrificed at the altar of nationalism.

Let me move away from what is happening and the debate about whether the JNU students should be charged with sedition. Let me get back to the issue of the protest against the execution of Afzal Guru. More critically why is the execution of Afzal Guru still seen as unjust by so many people of this country, and not just only Kashmiris. The slogan, "Tum kitne Afzal maaroge, har ghar se Afzal niklega!" (How many Afzals can you kill, Afzal will be born in every home) is significant as it shows that in the eyes of several people Afzal become a martyr.

Afzal was convicted by the highest court of the land. His mercy petition filed by his wife, Tabassum was rejected by the President of India. The information about the rejection of the clemency petition was not communicated to Tabassum in time, denying Afzal the opportunity to appeal for a review of his case, a right granted to convicted persons by the judiciary of India. The government executed Afzal without informing his family and his lawyers. The clandestine execution of Afzal violating all procedures and even the law as laid down by the Supreme Court of the land has been seen by many as desperate attempts of ruling parties like the Congress and the BJP to pander to the frenzy of jingoism and appeal for votes.

Afzal was too poor to be able to afford a lawyer, and had asked for legal aid from the state and the court. The Supreme Court has held in 1956 that the every accused has an inalienable right to be defended by a lawyer of his choice, and such representation and defence must be ‘effective' (Hansraj and Ors vs State, AIR, 1956, p. 641). Afzal never got a lawyer of his choice. The court appointed lawyers, Seema Gulati and then Niraj Bansal.

At the very beginning of the trail, Seema Gulati conceded that the prosecution had prima facie evidence to frame charges. She admitted all the crucial documents and recovered items presented by the prosecution without demanding any formal proof. Later, all these were used as the basis for Afzal's conviction. After Gulati's departure midway through the trial, the court appointed Niraj Bansal, Gulati's junior as Afzal's lawyer. Afzal's repeated plea to the court that he did not have confidence in Bansal were ignored. It is evident that Niraj Bansal made virtually no efforts to oppose the prosecution's case either on question of facts and law. The importance of the right to effective counsel was underlined by the Supreme Court when it said “judicial justice with procedural intricacies, legal submissions and critical examination of evidence leans upon professional expertise; and a failure of equal justice under the law is on the cards where such supportive skill is absent for one side”(Madhav Hayawadanrao Hoskot vs State of Maharashtra, AIR 1978, SC 1548, para 3). The manner in which the court appointed lawyers had defended Afzal, leaves little doubt it was a case of failure of equal justice. As Afzal had said, “I am Afzal for Kashmiris, and I am Afzal for Indians as well, but the two groups have an entirely conflicting perception of my being”. He was a Kashmiri Muslim in Delhi, liable at any point of time to be confronted, attacked, tortured and imprisoned.

Death penalty has little to do with guilt or deterrence. Prosecution of conspiracy cases which involve allegations of attempts to overthrow the government by waging war against the state is essentially a political trial. Justice in such political trials is not always guided by criminal procedure or substantive law, it is often influenced by majoritarian political considerations dressed in the garb of “democratic values”. The Supreme Court of India while ruling in Afzal Guru's case confirmed this when it decided that a life had to be sacrificed to satisfy the “collective conscience of the people”. After the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament the nation needed a sacrifice for safeguarding itself against its enemies, particularly after the Operation Parakram, India's first attempt at using military coercion against Pakistan, achieved only limited success. Afzal Guru embodied the perfect enemy. And the media, the military, the intelligence establishment and the politicians – all were agreed. He was a Kashmiri Muslim, a self-confessed failed militant, who had refused to become an informer for the security agencies. A lonely figure who was trying to make a living out of small business and feed his family – a virtual nobody. The court dispensed with its own rules and convicted him on the basis of circumstantial evidence.

In anthropological theory, “sacrifice”, is ritualized violence concerned with marking and safeguarding social boundaries. The sacrifice is also of course a scapegoat. It is the ideal cultural spectacle for the disposal of bodies which threatens the edifice of the community itself. In modern times the community has been substituted by the “nation state”. As if in recognition of the importance of rites of sacrifice, the Supreme Court in 2006 had declared that Afzal Guru was to be executed on the day of the Hindu festival of Diwali, when the Hindus in north India celebrate the triumph of Ram over Ravana by burning his effigies. Annoyed by the appeals that were filed against the execution order and its stay, Swapan Dasgupta, an ideologue of the Hindu nationalists, wrote, “this is the time of the year when India celebrates the triumph of good over evil … … it is ironic that this should be the time when the country was confronted with disagreeable demand aimed at puncturing our sense of Dharma”. Execution of the evil is necessary to uphold Dharma. Already a line has been drawn between the people who are for upholding the Dharma and those who are against the Dharma. The death penalty has become the quintessential expression of the power of the nation and destruction of its enemy. In this scheme of things, the judicial system and the media have taken on the role of identifying the terrorists, who threaten the sovereignty and integrity of India.

The Indian state sees the movement in Kashmir as Pakistan's proxy war. It refuses to accept that there is popular support for the movement for self-determination in Kashmir. Yet it has tied down nearly half a million members of its armed forces in crushing the movement in the valley for more than two and a half decades. All popular struggles for freedom have a deep moral core. In these movements there is a strong tradition of self-sacrifice for the cause of freedom. Through his execution, Afzal Guru, the failed freedom fighter has returned as a martyr. We are witnessing the unfolding of story of his martyrdom. It is the martyrdom of Afzal that has given birth to the slogan, "Tum kitne Afzal maaroge, har ghar se Afzal niklega!" (How many Afzals can you kill, Afzal will be born in every home).

Reinventing the Indian Left

Satya Sagar — 2016-03-02T20:07:58Z

It is an inspiring moment as the students of JNU fight back magnificently against a paranoid, malicious rightwing regime, bent on persecuting them through mob violence and misuse of state power. The movement against the absurd charges of ‘sedition' foisted on student leaders and assaults on media and academics by the ruling BJP's goons, has rallied together the entire spectrum of left, democratic parties and civil society in the country.

And yet, for all the brave resistance being put up, the harsh fact remains that as far as the Indian Left is concerned, it is at its lowest ebb since Indian Independence. Over the last two decades, with their dwindling public support and confused responses to national and global developments, the left parties- across the spectrum- have become a negligible force in Indian politics. Today, talk of socialism, five year plans, public sector, anti-imperialism, Naxalism and the very idea of the Communist Party evokes little enthusiasm amidst the Indian population, including the poor and marginalized the Left is supposed to be working for.

There was a time, not too long ago, when the Left towered mightily over domestic and foreign policy debates, shaped social and cultural trends and fired the imagination of thousands of youth across the country, willing to sacrifice their lives for the ‘revolution'. The best and brightest in the nation engaged with the philosophy of Marxism, Leninism or Maoism, left cushy careers to organize the rural and urban poor, became the finest writers, poets, artists in the nation and influenced public imagination disproportionate to their actual numbers on the ground.

‘The Phoenix Moment: Challenges Confronting the Indian Left', written by the well-known journalist Praful Bidwai, is a fascinatingly detailed study of why the Indian Left both rose to dizzying heights in the past and crashed ignominiously in recent times. The last book he wrote before his untimely demise last year, is brutally honest, meticulously researched and bitingly critical. It is also impressively broad in scope, analyzing the Left from not just the usual parameters of redistribution of wealth, public welfare and workers' rights but also ecology, gender and caste.

Given the various interpretations of the term ‘Indian left', Praful deals almost entirely with the history and performance of the CPI and CPM for sake of clarity, though some parts of his analysis could apply to smaller left formations too. While tempered with much praise for the their genuine contributions, a lot of the book's content is likely to be very embarrassing to the bosses of the bigger communist parties. They should however bear in mind it is only someone deeply anguished by the state of the left movement who could have written with so much honesty, concern and in such great detail.

So, why exactly are the Indian left parties in the miserable shape they are in today? Praful traces the problems of the Indian communist movement to the time of its emergence in the thirties itself, when its leadership showed lack of theoretical clarity or willingness to creatively adapt Marxism-Leninism to the specifics of the Indian context. Instead he says, the newly formed Communist Party of India (CPI) –heavily under the influence of the Communist Party of Great Britain – ‘slavishly' followed instructions from the Communist International and made grave political blunders.

It is clear that positions taken by the CPI in the run up to Indian independence were marked by numerous flip-flops on several critical issues that showed severe confusion of priorities or even lack of sound theoretical understanding on its part. For example, though many communists and socialists were part of the Congress and the Indian freedom movement for a long time, the CPI's decision to stay out of the Quit India movement launched by the Congress in 1942 against the British led to their alienation from the Independence struggle. The CPI, though at first internally divided on the issue, fell in line with the directive from the Communist International to support the ‘People's War' as the Soviet Union was under attack from Hitler and had an alliance with the British.

Similarly, the CPI leadership in 1948, in an adventurist spree, dubbed Indian independence itself as ‘fake', the Nehru government ‘illegitimate' and called upon its cadre to revolt, with arms if needed. Following brutal suppression by the Indian state, the death or imprisonment of hundreds of its cadre and plummeting membership the party again changed track abruptly. It contested the general elections in 1952 and emerged as the main opposition to the Indian National Congress in parliament – thus giving legitimacy to a system it had condemned in the harshest terms just a few years prior.

The Phoenix Moment goes on to describe how despite the lack of consistent or even coherent analysis of the Indian situation, the communist movement did grow rapidly among industrial workers, peasantry and students due to popular admiration for the Soviet Union and the dire economic conditions of post-Independence India. The CPI also had a fiercely committed cadre and many of its leaders were skilled at mobilizing and building organization.

The CPI's prestige rose further nationally when it managed to win elections to the Kerala assembly in 1957, forming the world's first elected communist government. Its attempt at land reform however provoked a backlash from entrenched groups and the dismissal of its government by the Nehru regime again boosted the party's image across India. Despite the split in the CPI, with the formation of the CPI (Marxist) in 1964, the movement continued to grow and achieved electoral success in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura where the CPI(M) and its Left Front partners came to power repeatedly since the mid-seventies.

In 1996, the CPM's Jyoti Basu was even offered the post of Prime Minister as part of a coalition government, an offer rejected by his own party in what Basu called a ‘historic blunder'. More than being a mere mistake, the party's decision probably stemmed from its deep confusion as to whether they were part of the Indian state and establishment as in real practice or carrying out a ‘revolution' as claimed by their official rhetoric.

The Phoenix Moment does an excellent job clarifying the record of all these Left Front regimes in the three states mentioned above, with detailed data on indicators such as land redistribution, literacy, health, employment, status of agricultural labour, women and minorities. While there were some very important initiatives taken on behalf of the poor and working populations and performance varies across states they ruled, the overall picture of achievements of the Left Front governments, according to Praful, was disappointing.

As he points out, the left parties got entangled a bit too much in purely electoral and parliamentary politics, paying less attention to popular mobilization, building alternative institutions or political and social processes that could advance the principles of socialism in Indian society. For example, the left parties in their initial phase of rapid growth were enthusiastically involved in a wide range of popular initiatives like forming cooperatives, spreading literacy, running hospitals and clinics, battling superstition and obscurantist practices or providing relief during natural disasters.

Once they tasted power all such regular activity, was quietly abandoned, being seen – as part of a purely rhetorical radicalism - as too ‘reformist' or ‘Gandhian'. Instead more emphasis was placed on ‘political work' – narrowly defined as token protests here and there or making fiery statements, while putting all real energy into winning elections. Moving away from the highly creative efforts of their early years the communist parties became slothful and even neglected the task of developing good quality cadre or working on a regular basis with ordinary people. Ironically the RSS, the mother organisation behind Hindutva religious nationalism, has built a mighty organization, by never contesting elections directly, and carrying out, precisely the kind of ‘reformist' work that the Indian left once did so well

The neglect of regular organizational work by left parties was compounded by theoretical positions influenced more by experiences of the left in Europe than what was evident in the Indian context. A glaring example of this was their indifference to the issue of caste, which they treated as a ‘feudal remnant' that would disappear with the intensification of the ‘class struggle'.

This myopic stand on caste was part of a general contempt the left had for ‘identity based' movements – like those around language, regional or community aspirations - seen to be divisive of the working classes. The fact that each Indian communist party has contributed to dividing the Indian working class by setting up their individual trade union wings – like sub-castes almost - is of course not seen as a problem of identity politics by the left leadership!

The powerful emergence of the backward caste and Dalit movements in recent decades, particularly in the populous Hindi heartland, exposed the Left's lack of connect with ground realities. It did not help at all that historically, the left parties have been led overwhelmingly by those from upper caste Hindu backgrounds, with hardly any Dalits, extreme backward castes, Adivasis or Muslims anywhere in the top echelons of the organizational hierarchy.

On the economic front too, while the Left organized a section of urban, industrial workers the fact remains that trade unions represent just around 7% of the close to 500 million working population in the country. The vast majority, in the informal economy with no minimum wages, harsh working conditions and little security have not figured very much on the Left's agenda. More than half of these workers in the informal sector again are farm labour, a section the Left has neglected, focusing instead on organizing the numerically smaller but socially more powerful middle and rich peasantry.

As if all this was not bad enough the Left Front regime in West Bengal lost its ideological moorings too, when it went to the extent of championing the policies of economic liberalization and privatization, introduced under pressure from Indian and foreign corporations, by the Narasimha Rao led Congress government in 1991. The Buddhadeb Bhattacharya regime's attempt, to forcibly take away land from farmers in Singur and Nandigram on behalf of private industry in 2007, led to massive public protests that finally ousted the Left Front government itself, after being in power for over three decades continuously.

It is a pity that Praful's book does not go sufficiently into analyzing the reasons for the failure of the Indian Left to expand beyond West Bengal and Kerala or hold on to its initial strengths in states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. He also does not discuss the Naxalite and Maoist movements, whose contributions as well as follies are essential to discuss to understand the overall Indian left movement. There is a precious section though in the appendix of the book though that gives a fascinating account of how the left built its organization and power base in Tripura, a history that is still very relevant to the future of the Indian left movement.

So given all these problems in their theory and practice what are the chances of the CPI and CPM really reinventing themselves and rising from the ashes? According to Praful, this is certainly possible provided they undergo critical introspection and radical course correction, failing which they will only fade away into complete irrelevance.

Unfortunately, honest reflection is unlikely, given that Indian communist parties, like their counterparts internationally, have never really allowed much debate or criticism of policies within their own fold. They have instead claimed to be adhering to the Leninist principle of ‘democratic centralism', under which factions of any kind were not allowed within the party for fear of breaking up their ‘unity'. Strangely, a movement that swore it was fighting for ‘scientific socialism' has never really adhered to the primary processes that drive the sciences – namely free flow of ideas, debate and the right to experiment and hold dissenting positions.

The price they have paid for such a rigid and foolish attitude has been high. Apart from an inability to make accurate judgments of political or social scenarios, the Indian Left also failed to make course corrections because the feedback from its own cadre or leaders was censored or stifled. The brightest minds and many sincere workers of these parties got disillusioned and left, leading to a depletion of quality cadre. This in turn led to further decline of the Party's performance, both in terms of mass mobilization and electoral performance.

While Praful is deeply critical of the bigger Indian left parties for their various failures, he remains very hopeful, in general, about the future of the broader left movement, that includes other smaller communist parties and the sizeable non-party left and civil society forces. In this context, with some reservations, he also mentions the Aam Aadmi Party, whose ability to mobilise the public and focus on specific needs of the underclass bear both studying and emulation. The task of taking left principles, ideas and agendas forward according to him will fall on the shoulders of these other forces, that will need to work together in ‘shared solidarity'.

As a beginning towards this, he suggests the drawing up of a ‘People's Charter', through a process of deep reflection and analysis, to work out a plan of transformational action in the Indian context. This is an important idea that should be considered by all those on the left at this juncture in Indian politics as a small but significant step out of the morass they are in.

Having a good plan though may not be enough to take on the challenge of fighting both growing corporate power and the religious nationalism allied with it. The Indian left, across the spectrum, should also intensify debates within their fold on critical political, social and cultural questions. Most importantly they should ‘go back to the masses' not only in order to regain their influence on the Indian polity but even survive as a political formation in this country.

Given the dire political situation in the country, those on the left will also have to learn how to work together with each other and also allied forces, eschewing narrow sectarian attitudes. It is only a popular united front of workers, farmers, students, Dalits, Adivasis and minorities, against crony capitalism and religious nationalism, that could both save Indian democracy and help the Indian left regenerate like the mythical Phoenix.

Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health woker and can be reached at sagarnama@gmail.com

The State of Israel is Changing its Nature

Michel Warschawski — 2016-03-02T20:05:41Z

It sounds like fascism, it smells like fascism, it looks like fascism.

Usually I don't like to use the concept "fascism" to describe the Israeli regime. First of all and above all, the State of Israel is a colonial State, and its institutions, policies and strategies belong to the broad family of colonialism. The basic relationship with the indigenous Arab population has been from the very beginning of the Zionist enterprise and still is today a colonial relationship. In that colonial framework, one can identify some specificities: civil rights for the Indigenous minority that were not pushed to exile in 1947-1949 and democratic institutions and mechanisms inside Israel, in its pre-67 borders. One must mention, however, the long series of discriminative laws and practices towards the Palestinian minority in the framework of the so-called "Jewish and Democratic State" of Israel.

But, for several years, there have been important legislative and political developments that should raise the issue of the "fascization" of Israel. The old "democratic framework" is gradually changing into a new kind of system that recalls Italy in the twenties and even Germany at the beginning of the Nazi regime. Let's point out three of these changes.

First, the privatization of violence: the far-right government is using (and financing) private organizations to harass, spy, and infiltrate progressive groups. Recently, Israeli TV gave publicity to one of these groups, "Ad Kann.” Ad Kann admits that its mission is to infiltrate anti-occupation and human rights organizations, like B'tselem or Braking the Silence, and monitor their activities. If we stick to fascist precedents, the next step will be to initiate provocations on behalf of these infiltrated groups.

The second change: the initiation of a long series of new laws that reduce the civil liberties of individuals and organizations. The new NGO law (not yet voted on) is the last example of this attack on civil liberties: NGOs receiving financial support of foreign countries (like the European Union) will have to publicly identify themselves as such. Palestinian organizations from Israel have already been seriously targeted, and the next step, recently announced by leaders of the right-wing coalition, will be to reduce the rights of Arab members of Parliament. If we stick to the fascist precedents, the next step may be to forbid Arabs to be elected or even to vote.

Third, the creation of an atmosphere of fear: even targeted attacks (such as on Ezra Nawi) have a deterrent affect on the broader progressive public that thinks twice before taking political initiatives, assuming that the State or private gangs may react violently. Terrorizing the population is one of the most efficient ways of fascism to impose its domination on the minds and then on society and the State.

Like in previous cases in modern history, the majority of people are not fascist, and even despise fascism. The problem is the lack of a sense of urgency that we need to mobilize and unite, now. In few years, it may be too late.

Michel Warschawski (Mikado) is an Israeli anti-Zionist activist. He led the Marxist Revolutionary Communist League until its demise in the 1990s, and co-founded the Alternative Information Center.

Source: http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/aicoment/1268-the-state-of-israel-is-changing-its-nature

Pride and Shame

Messaoud Romdhani — 2016-03-02T20:03:32Z

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” (Martin Luther King)

Despite the great impact of the Tunisian uprising on the region and the relative success of the transitional process, crowned with two important elections judged “democratic and transparent” both in 2011 and 2014 and despite a new constitution that has been considered “unique” in the region, guaranteeing the basic freedoms and rights, Tunisia suffers from a lack of adequate legislations that protect minorities' rights without distinction.

Here is an example: On January 23, 1846, that is 170 years ago, Ahmed Bey, the then governor of Tunisia, issued a decree outlawing slavery in the country and Tunisians, now, are so proud of this historical event that it had predated the United States slave abolition by nearly 20 years.

Unfortunately, “when pride comes, disgrace follows.” Abolishing slavery has never meant getting rid of racial discrimination towards black people and de facto racism is a reality in Tunisia today. The reason? The abolition of slavery has never been followed by a change in social relations, and education and it has not challenged the deep-seated cultural reflexes, often referred to as “foundational beliefs”.

“Racial discrimination based on the color of the skin is a shameful reality in Tunisia today, it can be either latent or apparent and it is fueled by a collective painful memory that considers black-skinned Tunisians as descendants of Sub-Saharan slaves,” says Business news (24-04-2015)

Take the village of Gosba, near the southern state of Mednine: there, inhabitants are divided into two communities: black and white. Like Alabama in the 1950's, there are buses for white and black students. Worse still, blacks have no right to bury their dead in the white‘s cemetery!! Their own, a bit far away, is called “the cemetery of slaves” (see the documentary film, slaves of Gbonton)

Racial separation has been reinforced in Gosba since the year 2000 when two young people, a white girl and a black boy fell in love and decided to get married without their parents consent. Ever since, racial division has been deep-rooted and black people suffer not only more humiliation and contempt, but also marginalization and poverty; a group of people connected by color and blood relations, living all their rituals and social activities inside the closed group.

In a letter addressed to the Assembly of People's Representatives, academic and researcher Maha Abdelhamid said that racism is not peculiar to Gosba. “It is seen in every town, village and district… It develops in the open air in the plain view of everybody.” (Lettre de Maha Abdelhamid aux deputes tunisiens, Février 2015)
Sometimes, racism may not be so overt and explicit. But that does not preclude its existence everywhere you go, from public transports to schools and universities, to the streets of Tunis.

Also, media does perpetrate racism. Because of her firm position in defending the freedom of the press, former President of the Journalists' Union, Nejiba Hamrouni, was a victim of a smear campaign in 2013 , had her photo distorted on the front page of a newspaper and insulted with reference to her dark skin. That neither provoked reactions on the part of the State, nor was it denounced by large parts of civil society.
But not only black Tunisians are victims of racism, sub-Saharan students living in Tunisia face the same stigma. They were, for instance, a target of a spate of violence by football fans following the defeat of Tunisia in the African Cup of Nations (February 2015)

"Sub-Saharan students here are living in fear right now," Rania Ramdhane , a spokesperson for Mnmeti (My Dream), an anti-racism association , told Al Jazeera English (6 February 2015). A Malian student said that he was beaten and insulted by a group of Tunisia. "While beating me, they kept saying "go back to your country, the country of monkeys" And when I complained to the police, they refused to register my complaint." (Business news, 21 April 2015)

In a long powerful letter, Mariam Touré, a Malian student wrote about her deception when she arrived in Tunisia. «When I left my country, I was passionate about Tunisia, the Paris of Africa, the country of freedom and tolerance. She was disappointed when she "discovered another facet" where the country is no different from other racist countries. "Take my words as a cry of a lost sister who does not understand why the color of the skin would be the object of derision and mockery," (Equal Times8 March 2015)

Today, while we are commemorating the anti-racism Bey decree, we have also to remember that Tunisia has ratified the “International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination that stipulates that countries guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, color or national origin." And the Convention urges for legislations to protect minorities, through criminalizing incitement of racial hatred and "ensuring judicial remedies for acts of racial discrimination."

While we are proud of the success of our transition, of our nascent democracy, it is worth recalling that some 10% of the population is often considered as second class citizens, simply because they happen to have a darker skin.