TRUE LIES- a poem by talaam acey
Brotha Talaam breaks it down!
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism
by Samir Amin
Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His recent books include The Liberal Virus (Monthly Review Press, 2004), A Life Looking Forward (Zed Books, 2007), and The World We Wish to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century, forthcoming from Monthly Review Press. James Membrez translated this essay from the original French.
All the currents that claim adherence to political Islam proclaim the “specificity of Islam.” According to them, Islam knows nothing of the separation between politics and religion, something supposedly distinctive of Christianity.
It would accomplish nothing to remind them, as I have done, that their remarks reproduce, almost word for word, what European reactionaries at the beginning of the nineteenth century (such as Bonald and de Maistre) said to condemn the rupture that the Enlightenment and the French Revolution had produced in the history of the Christian West! On the basis of this position, every current of political Islam chooses to conduct its struggle on the terrain of culture—but “culture” reduced in actual fact to the conventional affirmation of belonging to a particular religion. In reality, the militants of political Islam are not truly interested in discussing the dogmas that form religion. The ritual assertion of membership in the community is their exclusive preoccupation.
Such a vision of the reality of the modern world is not only distressing because of the immense emptiness of thought that it conceals, but it also justifies imperialism’s strategy of substituting a so-called conflict of cultures for the one between imperialist centers and dominated peripheries. The exclusive emphasis on culture allows political Islam to eliminate from every sphere of life the real social confrontations between the popular classes and the globalized capitalist system that oppresses and exploits them. The militants of political Islam have no real presence in the areas where actual social conflicts take place and their leaders repeat incessantly that such conflicts are unimportant.
Islamists are only present in these areas to open schools and health clinics. But these are nothing but works of charity and means for indoctrination. They are not means of support for the struggles of the popular classes against the system responsible for their poverty. On the terrain of the real social issues, political Islam aligns itself with the camp of dependent capitalism and dominant imperialism. It defends the principle of the sacred character of property and legitimizes inequality and all the requirements of capitalist reproduction. The support by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian parliament for the recent reactionary laws that reinforce the rights of property owners to the detriment of the rights of tenant farmers (the majority of the small peasantry) is but one example among hundreds of others.
There is no example of even one reactionary law promoted in any Muslim state to which the Islamist movements are opposed. Moreover, such laws are promulgated with the agreement of the leaders of the imperialist system. Political Islam is not anti-imperialist, even if its militants think otherwise! It is an invaluable ally for imperialism and the latter knows it. It is easy to understand, then, that political Islam has always counted in its ranks the ruling classes of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Moreover, these classes were among its most active promoters from the very beginning.
The local comprador bourgeoisies, the nouveaux riches, beneficiaries of current imperialist globalization, generously support political Islam. The latter has renounced an anti-imperialist perspective and substituted for it an “anti-Western” (almost “anti-Christian”) position, which obviously only leads the societies concerned into an impasse and hence does not form an obstacle to the deployment of imperialist control over the world system. Political Islam is not only reactionary on certain questions (notably concerning the status of women) and perhaps even responsible for fanatic excesses directed against non-Muslim citizens (such as the Copts in Egypt)—it is fundamentally reactionary and therefore obviously cannot participate in the progress of peoples’ liberation.
Three major arguments are nevertheless advanced to encourage social movements as a whole to enter into dialogue with the movements of political Islam. The first is that political Islam mobilizes numerous popular masses, which cannot be ignored or scorned. Numerous images certainly reinforce this claim. Still, one should keep a cool head and properly assess the mobilizations in question. The electoral “successes” that have been organized are put into perspective as soon as they are subjected to more rigorous analyses. I mention here, for example, the huge proportion of abstentions—more than 75 percent!—in the Egyptian elections. The power of the Islamist street is, in large part, simply the reverse side of the weaknesses of the organized left, which is absent from the spheres in which current social conflicts are occurring. Even if it were agreed that political Islam actually mobilizes significant numbers, does that justify concluding that the left must seek to include political Islamic organizations in alliances for political or social action? If political Islam successfully mobilizes large numbers of people, that is simply a fact, and any effective political strategy must include this fact in its considerations, proposals, and options.
But seeking alliances is not necessarily the best means to deal with this challenge. It should be pointed out that the organizations of political Islam—the Muslim Brotherhood in particular—are not seeking such an alliance, indeed even reject it. If, by chance, some unfortunate leftist organizations come to believe that political Islamic organizations have accepted them, the first decision the latter would make, after having succeeded in coming to power, would be to liquidate their burdensome ally with extreme violence, as was the case in Iran with the Mujahideen and the Fidayeen Khalq.
The second reason put forward by the partisans of “dialogue” is that political Islam, even if it is reactionary in terms of social proposals, is “anti-imperialist.” I have heard it said that the criterion for this that I propose (unreserved support for struggles carried out for social progress) is “economistic” and neglects the political dimensions of the challenge that confronts the peoples of the South. I do not believe that this critique is valid given what I have said about the democratic and national dimensions of the desirable responses for handling this challenge.
I also agree that in their response to the challenge that confronts the peoples of the South, the forces in action are not necessarily consistent in their manner of dealing with its social and political dimensions. It is, thus, possible to imagine a political Islam that is anti-imperialist, though regressive on the social plane. Iran, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and certain resistance movements in Iraq immediately come to mind. I will discuss these particular situations later.
What I contend is that political Islam as a whole is quite simply not anti-imperialist but is altogether lined up behind the dominant powers on the world scale. The third argument calls the attention of the left to the necessity of combating Islamophobia. Any left worthy of the name cannot ignore the question des banlieues, that is, the treatment of the popular classes of immigrant origin in the metropolises of contemporary developed capitalism. Analysis of this challenge and the responses provided by various groups (the interested parties themselves, the European electoral left, the radical left) lies outside the focus of this text. I will content myself with expressing my viewpoint in principle: the progressive response cannot be based on the institutionalization of communitarianism,* which is essentially and necessarily always associated with inequality, and ultimately originates in a racist culture. A specific ideological product of the reactionary political culture of the United States, communitarianism (already triumphant in Great Britain) is beginning to pollute political life on the European continent. Islamophobia, systematically promoted by important sections of the political elite and the media, is part of a strategy for managing community diversity for capital’s benefit, because this supposed respect for diversity is, in fact, only the means to deepen divisions within the popular classes. * A political theory based on “collective cultural identities” as central to understanding dynamic social reality.—Ed.
The question of the so-called problem neighborhoods (banlieues) is specific and confusing it with the question of imperialism (i.e., the imperialist management of the relations between the dominant imperialist centers and the dominated peripheries), as is sometimes done, will contribute nothing to making progress on each of these completely distinct terrains. This confusion is part of the reactionary toolbox and reinforces Islamphobia, which, in turn, makes it possible to legitimize both the offensive against the popular classes in the imperialist centers and the offensive against the peoples of the peripheries concerned. This confusion and Islamophobia, in turn, provide a valuable service to reactionary political Islam, giving credibility to its anti-Western discourse. I say, then, that the two reactionary ideological campaigns promoted, respectively, by the racist right in the West and by political Islam mutually support each other, just as they support communitarian practices.
Modernity, Democracy, Secularism, and Islam
The image that the Arab and Islamic regions give of themselves today is that of societies in which religion (Islam) is at the forefront in all areas of social and political life, to the point that it appears strange to imagine that it could be different. The majority of foreign observers (political leaders and the media) conclude that modernity, perhaps even democracy, will have to adapt to the strong presence of Islam, de facto precluding secularism. Either this reconciliation is possible and it will be necessary to support it, or it is not and it will be necessary to deal with this region of the world as it is. I do not at all share this so-called realist vision.
The future —in the long view of a globalized socialism—is, for the peoples of this region as for others, democracy and secularism. This future is possible in these regions as elsewhere, but nothing is guaranteed and certain, anywhere. Modernity is a rupture in world history, initiated in Europe during the sixteenth century. Modernity proclaims that human beings are responsible for their own history, individually and collectively, and consequently breaks with the dominant pre-modern ideologies. Modernity, then, makes democracy possible, just as it demands secularism, in the sense of separation of the religious and the political. Formulated by the eighteenth century Enlightenment, implemented by the French Revolution, the complex association of modernity, democracy, and secularism, its advances and retreats, has been shaping the contemporary world ever since.
But modernity by itself is not only a cultural revolution. It derives its meaning only through the close relation that it has with the birth and subsequent growth of capitalism. This relation has conditioned the historic limits of “really existing” modernity. The concrete forms of modernity, democracy, and secularism found today must, then, be considered as products of the concrete history of the growth of capitalism. They are shaped by the specific conditions in which the domination of capital is expressed—the historical compromises that define the social contents of hegemonic blocs (what I call the historical course of political cultures). This condensed presentation of my understanding of the historical materialist method is evoked here simply to situate the diverse ways of combining capitalist modernity, democracy, and secularism in their theoretical context. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution put forward a model of radical secularism. Atheist or agnostic, deist or believer (in this case Christian), the individual is free to choose, the state knows nothing about it.
On the European continent—and in France beginning with the Restoration—the retreats and compromises which combined the power of the bourgeoisie with that of the dominant classes of the pre-modern systems were the basis for attenuated forms of secularism, understood as tolerance, without excluding the social role of the churches from the political system. As for the United States, its particular historical path resulted in the forming of a fundamentally reactionary political culture, in which genuine secularism is practically unknown. Religion here is a recognized social actor and secularism is confused with the multiplicity of official religions (any religion—or even sect—is official). There is an obvious link between the degree of radical secularism upheld and the degree of support for shaping society in accord with the central theme of modernity. The left, be it radical or even moderate, which believes in the effectiveness of politics to orient social evolution in chosen directions, defends strong concepts of secularism.
The conservative right claims that things should be allowed to evolve on their own whether the question is economic, political, or social. As to economy the choice in favor of the “market” is obviously favorable to capital. In politics low-intensity democracy becomes the rule, alternation is substituted for alternative. And in society, in this context, politics has no need for active secularism—”communities” compensate for the deficiencies of the state. The market and representative democracy make history and they should be allowed to do so. In the current moment of the left’s retreat, this conservative version of social thought is widely dominant, in formulations that run the gamut from those of Touraine to those of Negri. The reactionary political culture of the United States goes even further in negating the responsibility of political action. The repeated assertion that God inspires the “American” nation, and the massive adherence to this “belief,” reduce the very concept of secularism to nothing.
To say that God makes history is, in fact, to allow the market alone to do it. From this point of view, where are the peoples of the Middle East region situated? The image of bearded men bowed low and groups of veiled women give rise to hasty conclusions about the intensity of religious adherence among individuals. Western “culturalist” friends who call for respect for the diversity of beliefs rarely find out about the procedures implemented by the authorities to present an image that is convenient for them. There are certainly those who are “crazy for God” (fous de Dieu).
Are they proportionally more numerous than the Spanish Catholics who march on Easter? Or the vast crowds who listen to televangelists in the United States? In any case, the region has not always projected this image of itself. Beyond the differences from country to country, a large region can be identified that runs from Morocco to Afghanistan, including all the Arab peoples (with the exception of those in the Arabian peninsula), the Turks, Iranians, Afghans, and peoples of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, in which the possibilities for the development of secularism are far from negligible.
The situation is different among other neighboring peoples, the Arabs of the peninsula or the Pakistanis. In this larger region, political traditions have been strongly marked by the radical currents of modernity: the ideas of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the communism of the Third International were present in the minds of everyone and were much more important than the parliamentarianism of Westminster, for example. These dominant currents inspired the major models for political transformation implemented by the ruling classes, which could be described, in some of their aspects, as forms of enlightened despotism. This was certainly the case in the Egypt of Mohammed Ali or Khedive Ismail. Kemalism in Turkey and modernization in Iran were similar. The national populism of more recent stages of history belongs to the same family of modernist political projects.
The variants of the model were numerous (the Algerian National Liberation Front, Tunisian Bourguibism, Egyptian Nasserism, the Baathism of Syria and Iraq), but the direction of movement was analogous. Apparently extreme experiences—the so-called communist regimes in Afghanistan and South Yemen—were really not very different. All these regimes accomplished much and, for this reason, had very wide popular support. This is why, even though they were not truly democratic, they opened the way to a possible development in this direction. In certain circumstances, such as those in Egypt from 1920 to 1950, an experiment in electoral democracy was attempted, supported by the moderate anti-imperialist center (the Wafd party), opposed by the dominant imperialist power (Great Britain) and its local allies (the monarchy). Secularism, implemented in moderate versions, to be sure, was not “refused” by the people. On the contrary, it was religious people who were regarded as obscurantists by general public opinion, and most of them were. The modernist experiments, from enlightened despotism to radical national populism, were not products of chance.
Powerful movements that were dominant in the middle classes created them. In this way, these classes expressed their will to be viewed as fully-fledged partners in modern globalization. These projects, which can be described as national bourgeois, were modernist, secularizing and potential carriers of democratic developments. But precisely because these projects conflicted with the interests of dominant imperialism, the latter fought them relentlessly and systematically mobilized declining obscurantist forces for this purpose. The history of the Muslim Brotherhood is well known. It was literally created in the 1920s by the British and the monarchy to block the path of the democratic and secular Wafd. Their mass return from their Saudi refuge after Nasser’s death, organized by the CIA and Sadat, is also well known. We are all acquainted with the history of the Taliban, formed by the CIA in Pakistan to fight the “communists” who had opened the schools to everyone, boys and girls. It is even well known that the Israelis supported Hamas at the beginning in order to weaken the secular and democratic currents of the Palestinian resistance.
Political Islam would have had much more difficulty in moving out from the borders of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan without the continual, powerful, and resolute support of the United States. Saudi Arabian society had not even begun its move out of tradition when petroleum was discovered under its soil. The alliance between imperialism and the traditional ruling class, sealed immediately, was concluded between the two partners and gave a new lease on life to Wahabi political Islam.
On their side, the British succeeded in breaking Indian unity by persuading the Muslim leaders to create their own state, trapped in political Islam at its very birth. It should be noted that the theory by which this curiosity was legitimated—attributed to Mawdudi—had been completely drawn up beforehand by the English Orientalists in His Majesty’s service.* *The origin of the force of today’s political Islam in Iran does not show the same historical connection with imperialist manipulation, for reasons discussed in the next section.—Ed.
It is, thus, easy to understand the initiative taken by the United States to break the united front of Asian and African states set up at Bandung (1955) by creating an “Islamic Conference,” immediately promoted (from 1957) by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Political Islam penetrated into the region by this means. The least of the conclusions that should be drawn from the observations made here is that political Islam is not the spontaneous result of the assertion of authentic religious convictions by the peoples concerned. Political Islam was constructed by the systematic action of imperialism, supported, of course, by obscurantist reactionary forces and subservient comprador classes. That this state of affairs is also the responsibility of left forces that neither saw nor knew how to deal with the challenge remains indisputable.
Questions Relative to the Front Line Countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Iran)
The project of the United States, supported to varying degrees by their subaltern allies in Europe and Japan, is to establish military control over the entire planet. With this prospect in mind, the Middle East was chosen as the “first strike” region for four reasons:
(1) it holds the most abundant petroleum resources in the world and its direct control by the armed forces of the United States would give Washington a privileged position, placing its allies—Europe and Japan—and possible rivals (China) in an uncomfortable position of dependence for their energy supplies;
(2) it is located at the crossroads of the Old World and makes it easier to put in place a permanent military threat against China, India, and Russia;
(3) the region is experiencing a moment of weakness and confusion that allows the aggressor to be assured of an easy victory, at least for the moment; and
(4) Israel’s presence in the region, Washington’s unconditional ally. This aggression has placed the countries and nations located on the front line (Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Iran) in the particular situation of being destroyed (the first three) or threatened with destruction (Iran).
Afghanistan
Afghanistan experienced the best period in its modern history during the so-called communist republic. This was a regime of modernist enlightened despotism that opened up the educational system to children of both sexes. It was an enemy of obscurantism and, for this reason, had decisive support within the society. The agrarian reform that it had undertaken was, for the most part, a group of measures intended to reduce the tyrannical powers of tribal leaders. The support—at least tacitly—of the majority of the peasantry guaranteed the probable success of this well-begun change. The propaganda conveyed by the Western media as well as by political Islam presented this experiment as communist and atheist totalitarianism rejected by the Afghan people. In reality, the regime was far from being unpopular, much like Ataturk in his time. The fact that the leaders of this experiment, in both of the major factions (Khalq and Parcham), were self-described as communists is not surprising. The model of the progress accomplished by the neighboring peoples of Soviet Central Asia (despite everything that has been said on the subject and despite the autocratic practices of the system) in comparison with the ongoing social disasters of British imperialist management in other neighboring countries (India and Pakistan included) had the effect, here as in many other countries of the region, of encouraging patriots to assess the full extent of the obstacle formed by imperialism to any attempt at modernization. The invitation extended by one faction to the Soviets to intervene in order to rid themselves of the others certainly had a negative effect and mortgaged the possibilities of the modernist national populist project. The United States in particular and its allies of the Triad in general have always been tenacious opponents of the Afghan modernizers, communists or not. It is they who mobilized the obscurantist forces of Pakistan-style political Islam (the Taliban) and the warlords (the tribal leaders successfully neutralized by the so-called communist regime), and they who trained and armed them. Even after the Soviet retreat, the Najibullah government demonstrated the capability for resistance. It probably would have gained the upper hand but for the Pakistani military offensive that came to the support of the Taliban, and then the offensive of the reconstituted forces of the warlords, which increased the chaos. Afghanistan was devastated by the intervention of the United States and its allies and agents, the Islamists in particular. Afghanistan cannot be reconstructed under their authority, barely disguised behind a clown without roots in the country, who was parachuted there by the Texas transnational by whom he was employed. The supposed “democracy,” in the name of which Washington, NATO, and the UN, called to the rescue, claim to justify the continuation of their presence (in fact, occupation), was a lie from the very beginning and has become a huge farce. There is only one solution to the Afghan problem: all foreign forces should leave the country and all powers should be forced to refrain from financing and arming their allies. To those who are well-intended and express their fear that the Afghan people will then tolerate the dictatorship of the Taliban (or the warlords), I would respond that the foreign presence has been up until now and remains the best support for this dictatorship! The Afghan people had been moving in another direction—potentially the best possible—at a time when the West was forced to take less interest in its affairs. To the enlightened despotism of “communists,” the civilized West has always preferred obscurantist despotism, infinitely less dangerous for its interests!
Iraq
The armed diplomacy of the United States had the objective of literally destroying Iraq well before pretexts were actually given to it to do so on two different occasions: the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and then after September 11, 2001—exploited for this purpose by Bush with Goebbels-style cynicism and lies (“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”). The reason for this objective is simple and has nothing to do with the discourse calling for the liberation of the Iraqi people from the bloody dictatorship (real enough) of Saddam Hussein. Iraq possesses a large part of the best petroleum resources of the planet. But, what is more, Iraq had succeeded in training scientific and technical cadres that were capable, through their critical mass, of supporting a coherent and substantial national project. This danger had to be eliminated by a preventive war that the United States gave itself the right to carry out when and where it decided, without the least respect for international law.
Beyond this obvious observation, several serious questions should be examined:
(1) How could Washington’s plan appear—even for a brief historical moment—to be such a dazzling success so easily?
(2) What new situation has been created and confronts the Iraqi nation today?
(3) What responses are the various elements of the Iraqi population giving to this challenge? and
(4) What solutions can the democratic and progressive Iraqi, Arab, and international forces promote?
Saddam Hussein’s defeat was predictable. Faced with an enemy whose main advantage lies in its capability to effect genocide with impunity by aerial bombardment (the use of nuclear weapons is to come), the people have only one possible effective response: carry out resistance on their invaded territory. Saddam’s regime was devoted to eliminating every means of defense within reach of its people through the systematic destruction of any organization and every political party (beginning with the Communist Party) that had made the history of modern Iraq, including the Baath itself, which had been one of the major actors in this history. It is not surprising in these conditions that the Iraqi people allowed their country to be invaded without a struggle, nor even that some behaviors (such as apparent participation in elections organized by the invader or the outburst of fratricidal fighting among Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shia Arabs) seemed to be signs of a possible acceptance of defeat (on which Washington had based its calculations).
But what is worthy of note is that the resistance on the ground grows stronger every day (despite all of the serious weaknesses displayed by the various resistance forces), that it has already made it impossible to establish a regime of lackeys capable of maintaining the appearance of order; in a way, that it has already demonstrated the failure of Washington’s project. A new situation has, nevertheless, been created by the foreign military occupation. The Iraqi nation is truly threatened. Washington is incapable of maintaining its control over the country (so as to pillage its petroleum resources, which is its number one objective) through the intermediary of a seeming national government. The only way it can continue its project, then, is to break the country apart. The division of the country into at least three states (Kurd, Sunni Arab, and Shia Arab) was, perhaps from the very beginning, Washington’s objective, in alignment with Israel (the archives will reveal the truth of that in the future). Today, the “civil war” is the card that Washington plays to legitimize the continuation of its occupation. Clearly, permanent occupation was—and remains—the objective: it is the only means by which Washington can guarantee its control of the petroleum resources.
Certainly, no credence can be given to Washington’s declarations of intent, such as “we will leave the country as soon as order has been restored.” It should be remembered that the British never said of their occupation of Egypt, beginning in 1882, that it was anything other than provisional (it lasted until 1956!). Meanwhile, of course, the United States destroys the country, its schools, factories, and scientific capacities, a little more each day, using all means, including the most criminal. The responses given by the Iraqi people to the challenge—so far, at least—do not appear to be up to facing the seriousness of the situation. That is the least that can be said. What are the reasons for this?
The dominant Western media repeat ad nauseam that Iraq is an artificial country and that the oppressive domination of Saddam’s “Sunni” regime over the Shia and Kurds is the origin of the inevitable civil war (which can only be suppressed, perhaps, by continuing the foreign occupation).The resistance, then, is limited to a few pro-Saddam hard-core Islamists from the Sunni triangle. It is surely difficult to string together so many falsehoods. Following the First World War, the British had great difficulty in defeating the resistance of the Iraqi people. In complete harmony with their imperial tradition, the British imported a monarchy and created a class of large landowners to support their power, thereby giving a privileged position to the Sunnis. But, despite their systematic efforts, the British failed. The Communist Party and the Baath Party were the main organized political forces that defeated the power of the “Sunni” monarchy detested by everyone, Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. The violent competition between these two forces, which occupied center stage between 1958 and 1963, ended with the victory of the Baath Party, welcomed at the time by the Western powers as a relief. The Communist project carried in itself the possibility for a democratic evolution; this was not true of the Baath. The latter was nationalist and pan-Arab in principle, admired the Prussian model for constructing German unity, and recruited its members from the secular, modernist petite bourgeoisie, hostile to obscurantist expressions of religion.
In power, the Baath evolved, in predictable fashion, into a dictatorship that was only half anti-imperialist, in the sense that, depending on conjunctures and circumstances, a compromise could be accepted by the two partners (Baathist power in Iraq and U.S. imperialism, dominant in the region). This deal encouraged the megalomaniacal excesses of the leader, who imagined that Washington would accept making him its main ally in the region. Washington’s support for Baghdad (the delivery of chemical weapons is proof of this) in the absurd and criminal war against Iran from 1980 to 1989 appeared to lend credence to this calculation. Saddam never imagined Washington’s deceit, that modernization of Iraq was unacceptable to imperialism and that the decision to destroy the country had already been made. Saddam fell into the open trap when the green light was given to annex Kuwait (in fact attached in Ottoman times to the provinces that constitute Iraq, and detached by the British imperialists in order to make it one of their petroleum colonies).
Iraq was then subjected to ten years of sanctions intended to bleed the country dry so as to facilitate the glorious conquest of the resulting vacuum by the armed forces of the United States. The successive Baathist regimes, including the last one in its declining phase under Saddam’s leadership, can be accused of everything, except for having stirred up the conflict between the Sunni and Shia. Who then is responsible for the bloody clashes between the two communities?
One day, we will certainly learn how the CIA (and undoubtedly Mossad) organized many of these massacres. But, beyond that, it is true that the political desert created by the Saddam regime and the example that it provided of unprincipled opportunist methods encouraged succeeding aspirants to power of all kinds to follow this path, often protected by the occupier. Sometimes, perhaps, they were even naïve to the point of believing that they could be of service to the occupying power. The aspirants in question, be they religious leaders (Shia or Sunni), supposed (para-tribal) “notables,” or notoriously corrupt businessmen exported by the United States, never had any real political standing in the country. Even those religious leaders whom the believers respected had no political influence that was acceptable to the Iraqi people. Without the void created by Saddam, no one would know how to pronounce their names. Faced with the new political world created by the imperialism of liberal globalization, will other authentically popular and national, possibly even democratic, political forces have the means to reconstruct themselves?
There was a time when the Iraqi Communist Party was the focus for organizing the best of what Iraqi society could produce. The Communist Party was established in every region of the country and dominated the world of intellectuals, often of Shia origin (I note in passing that the Shia produced revolutionaries or religious leaders above all, rarely bureaucrats or compradors!). The Communist Party was authentically popular and anti-imperialist, little inclined to demagoguery and potentially democratic. After the massacre of thousands of its best militants by the Baathist dictatorships, the collapse of the Soviet Union (for which the Iraqi Communist Party was not prepared), and the behavior of those intellectuals who believed it acceptable to return from exile as camp followers of the armed forces of the United States, is the Iraqi Communist Party henceforth fated to disappear permanently from history? Unfortunately, this is all too possible, but not inevitable, far from it.
The Kurdish question is real, in Iraq as in Iran and Turkey. But on this subject also, it should be remembered that the Western powers have always practiced, with great cynicism, double standards. The repression of Kurdish demands has never attained in Iraq and Iran the level of police, military, political, and moral violence carried out by Ankara. Neither Iran nor Iraq has ever gone so far as to deny the very existence of the Kurds. However, Turkey must be pardoned for everything as a member of NATO, an organization of democratic nations, as the media remind us. Among the eminent democrats proclaimed by the West was Portugal’s Salazar, one of NATO’s founding members, and the no less ardent admirers of democracy, the Greek colonels and Turkish generals! Each time that the Iraqi popular fronts, formed around the Communist Party and the Baath in the best moments of its turbulent history, exercised political power, they always found an area of agreement with the principal Kurdish parties. The latter, moreover, have always been their allies.
The anti-Shia and anti-Kurd excesses of the Saddam regime were certainly real: for example, the bombing of the Basra region by Saddam’s army after its defeat in Kuwait in 1990 and the use of gas against the Kurds. These excesses came in response to the maneuvers of Washington’s armed diplomacy, which had mobilized sorcerer’s apprentices among Shia and Kurds. They remain no less criminal excesses, and stupid, moreover, since the success of Washington’s appeals was quite limited. But can anything else be expected from dictators like Saddam? The force of the resistance to foreign occupation, unexpected under these conditions, might seem to bemiraculous. This is not the case, since the basic reality is that the Iraqi people as a whole (Arab and Kurd, Sunni and Shia) detest the occupiers and are familiar with its crimes on a daily basis (assassinations, bombings, massacres, torture). Given this a united front of national resistance (call it what you want) might even be imagined, proclaiming itself as such, posting the names, lists of organizations, and parties composing it and their common program. This, however, is not actually the case up to the present for all of the reasons described above, including the destruction of the social and political fabric caused by the Saddam dictatorship and the occupation.
Regardless of the reasons, this weakness is a serious handicap, which makes it easier to divide the population, encourage opportunists, even so far as making them collaborators, and throw confusion over the objectives of the liberation. Who will succeed in overcoming these handicaps? The communists should be well placed to do so. Already, militants who are present on the ground are separating themselves from the leaders of the Communist Party (the only ones known by the dominant media) who, confused and embarrassed, are attempting to give a semblance of legitimacy to their rallying to the collaborationist government, even pretending that they are adding to the effectiveness of armed resistance by such action! But, under the circumstances, many other political forces could make decisive initiatives in the direction of forming this front. It remains the case that, despite its weaknesses, the Iraqi people’s resistance has already defeated (politically if not yet militarily) Washington’s project.
It is precisely this that worries the Atlanticists in the European Union, faithful allies of the United States. Today, they fear a U.S. defeat, because this would strengthen the capacity of the peoples of the South to force globalized transnational capital of the imperialist triad to respect the interests of the nations and peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Iraqi resistance has offered proposals that would make it possible to get out of the impasse and aid the United States to withdraw from the trap. It proposes: (1) formation of a transitional administrative authority set up with the support of the UN Security Council; (2) the immediate cessation of resistance actions and military and police interventions by occupying forces; (3) the departure of all foreign military and civilian authorities within six months. The details of these proposals have been published in the prestigious Arab review Al Moustaqbal al Arabi (January 2006), published in Beirut.
The absolute silence with which the European media oppose the dissemination of this message is a testament to the solidarity of the imperialist partners. Democratic and progressive European forces have the duty to dissociate themselves from this policy of the imperialist triad and support the proposals of the Iraqi resistance. To leave the Iraqi people to confront its opponent alone is not an acceptable option: it reinforces the dangerous idea that nothing can be expected from the West and its peoples, and consequently encourages the unacceptable—even criminal—excesses in the activities of some of the resistance movements.
The sooner the foreign occupation troops leave the country and the stronger the support by democratic forces in the world and in Europe for the Iraqi people, the greater will be the possibilities for a better future for this martyred people. The longer the occupation lasts, the more dismal will be the aftermath of its inevitable end.
Palestine
The Palestinian people have, since the Balfour Declaration during the First World War, been the victim of a colonization project by a foreign population, who reserve for them the fate of the “redskins,” whether one acknowledges it or pretends to be ignorant of it.
This project has always had the unconditional support of the dominant imperialist power in the region (yesterday Great Britain, today the United States), because the foreign state in the region formed by that project can only be the unconditional ally, in turn, of the interventions required to force the Arab Middle East to submit to the domination of imperialist capitalism. This is an obvious fact for all the peoples of Africa and Asia. Consequently, on both continents, they are spontaneously united on the assertion and defense of the rights of the Palestinian people.
In Europe, however, the “Palestinian question” causes division, produced by the confusions kept alive by Zionist ideology, which is frequently echoed favorably. Today more than ever, in conjunction with the implementation of the U.S. “Greater Middle East project,” the rights of the Palestinian people have been abolished. All the same, the PLO accepted the Oslo and Madrid plans and the roadmap drafted by Washington. It is Israel that has openly gone back on its agreement, and implemented an even more ambitious expansion plan.
The PLO has been undermined as a result: public opinion can justly reproach it with having naively believed in the sincerity of its adversaries. The support provided by the occupation authorities to its Islamist adversary (Hamas), in the beginning, at least, and the spread of corrupt practices in the Palestinian administration (on which the fund donors—the World Bank, Europe, and the NGOs—are silent, if they are not party to it) had to lead to the Hamas electoral victory (it was predictable). This then became an additional pretext immediately put forward to justify unconditional alignment with Israeli policies no matter what they may be.
The Zionist colonial project has always been a threat, beyond Palestine, for neighboring Arab peoples. Its ambitions to annex the Egyptian Sinai and its effective annexation of the Syrian Golan are testimony to that. In the Greater Middle East project, a particular place is granted to Israel, to its regional monopoly of nuclear military equipment and its role as “indispensable partner” (under the fallacious pretext that Israel has technological expertise of which the Arab people are incapable. What an indispensable racism!). It is not the intention here to offer analyses concerning the complex interactions between the resistance struggles against Zionist colonial expansion and the political conflicts and choices in Lebanon and Syria. The Baathist regimes in Syria have resisted, in their own way, the demands of the imperialist powers and Israel. That this resistance has also served to legitimize more questionable ambitions (control of Lebanon) is certainly not debatable. Moreover, Syria has carefully chosen the least dangerous allies in Lebanon. It is well known that the Lebanese Communist Party had organized resistance to the Israeli incursions in South Lebanon (diversion of water included).
The Syrian, Lebanese, and Iranian authorities closely cooperated to destroy this dangerous base and replace it with Hezbollah. The assassination of Rafiq al-Harriri (a still unresolved case) obviously gave the imperialist powers (the United States in front, France behind) the opportunity to intervene with two objectives in mind:
(1) force Damascus to align itself permanently with the vassal Arab states (Egypt and Saudi Arabia)—or, failing that, eliminate the vestiges of a deteriorated Baathist power; and
(2) demolish what remains of the capability to resist Israeli incursions (by demanding the disarmament of Hezbollah).
Rhetoric about democracy can be invoked within this context, if useful. Today to accept the implementation of the Israeli project in progress is to ratify the abolition of the primary right of peoples: the right to exist. This is the supreme crime against humanity. The accusation of “anti-Semitism” addressed to those who reject this crime is only a means for appalling blackmail.
Iran
It is not our intention here to develop the analyses called for by the Islamic Revolution. Was it, as it has been proclaimed to be among supporters of political Islam as well as among foreign observers, the declaration of and point of departure for a change that ultimately must seize the entire region, perhaps even the whole Muslim world, renamed for the occasion the umma (the “nation,” which has never been)? Or was it a singular event, particularly because it was a unique combination of the interpretations of Shia Islam and the expression of Iranian nationalism? From the perspective of what interests us here, I will only make two observations. The first is that the regime of political Islam in Iran is not by nature incompatible with integration of the country into the globalized capitalist system such as it is, since the regime is based on liberal principles for managing the economy. The second is that the Iranian nation as such is a “strong nation,” one whose major components, if not all, of both popular classes and ruling classes, do not accept the integration of their country into the globalized system in a dominated position. There is, of course, a contradiction between these two dimensions of the Iranian reality. The second one accounts for Teheran’s foreign policy tendencies, which bear witness to the will to resist foreign diktats. It is Iranian nationalism—powerful and, in my opinion, altogether historically positive—that explains the success of the modernization of scientific, industrial, technological, and military capabilities undertaken by the Shah’s regime and the Khomeinist regime that followed. Iran is one of the few states of the South (with China, India, Korea, Brazil, and maybe a few others, but not many!) to have a national bourgeois project. Whether it be possible in the long term to achieve this project or not (my opinion is that it is not) is not the focus of our discussion here. Today this project exists and is in place. It is precisely because Iran forms a critical mass capable of attempting to assert itself as a respected partner that the United States has decided to destroy the country by a new preventive war. As is well known, the conflict is taking place around the nuclear capabilities that Iran is developing. Why should not this country, just like others, have the right to pursue these capabilities, up to and including becoming a nuclear military power? By what right can the imperialist powers and their Israeli accomplice boast about granting themselves a monopoly over weapons of mass destruction? Can one give any credit to the discourse that argues that “democratic” nations will never make use of such weapons like “rogue states” could, when it is common knowledge that the democratic nations in question are responsible for the greatest genocides of modern times, including the one against the Jews, and that the United States has already used atomic weapons and still today rejects an absolute and general ban on their use?
Conclusion
Today, political conflicts in the region find three groups of forces opposed to one another: those that proclaim their nationalist past (but are, in reality, nothing more than the degenerate and corrupt inheritors of the bureaucracies of the national-populist era); those that proclaim political Islam; and those that are attempting to organize around “democratic” demands that are compatible with economic liberalism. The consolidation of power by any of these forces is not acceptable to a left that is attentive to the interests of the popular classes.In fact, the interests of the comprador classes affiliated with the current imperialist system are expressed through these three tendencies. U.S. diplomacy keeps all three irons in the fire, since it is focused on using the conflicts among them for its exclusive benefit. For the left to attempt to become involved in these conflicts solely through alliances with one or another of the tendencies* (preferring the regimes in place to avoid the worst, i.e., political Islam, or else seeking to be allied with the latter in order to get rid of the regimes) is doomed to fail. The left must assert itself by undertaking struggles in areas where it finds its natural place: defense of the economic and social interests of the popular classes, democracy, and assertion of national sovereignty, all conceptualized together as inseparable. * Tactical alliances arising from the concrete situation are another matter, e.g., the joint action of the Lebanese Communist Party with Hezbollah in resisting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006.—Ed.
The region of the Greater Middle East is today central in the conflict between the imperialist leader and the peoples of the entire world. To defeat the Washington establishment’s project is the condition for providing the possibility of success for advances in any region of the world. Failing that, all these advances will remain vulnerable in the extreme. That does not mean that the importance of struggles carried out in other regions of the world, in Europe or Latin America or elsewhere, should be underestimated. It means only that they should be part of a comprehensive perspective that contributes to defeating Washington in the region that it has chosen for its first criminal strike of this century.
by Samir Amin
Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His recent books include The Liberal Virus (Monthly Review Press, 2004), A Life Looking Forward (Zed Books, 2007), and The World We Wish to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century, forthcoming from Monthly Review Press. James Membrez translated this essay from the original French.All the currents that claim adherence to political Islam proclaim the “specificity of Islam.” According to them, Islam knows nothing of the separation between politics and religion, something supposedly distinctive of Christianity.
It would accomplish nothing to remind them, as I have done, that their remarks reproduce, almost word for word, what European reactionaries at the beginning of the nineteenth century (such as Bonald and de Maistre) said to condemn the rupture that the Enlightenment and the French Revolution had produced in the history of the Christian West! On the basis of this position, every current of political Islam chooses to conduct its struggle on the terrain of culture—but “culture” reduced in actual fact to the conventional affirmation of belonging to a particular religion. In reality, the militants of political Islam are not truly interested in discussing the dogmas that form religion. The ritual assertion of membership in the community is their exclusive preoccupation.
Such a vision of the reality of the modern world is not only distressing because of the immense emptiness of thought that it conceals, but it also justifies imperialism’s strategy of substituting a so-called conflict of cultures for the one between imperialist centers and dominated peripheries. The exclusive emphasis on culture allows political Islam to eliminate from every sphere of life the real social confrontations between the popular classes and the globalized capitalist system that oppresses and exploits them. The militants of political Islam have no real presence in the areas where actual social conflicts take place and their leaders repeat incessantly that such conflicts are unimportant.
Islamists are only present in these areas to open schools and health clinics. But these are nothing but works of charity and means for indoctrination. They are not means of support for the struggles of the popular classes against the system responsible for their poverty. On the terrain of the real social issues, political Islam aligns itself with the camp of dependent capitalism and dominant imperialism. It defends the principle of the sacred character of property and legitimizes inequality and all the requirements of capitalist reproduction. The support by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian parliament for the recent reactionary laws that reinforce the rights of property owners to the detriment of the rights of tenant farmers (the majority of the small peasantry) is but one example among hundreds of others.
There is no example of even one reactionary law promoted in any Muslim state to which the Islamist movements are opposed. Moreover, such laws are promulgated with the agreement of the leaders of the imperialist system. Political Islam is not anti-imperialist, even if its militants think otherwise! It is an invaluable ally for imperialism and the latter knows it. It is easy to understand, then, that political Islam has always counted in its ranks the ruling classes of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Moreover, these classes were among its most active promoters from the very beginning.
The local comprador bourgeoisies, the nouveaux riches, beneficiaries of current imperialist globalization, generously support political Islam. The latter has renounced an anti-imperialist perspective and substituted for it an “anti-Western” (almost “anti-Christian”) position, which obviously only leads the societies concerned into an impasse and hence does not form an obstacle to the deployment of imperialist control over the world system. Political Islam is not only reactionary on certain questions (notably concerning the status of women) and perhaps even responsible for fanatic excesses directed against non-Muslim citizens (such as the Copts in Egypt)—it is fundamentally reactionary and therefore obviously cannot participate in the progress of peoples’ liberation.
Three major arguments are nevertheless advanced to encourage social movements as a whole to enter into dialogue with the movements of political Islam. The first is that political Islam mobilizes numerous popular masses, which cannot be ignored or scorned. Numerous images certainly reinforce this claim. Still, one should keep a cool head and properly assess the mobilizations in question. The electoral “successes” that have been organized are put into perspective as soon as they are subjected to more rigorous analyses. I mention here, for example, the huge proportion of abstentions—more than 75 percent!—in the Egyptian elections. The power of the Islamist street is, in large part, simply the reverse side of the weaknesses of the organized left, which is absent from the spheres in which current social conflicts are occurring. Even if it were agreed that political Islam actually mobilizes significant numbers, does that justify concluding that the left must seek to include political Islamic organizations in alliances for political or social action? If political Islam successfully mobilizes large numbers of people, that is simply a fact, and any effective political strategy must include this fact in its considerations, proposals, and options.
But seeking alliances is not necessarily the best means to deal with this challenge. It should be pointed out that the organizations of political Islam—the Muslim Brotherhood in particular—are not seeking such an alliance, indeed even reject it. If, by chance, some unfortunate leftist organizations come to believe that political Islamic organizations have accepted them, the first decision the latter would make, after having succeeded in coming to power, would be to liquidate their burdensome ally with extreme violence, as was the case in Iran with the Mujahideen and the Fidayeen Khalq.
The second reason put forward by the partisans of “dialogue” is that political Islam, even if it is reactionary in terms of social proposals, is “anti-imperialist.” I have heard it said that the criterion for this that I propose (unreserved support for struggles carried out for social progress) is “economistic” and neglects the political dimensions of the challenge that confronts the peoples of the South. I do not believe that this critique is valid given what I have said about the democratic and national dimensions of the desirable responses for handling this challenge.
I also agree that in their response to the challenge that confronts the peoples of the South, the forces in action are not necessarily consistent in their manner of dealing with its social and political dimensions. It is, thus, possible to imagine a political Islam that is anti-imperialist, though regressive on the social plane. Iran, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and certain resistance movements in Iraq immediately come to mind. I will discuss these particular situations later.
What I contend is that political Islam as a whole is quite simply not anti-imperialist but is altogether lined up behind the dominant powers on the world scale. The third argument calls the attention of the left to the necessity of combating Islamophobia. Any left worthy of the name cannot ignore the question des banlieues, that is, the treatment of the popular classes of immigrant origin in the metropolises of contemporary developed capitalism. Analysis of this challenge and the responses provided by various groups (the interested parties themselves, the European electoral left, the radical left) lies outside the focus of this text. I will content myself with expressing my viewpoint in principle: the progressive response cannot be based on the institutionalization of communitarianism,* which is essentially and necessarily always associated with inequality, and ultimately originates in a racist culture. A specific ideological product of the reactionary political culture of the United States, communitarianism (already triumphant in Great Britain) is beginning to pollute political life on the European continent. Islamophobia, systematically promoted by important sections of the political elite and the media, is part of a strategy for managing community diversity for capital’s benefit, because this supposed respect for diversity is, in fact, only the means to deepen divisions within the popular classes. * A political theory based on “collective cultural identities” as central to understanding dynamic social reality.—Ed.
The question of the so-called problem neighborhoods (banlieues) is specific and confusing it with the question of imperialism (i.e., the imperialist management of the relations between the dominant imperialist centers and the dominated peripheries), as is sometimes done, will contribute nothing to making progress on each of these completely distinct terrains. This confusion is part of the reactionary toolbox and reinforces Islamphobia, which, in turn, makes it possible to legitimize both the offensive against the popular classes in the imperialist centers and the offensive against the peoples of the peripheries concerned. This confusion and Islamophobia, in turn, provide a valuable service to reactionary political Islam, giving credibility to its anti-Western discourse. I say, then, that the two reactionary ideological campaigns promoted, respectively, by the racist right in the West and by political Islam mutually support each other, just as they support communitarian practices.
Modernity, Democracy, Secularism, and Islam
The image that the Arab and Islamic regions give of themselves today is that of societies in which religion (Islam) is at the forefront in all areas of social and political life, to the point that it appears strange to imagine that it could be different. The majority of foreign observers (political leaders and the media) conclude that modernity, perhaps even democracy, will have to adapt to the strong presence of Islam, de facto precluding secularism. Either this reconciliation is possible and it will be necessary to support it, or it is not and it will be necessary to deal with this region of the world as it is. I do not at all share this so-called realist vision.
The future —in the long view of a globalized socialism—is, for the peoples of this region as for others, democracy and secularism. This future is possible in these regions as elsewhere, but nothing is guaranteed and certain, anywhere. Modernity is a rupture in world history, initiated in Europe during the sixteenth century. Modernity proclaims that human beings are responsible for their own history, individually and collectively, and consequently breaks with the dominant pre-modern ideologies. Modernity, then, makes democracy possible, just as it demands secularism, in the sense of separation of the religious and the political. Formulated by the eighteenth century Enlightenment, implemented by the French Revolution, the complex association of modernity, democracy, and secularism, its advances and retreats, has been shaping the contemporary world ever since.
But modernity by itself is not only a cultural revolution. It derives its meaning only through the close relation that it has with the birth and subsequent growth of capitalism. This relation has conditioned the historic limits of “really existing” modernity. The concrete forms of modernity, democracy, and secularism found today must, then, be considered as products of the concrete history of the growth of capitalism. They are shaped by the specific conditions in which the domination of capital is expressed—the historical compromises that define the social contents of hegemonic blocs (what I call the historical course of political cultures). This condensed presentation of my understanding of the historical materialist method is evoked here simply to situate the diverse ways of combining capitalist modernity, democracy, and secularism in their theoretical context. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution put forward a model of radical secularism. Atheist or agnostic, deist or believer (in this case Christian), the individual is free to choose, the state knows nothing about it.
On the European continent—and in France beginning with the Restoration—the retreats and compromises which combined the power of the bourgeoisie with that of the dominant classes of the pre-modern systems were the basis for attenuated forms of secularism, understood as tolerance, without excluding the social role of the churches from the political system. As for the United States, its particular historical path resulted in the forming of a fundamentally reactionary political culture, in which genuine secularism is practically unknown. Religion here is a recognized social actor and secularism is confused with the multiplicity of official religions (any religion—or even sect—is official). There is an obvious link between the degree of radical secularism upheld and the degree of support for shaping society in accord with the central theme of modernity. The left, be it radical or even moderate, which believes in the effectiveness of politics to orient social evolution in chosen directions, defends strong concepts of secularism.
The conservative right claims that things should be allowed to evolve on their own whether the question is economic, political, or social. As to economy the choice in favor of the “market” is obviously favorable to capital. In politics low-intensity democracy becomes the rule, alternation is substituted for alternative. And in society, in this context, politics has no need for active secularism—”communities” compensate for the deficiencies of the state. The market and representative democracy make history and they should be allowed to do so. In the current moment of the left’s retreat, this conservative version of social thought is widely dominant, in formulations that run the gamut from those of Touraine to those of Negri. The reactionary political culture of the United States goes even further in negating the responsibility of political action. The repeated assertion that God inspires the “American” nation, and the massive adherence to this “belief,” reduce the very concept of secularism to nothing.
To say that God makes history is, in fact, to allow the market alone to do it. From this point of view, where are the peoples of the Middle East region situated? The image of bearded men bowed low and groups of veiled women give rise to hasty conclusions about the intensity of religious adherence among individuals. Western “culturalist” friends who call for respect for the diversity of beliefs rarely find out about the procedures implemented by the authorities to present an image that is convenient for them. There are certainly those who are “crazy for God” (fous de Dieu).
Are they proportionally more numerous than the Spanish Catholics who march on Easter? Or the vast crowds who listen to televangelists in the United States? In any case, the region has not always projected this image of itself. Beyond the differences from country to country, a large region can be identified that runs from Morocco to Afghanistan, including all the Arab peoples (with the exception of those in the Arabian peninsula), the Turks, Iranians, Afghans, and peoples of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, in which the possibilities for the development of secularism are far from negligible.
The situation is different among other neighboring peoples, the Arabs of the peninsula or the Pakistanis. In this larger region, political traditions have been strongly marked by the radical currents of modernity: the ideas of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the communism of the Third International were present in the minds of everyone and were much more important than the parliamentarianism of Westminster, for example. These dominant currents inspired the major models for political transformation implemented by the ruling classes, which could be described, in some of their aspects, as forms of enlightened despotism. This was certainly the case in the Egypt of Mohammed Ali or Khedive Ismail. Kemalism in Turkey and modernization in Iran were similar. The national populism of more recent stages of history belongs to the same family of modernist political projects.
The variants of the model were numerous (the Algerian National Liberation Front, Tunisian Bourguibism, Egyptian Nasserism, the Baathism of Syria and Iraq), but the direction of movement was analogous. Apparently extreme experiences—the so-called communist regimes in Afghanistan and South Yemen—were really not very different. All these regimes accomplished much and, for this reason, had very wide popular support. This is why, even though they were not truly democratic, they opened the way to a possible development in this direction. In certain circumstances, such as those in Egypt from 1920 to 1950, an experiment in electoral democracy was attempted, supported by the moderate anti-imperialist center (the Wafd party), opposed by the dominant imperialist power (Great Britain) and its local allies (the monarchy). Secularism, implemented in moderate versions, to be sure, was not “refused” by the people. On the contrary, it was religious people who were regarded as obscurantists by general public opinion, and most of them were. The modernist experiments, from enlightened despotism to radical national populism, were not products of chance.
Powerful movements that were dominant in the middle classes created them. In this way, these classes expressed their will to be viewed as fully-fledged partners in modern globalization. These projects, which can be described as national bourgeois, were modernist, secularizing and potential carriers of democratic developments. But precisely because these projects conflicted with the interests of dominant imperialism, the latter fought them relentlessly and systematically mobilized declining obscurantist forces for this purpose. The history of the Muslim Brotherhood is well known. It was literally created in the 1920s by the British and the monarchy to block the path of the democratic and secular Wafd. Their mass return from their Saudi refuge after Nasser’s death, organized by the CIA and Sadat, is also well known. We are all acquainted with the history of the Taliban, formed by the CIA in Pakistan to fight the “communists” who had opened the schools to everyone, boys and girls. It is even well known that the Israelis supported Hamas at the beginning in order to weaken the secular and democratic currents of the Palestinian resistance.
Political Islam would have had much more difficulty in moving out from the borders of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan without the continual, powerful, and resolute support of the United States. Saudi Arabian society had not even begun its move out of tradition when petroleum was discovered under its soil. The alliance between imperialism and the traditional ruling class, sealed immediately, was concluded between the two partners and gave a new lease on life to Wahabi political Islam.
On their side, the British succeeded in breaking Indian unity by persuading the Muslim leaders to create their own state, trapped in political Islam at its very birth. It should be noted that the theory by which this curiosity was legitimated—attributed to Mawdudi—had been completely drawn up beforehand by the English Orientalists in His Majesty’s service.* *The origin of the force of today’s political Islam in Iran does not show the same historical connection with imperialist manipulation, for reasons discussed in the next section.—Ed.
It is, thus, easy to understand the initiative taken by the United States to break the united front of Asian and African states set up at Bandung (1955) by creating an “Islamic Conference,” immediately promoted (from 1957) by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Political Islam penetrated into the region by this means. The least of the conclusions that should be drawn from the observations made here is that political Islam is not the spontaneous result of the assertion of authentic religious convictions by the peoples concerned. Political Islam was constructed by the systematic action of imperialism, supported, of course, by obscurantist reactionary forces and subservient comprador classes. That this state of affairs is also the responsibility of left forces that neither saw nor knew how to deal with the challenge remains indisputable.
Questions Relative to the Front Line Countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Iran)
The project of the United States, supported to varying degrees by their subaltern allies in Europe and Japan, is to establish military control over the entire planet. With this prospect in mind, the Middle East was chosen as the “first strike” region for four reasons:
(1) it holds the most abundant petroleum resources in the world and its direct control by the armed forces of the United States would give Washington a privileged position, placing its allies—Europe and Japan—and possible rivals (China) in an uncomfortable position of dependence for their energy supplies;
(2) it is located at the crossroads of the Old World and makes it easier to put in place a permanent military threat against China, India, and Russia;
(3) the region is experiencing a moment of weakness and confusion that allows the aggressor to be assured of an easy victory, at least for the moment; and
(4) Israel’s presence in the region, Washington’s unconditional ally. This aggression has placed the countries and nations located on the front line (Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Iran) in the particular situation of being destroyed (the first three) or threatened with destruction (Iran).
Afghanistan
Afghanistan experienced the best period in its modern history during the so-called communist republic. This was a regime of modernist enlightened despotism that opened up the educational system to children of both sexes. It was an enemy of obscurantism and, for this reason, had decisive support within the society. The agrarian reform that it had undertaken was, for the most part, a group of measures intended to reduce the tyrannical powers of tribal leaders. The support—at least tacitly—of the majority of the peasantry guaranteed the probable success of this well-begun change. The propaganda conveyed by the Western media as well as by political Islam presented this experiment as communist and atheist totalitarianism rejected by the Afghan people. In reality, the regime was far from being unpopular, much like Ataturk in his time. The fact that the leaders of this experiment, in both of the major factions (Khalq and Parcham), were self-described as communists is not surprising. The model of the progress accomplished by the neighboring peoples of Soviet Central Asia (despite everything that has been said on the subject and despite the autocratic practices of the system) in comparison with the ongoing social disasters of British imperialist management in other neighboring countries (India and Pakistan included) had the effect, here as in many other countries of the region, of encouraging patriots to assess the full extent of the obstacle formed by imperialism to any attempt at modernization. The invitation extended by one faction to the Soviets to intervene in order to rid themselves of the others certainly had a negative effect and mortgaged the possibilities of the modernist national populist project. The United States in particular and its allies of the Triad in general have always been tenacious opponents of the Afghan modernizers, communists or not. It is they who mobilized the obscurantist forces of Pakistan-style political Islam (the Taliban) and the warlords (the tribal leaders successfully neutralized by the so-called communist regime), and they who trained and armed them. Even after the Soviet retreat, the Najibullah government demonstrated the capability for resistance. It probably would have gained the upper hand but for the Pakistani military offensive that came to the support of the Taliban, and then the offensive of the reconstituted forces of the warlords, which increased the chaos. Afghanistan was devastated by the intervention of the United States and its allies and agents, the Islamists in particular. Afghanistan cannot be reconstructed under their authority, barely disguised behind a clown without roots in the country, who was parachuted there by the Texas transnational by whom he was employed. The supposed “democracy,” in the name of which Washington, NATO, and the UN, called to the rescue, claim to justify the continuation of their presence (in fact, occupation), was a lie from the very beginning and has become a huge farce. There is only one solution to the Afghan problem: all foreign forces should leave the country and all powers should be forced to refrain from financing and arming their allies. To those who are well-intended and express their fear that the Afghan people will then tolerate the dictatorship of the Taliban (or the warlords), I would respond that the foreign presence has been up until now and remains the best support for this dictatorship! The Afghan people had been moving in another direction—potentially the best possible—at a time when the West was forced to take less interest in its affairs. To the enlightened despotism of “communists,” the civilized West has always preferred obscurantist despotism, infinitely less dangerous for its interests!
Iraq
The armed diplomacy of the United States had the objective of literally destroying Iraq well before pretexts were actually given to it to do so on two different occasions: the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and then after September 11, 2001—exploited for this purpose by Bush with Goebbels-style cynicism and lies (“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”). The reason for this objective is simple and has nothing to do with the discourse calling for the liberation of the Iraqi people from the bloody dictatorship (real enough) of Saddam Hussein. Iraq possesses a large part of the best petroleum resources of the planet. But, what is more, Iraq had succeeded in training scientific and technical cadres that were capable, through their critical mass, of supporting a coherent and substantial national project. This danger had to be eliminated by a preventive war that the United States gave itself the right to carry out when and where it decided, without the least respect for international law.
Beyond this obvious observation, several serious questions should be examined:
(1) How could Washington’s plan appear—even for a brief historical moment—to be such a dazzling success so easily?
(2) What new situation has been created and confronts the Iraqi nation today?
(3) What responses are the various elements of the Iraqi population giving to this challenge? and
(4) What solutions can the democratic and progressive Iraqi, Arab, and international forces promote?
Saddam Hussein’s defeat was predictable. Faced with an enemy whose main advantage lies in its capability to effect genocide with impunity by aerial bombardment (the use of nuclear weapons is to come), the people have only one possible effective response: carry out resistance on their invaded territory. Saddam’s regime was devoted to eliminating every means of defense within reach of its people through the systematic destruction of any organization and every political party (beginning with the Communist Party) that had made the history of modern Iraq, including the Baath itself, which had been one of the major actors in this history. It is not surprising in these conditions that the Iraqi people allowed their country to be invaded without a struggle, nor even that some behaviors (such as apparent participation in elections organized by the invader or the outburst of fratricidal fighting among Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shia Arabs) seemed to be signs of a possible acceptance of defeat (on which Washington had based its calculations).
But what is worthy of note is that the resistance on the ground grows stronger every day (despite all of the serious weaknesses displayed by the various resistance forces), that it has already made it impossible to establish a regime of lackeys capable of maintaining the appearance of order; in a way, that it has already demonstrated the failure of Washington’s project. A new situation has, nevertheless, been created by the foreign military occupation. The Iraqi nation is truly threatened. Washington is incapable of maintaining its control over the country (so as to pillage its petroleum resources, which is its number one objective) through the intermediary of a seeming national government. The only way it can continue its project, then, is to break the country apart. The division of the country into at least three states (Kurd, Sunni Arab, and Shia Arab) was, perhaps from the very beginning, Washington’s objective, in alignment with Israel (the archives will reveal the truth of that in the future). Today, the “civil war” is the card that Washington plays to legitimize the continuation of its occupation. Clearly, permanent occupation was—and remains—the objective: it is the only means by which Washington can guarantee its control of the petroleum resources.
Certainly, no credence can be given to Washington’s declarations of intent, such as “we will leave the country as soon as order has been restored.” It should be remembered that the British never said of their occupation of Egypt, beginning in 1882, that it was anything other than provisional (it lasted until 1956!). Meanwhile, of course, the United States destroys the country, its schools, factories, and scientific capacities, a little more each day, using all means, including the most criminal. The responses given by the Iraqi people to the challenge—so far, at least—do not appear to be up to facing the seriousness of the situation. That is the least that can be said. What are the reasons for this?
The dominant Western media repeat ad nauseam that Iraq is an artificial country and that the oppressive domination of Saddam’s “Sunni” regime over the Shia and Kurds is the origin of the inevitable civil war (which can only be suppressed, perhaps, by continuing the foreign occupation).The resistance, then, is limited to a few pro-Saddam hard-core Islamists from the Sunni triangle. It is surely difficult to string together so many falsehoods. Following the First World War, the British had great difficulty in defeating the resistance of the Iraqi people. In complete harmony with their imperial tradition, the British imported a monarchy and created a class of large landowners to support their power, thereby giving a privileged position to the Sunnis. But, despite their systematic efforts, the British failed. The Communist Party and the Baath Party were the main organized political forces that defeated the power of the “Sunni” monarchy detested by everyone, Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. The violent competition between these two forces, which occupied center stage between 1958 and 1963, ended with the victory of the Baath Party, welcomed at the time by the Western powers as a relief. The Communist project carried in itself the possibility for a democratic evolution; this was not true of the Baath. The latter was nationalist and pan-Arab in principle, admired the Prussian model for constructing German unity, and recruited its members from the secular, modernist petite bourgeoisie, hostile to obscurantist expressions of religion.
In power, the Baath evolved, in predictable fashion, into a dictatorship that was only half anti-imperialist, in the sense that, depending on conjunctures and circumstances, a compromise could be accepted by the two partners (Baathist power in Iraq and U.S. imperialism, dominant in the region). This deal encouraged the megalomaniacal excesses of the leader, who imagined that Washington would accept making him its main ally in the region. Washington’s support for Baghdad (the delivery of chemical weapons is proof of this) in the absurd and criminal war against Iran from 1980 to 1989 appeared to lend credence to this calculation. Saddam never imagined Washington’s deceit, that modernization of Iraq was unacceptable to imperialism and that the decision to destroy the country had already been made. Saddam fell into the open trap when the green light was given to annex Kuwait (in fact attached in Ottoman times to the provinces that constitute Iraq, and detached by the British imperialists in order to make it one of their petroleum colonies).
Iraq was then subjected to ten years of sanctions intended to bleed the country dry so as to facilitate the glorious conquest of the resulting vacuum by the armed forces of the United States. The successive Baathist regimes, including the last one in its declining phase under Saddam’s leadership, can be accused of everything, except for having stirred up the conflict between the Sunni and Shia. Who then is responsible for the bloody clashes between the two communities?
One day, we will certainly learn how the CIA (and undoubtedly Mossad) organized many of these massacres. But, beyond that, it is true that the political desert created by the Saddam regime and the example that it provided of unprincipled opportunist methods encouraged succeeding aspirants to power of all kinds to follow this path, often protected by the occupier. Sometimes, perhaps, they were even naïve to the point of believing that they could be of service to the occupying power. The aspirants in question, be they religious leaders (Shia or Sunni), supposed (para-tribal) “notables,” or notoriously corrupt businessmen exported by the United States, never had any real political standing in the country. Even those religious leaders whom the believers respected had no political influence that was acceptable to the Iraqi people. Without the void created by Saddam, no one would know how to pronounce their names. Faced with the new political world created by the imperialism of liberal globalization, will other authentically popular and national, possibly even democratic, political forces have the means to reconstruct themselves?
There was a time when the Iraqi Communist Party was the focus for organizing the best of what Iraqi society could produce. The Communist Party was established in every region of the country and dominated the world of intellectuals, often of Shia origin (I note in passing that the Shia produced revolutionaries or religious leaders above all, rarely bureaucrats or compradors!). The Communist Party was authentically popular and anti-imperialist, little inclined to demagoguery and potentially democratic. After the massacre of thousands of its best militants by the Baathist dictatorships, the collapse of the Soviet Union (for which the Iraqi Communist Party was not prepared), and the behavior of those intellectuals who believed it acceptable to return from exile as camp followers of the armed forces of the United States, is the Iraqi Communist Party henceforth fated to disappear permanently from history? Unfortunately, this is all too possible, but not inevitable, far from it.
The Kurdish question is real, in Iraq as in Iran and Turkey. But on this subject also, it should be remembered that the Western powers have always practiced, with great cynicism, double standards. The repression of Kurdish demands has never attained in Iraq and Iran the level of police, military, political, and moral violence carried out by Ankara. Neither Iran nor Iraq has ever gone so far as to deny the very existence of the Kurds. However, Turkey must be pardoned for everything as a member of NATO, an organization of democratic nations, as the media remind us. Among the eminent democrats proclaimed by the West was Portugal’s Salazar, one of NATO’s founding members, and the no less ardent admirers of democracy, the Greek colonels and Turkish generals! Each time that the Iraqi popular fronts, formed around the Communist Party and the Baath in the best moments of its turbulent history, exercised political power, they always found an area of agreement with the principal Kurdish parties. The latter, moreover, have always been their allies.
The anti-Shia and anti-Kurd excesses of the Saddam regime were certainly real: for example, the bombing of the Basra region by Saddam’s army after its defeat in Kuwait in 1990 and the use of gas against the Kurds. These excesses came in response to the maneuvers of Washington’s armed diplomacy, which had mobilized sorcerer’s apprentices among Shia and Kurds. They remain no less criminal excesses, and stupid, moreover, since the success of Washington’s appeals was quite limited. But can anything else be expected from dictators like Saddam? The force of the resistance to foreign occupation, unexpected under these conditions, might seem to bemiraculous. This is not the case, since the basic reality is that the Iraqi people as a whole (Arab and Kurd, Sunni and Shia) detest the occupiers and are familiar with its crimes on a daily basis (assassinations, bombings, massacres, torture). Given this a united front of national resistance (call it what you want) might even be imagined, proclaiming itself as such, posting the names, lists of organizations, and parties composing it and their common program. This, however, is not actually the case up to the present for all of the reasons described above, including the destruction of the social and political fabric caused by the Saddam dictatorship and the occupation.
Regardless of the reasons, this weakness is a serious handicap, which makes it easier to divide the population, encourage opportunists, even so far as making them collaborators, and throw confusion over the objectives of the liberation. Who will succeed in overcoming these handicaps? The communists should be well placed to do so. Already, militants who are present on the ground are separating themselves from the leaders of the Communist Party (the only ones known by the dominant media) who, confused and embarrassed, are attempting to give a semblance of legitimacy to their rallying to the collaborationist government, even pretending that they are adding to the effectiveness of armed resistance by such action! But, under the circumstances, many other political forces could make decisive initiatives in the direction of forming this front. It remains the case that, despite its weaknesses, the Iraqi people’s resistance has already defeated (politically if not yet militarily) Washington’s project.
It is precisely this that worries the Atlanticists in the European Union, faithful allies of the United States. Today, they fear a U.S. defeat, because this would strengthen the capacity of the peoples of the South to force globalized transnational capital of the imperialist triad to respect the interests of the nations and peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Iraqi resistance has offered proposals that would make it possible to get out of the impasse and aid the United States to withdraw from the trap. It proposes: (1) formation of a transitional administrative authority set up with the support of the UN Security Council; (2) the immediate cessation of resistance actions and military and police interventions by occupying forces; (3) the departure of all foreign military and civilian authorities within six months. The details of these proposals have been published in the prestigious Arab review Al Moustaqbal al Arabi (January 2006), published in Beirut.
The absolute silence with which the European media oppose the dissemination of this message is a testament to the solidarity of the imperialist partners. Democratic and progressive European forces have the duty to dissociate themselves from this policy of the imperialist triad and support the proposals of the Iraqi resistance. To leave the Iraqi people to confront its opponent alone is not an acceptable option: it reinforces the dangerous idea that nothing can be expected from the West and its peoples, and consequently encourages the unacceptable—even criminal—excesses in the activities of some of the resistance movements.
The sooner the foreign occupation troops leave the country and the stronger the support by democratic forces in the world and in Europe for the Iraqi people, the greater will be the possibilities for a better future for this martyred people. The longer the occupation lasts, the more dismal will be the aftermath of its inevitable end.
Palestine
The Palestinian people have, since the Balfour Declaration during the First World War, been the victim of a colonization project by a foreign population, who reserve for them the fate of the “redskins,” whether one acknowledges it or pretends to be ignorant of it.
This project has always had the unconditional support of the dominant imperialist power in the region (yesterday Great Britain, today the United States), because the foreign state in the region formed by that project can only be the unconditional ally, in turn, of the interventions required to force the Arab Middle East to submit to the domination of imperialist capitalism. This is an obvious fact for all the peoples of Africa and Asia. Consequently, on both continents, they are spontaneously united on the assertion and defense of the rights of the Palestinian people.
In Europe, however, the “Palestinian question” causes division, produced by the confusions kept alive by Zionist ideology, which is frequently echoed favorably. Today more than ever, in conjunction with the implementation of the U.S. “Greater Middle East project,” the rights of the Palestinian people have been abolished. All the same, the PLO accepted the Oslo and Madrid plans and the roadmap drafted by Washington. It is Israel that has openly gone back on its agreement, and implemented an even more ambitious expansion plan.
The PLO has been undermined as a result: public opinion can justly reproach it with having naively believed in the sincerity of its adversaries. The support provided by the occupation authorities to its Islamist adversary (Hamas), in the beginning, at least, and the spread of corrupt practices in the Palestinian administration (on which the fund donors—the World Bank, Europe, and the NGOs—are silent, if they are not party to it) had to lead to the Hamas electoral victory (it was predictable). This then became an additional pretext immediately put forward to justify unconditional alignment with Israeli policies no matter what they may be.
The Zionist colonial project has always been a threat, beyond Palestine, for neighboring Arab peoples. Its ambitions to annex the Egyptian Sinai and its effective annexation of the Syrian Golan are testimony to that. In the Greater Middle East project, a particular place is granted to Israel, to its regional monopoly of nuclear military equipment and its role as “indispensable partner” (under the fallacious pretext that Israel has technological expertise of which the Arab people are incapable. What an indispensable racism!). It is not the intention here to offer analyses concerning the complex interactions between the resistance struggles against Zionist colonial expansion and the political conflicts and choices in Lebanon and Syria. The Baathist regimes in Syria have resisted, in their own way, the demands of the imperialist powers and Israel. That this resistance has also served to legitimize more questionable ambitions (control of Lebanon) is certainly not debatable. Moreover, Syria has carefully chosen the least dangerous allies in Lebanon. It is well known that the Lebanese Communist Party had organized resistance to the Israeli incursions in South Lebanon (diversion of water included).
The Syrian, Lebanese, and Iranian authorities closely cooperated to destroy this dangerous base and replace it with Hezbollah. The assassination of Rafiq al-Harriri (a still unresolved case) obviously gave the imperialist powers (the United States in front, France behind) the opportunity to intervene with two objectives in mind:
(1) force Damascus to align itself permanently with the vassal Arab states (Egypt and Saudi Arabia)—or, failing that, eliminate the vestiges of a deteriorated Baathist power; and
(2) demolish what remains of the capability to resist Israeli incursions (by demanding the disarmament of Hezbollah).
Rhetoric about democracy can be invoked within this context, if useful. Today to accept the implementation of the Israeli project in progress is to ratify the abolition of the primary right of peoples: the right to exist. This is the supreme crime against humanity. The accusation of “anti-Semitism” addressed to those who reject this crime is only a means for appalling blackmail.
Iran
It is not our intention here to develop the analyses called for by the Islamic Revolution. Was it, as it has been proclaimed to be among supporters of political Islam as well as among foreign observers, the declaration of and point of departure for a change that ultimately must seize the entire region, perhaps even the whole Muslim world, renamed for the occasion the umma (the “nation,” which has never been)? Or was it a singular event, particularly because it was a unique combination of the interpretations of Shia Islam and the expression of Iranian nationalism? From the perspective of what interests us here, I will only make two observations. The first is that the regime of political Islam in Iran is not by nature incompatible with integration of the country into the globalized capitalist system such as it is, since the regime is based on liberal principles for managing the economy. The second is that the Iranian nation as such is a “strong nation,” one whose major components, if not all, of both popular classes and ruling classes, do not accept the integration of their country into the globalized system in a dominated position. There is, of course, a contradiction between these two dimensions of the Iranian reality. The second one accounts for Teheran’s foreign policy tendencies, which bear witness to the will to resist foreign diktats. It is Iranian nationalism—powerful and, in my opinion, altogether historically positive—that explains the success of the modernization of scientific, industrial, technological, and military capabilities undertaken by the Shah’s regime and the Khomeinist regime that followed. Iran is one of the few states of the South (with China, India, Korea, Brazil, and maybe a few others, but not many!) to have a national bourgeois project. Whether it be possible in the long term to achieve this project or not (my opinion is that it is not) is not the focus of our discussion here. Today this project exists and is in place. It is precisely because Iran forms a critical mass capable of attempting to assert itself as a respected partner that the United States has decided to destroy the country by a new preventive war. As is well known, the conflict is taking place around the nuclear capabilities that Iran is developing. Why should not this country, just like others, have the right to pursue these capabilities, up to and including becoming a nuclear military power? By what right can the imperialist powers and their Israeli accomplice boast about granting themselves a monopoly over weapons of mass destruction? Can one give any credit to the discourse that argues that “democratic” nations will never make use of such weapons like “rogue states” could, when it is common knowledge that the democratic nations in question are responsible for the greatest genocides of modern times, including the one against the Jews, and that the United States has already used atomic weapons and still today rejects an absolute and general ban on their use?
Conclusion
Today, political conflicts in the region find three groups of forces opposed to one another: those that proclaim their nationalist past (but are, in reality, nothing more than the degenerate and corrupt inheritors of the bureaucracies of the national-populist era); those that proclaim political Islam; and those that are attempting to organize around “democratic” demands that are compatible with economic liberalism. The consolidation of power by any of these forces is not acceptable to a left that is attentive to the interests of the popular classes.In fact, the interests of the comprador classes affiliated with the current imperialist system are expressed through these three tendencies. U.S. diplomacy keeps all three irons in the fire, since it is focused on using the conflicts among them for its exclusive benefit. For the left to attempt to become involved in these conflicts solely through alliances with one or another of the tendencies* (preferring the regimes in place to avoid the worst, i.e., political Islam, or else seeking to be allied with the latter in order to get rid of the regimes) is doomed to fail. The left must assert itself by undertaking struggles in areas where it finds its natural place: defense of the economic and social interests of the popular classes, democracy, and assertion of national sovereignty, all conceptualized together as inseparable. * Tactical alliances arising from the concrete situation are another matter, e.g., the joint action of the Lebanese Communist Party with Hezbollah in resisting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006.—Ed.
The region of the Greater Middle East is today central in the conflict between the imperialist leader and the peoples of the entire world. To defeat the Washington establishment’s project is the condition for providing the possibility of success for advances in any region of the world. Failing that, all these advances will remain vulnerable in the extreme. That does not mean that the importance of struggles carried out in other regions of the world, in Europe or Latin America or elsewhere, should be underestimated. It means only that they should be part of a comprehensive perspective that contributes to defeating Washington in the region that it has chosen for its first criminal strike of this century.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Lest We Forget:
Only 3 out of 100 Black males entering kindergarten will graduate from college
Only 3 out of 100 Black males entering kindergarten will graduate from college
Every 5 seconds during the school day, a Black public school student is suspended. Every 46 seconds during the school day, a Black high school student drops out. Every minute, a Black child is arrested and a Black baby is born to an unmarried mother. Every 3 minutes, a Black child is born into poverty. Every hour, a Black baby dies. Every 4 hours, a Black child or youth under 20 dies from an accident, and every 5 hours, a Black youth is a homicide victim. Every day, a Black young person under 25 dies from HIV infection and a Black child or youth under 20 commits suicide. Marian Wright Edelman, The Children’s Defense Fund
Discipline, Special Education, and Jail
• Black students, while representing only 17 percent of public school students, account for 32 percent of suspensions and 30 percent of expulsions. In 1999, 35 percent of all Black students in grades 7-12 had been suspended or expelled from school. The rate was 20 percent for Hispanics and 15 percent for Whites.
• Black children are labeled mentally retarded nearly 300 percent more than White children and only 8.4 percent of Black males are identified and enrolled in gifted and talented classes.
• Black males in their early 30s are twice as likely to have prison records (22 percent) than bachelor’s degrees (12 percent).
• A Black male born in 1991 (today’s 7th grade student) has a 29 percent chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life. The figure for Hispanic males is 16 percent, and for White males is 4 percent.
• A Black male is 700 percent more likely than a White male to be sentenced to a local, state, or federal prison.
• Black males are imprisoned at a rate of 3,405 per 100,000 (3.4 percent); Hispanics at a rate of 1,231 per 100,000 (1.2 percent); and Whites at a rate of 465 per 100,000 (.465 percent).
High School Performance, Course Enrollment, and Graduation
17.5 percent of Black students, 13.2 percent of Hispanic students, and 9.3 percent of White students in grades K-12 were retained at least one grade.3
13 percent of Blacks ages 16-24 have not earned a high school credential. The rate for Whites is 7 percent.
30 percent of Black high school students have taken advanced mathematics courses compared to 45 percent of Whites.
5 percent of Black high school students take a fourth year of a foreign language with 2 percent taking an AP foreign language course.
12 percent of Black high school students take science classes as high as chemistry and physics.
27 percent of Black high school students take advanced English.
Black students take AP exams at a rate of 53 per 1,000 students. The rate for Hispanic students is 115 per 1,000 and for Whites is 185 per 1,000.
The average SAT scores for Black students is 433V and 426M; for Whites it is over 22 percent higher at 529V and 531M.
The average ACT score for Black students is 16.9; for Whites it is nearly 30 percent higher at 21.8.
Unemployment
The unemployment rate for Blacks ages 16-19 is 25 percent.
The unemployment rate for Blacks without a high school credential is 30 percent, 19 percent with high school but no college, 10 percent with some college but no degree, and 6 percent with a bachelor’s degree.
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References:
Indiana Education Policy Center. (2000). Minority Overrepresentation in Indiana’s Special Education Programs. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University.
National Center for Education Statistics. (1993-1994). America &’s Teachers: Profile of a Profession. U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2001). Educational Achievement and Black-White Inequality. U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2003). Status and Trends in the Education of Blacks. U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (1995). The Condition of Education, 1994: The Educational Progress of Black Students. U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2001). The Condition of Education,
2001. U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Learning Disabilities. (April 2003). Minority Students in Special Education. New York, NY: NCLD.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. (2003). Poverty in the United States: 2002. U.S. Department of Commerce.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. (2002). The Black Population in the United States: March 2002. U.S. Department of Commerce.
U.S. Department of Education. (1999). Hope for Urban Education: A Study of Nine High-Performing, High-Poverty, Urban Elementary Schools. U.S. Department of Education.
U.S. Department of Education White Paper. (October 20, 1997). Mathematics Equals Opportunity. U.S. Department of Education.
U.S. Department of Justice. (12/31/03). Summary Findings of Prison Statistics. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm University of Nebraska-Lincoln. (2000). The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment. Policy research Report #SRS1.
Edelman, Marian Wright. (2001). What Can We Do? Quoted from: How to Make Black America Better (p. 122). New York, NY: Anchor Books.
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2003. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/
Alexandeer, K., Entwisle, D., & Kabbani, N. (2001). The Dropout Process in Life Course Perspective: Early Risk Factors at Home and at School, Teacher’s College Record, Volume 103, Number 5 (p. 775). October 2001. New York, NY: Teachers College, Columbia University.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The Arab Slave Trade Predates European Slave Trade: 650AD to 2008
Here's a brief summation of the history of Arab enslavement of African Peoples. It is important to know this history in order to understand both the evolution of Western capitalism's slave trade and the current atrocities against Africans (by Africans) unfolding in the name of Islam and/or "Arab Civilization."
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Obamamania
Does Not Mean the End of Racism
s. e. anderson- 1/16/08
Does Not Mean the End of Racism
s. e. anderson- 1/16/08
A Statement made at a Harlem Obama Forum January 16, 2008 that was sponsored by the Harlem Tenants Association
This presentation would not be possible without the contributions of my Miami Brother Dinizulu Tinnie and Brother Maulana Karenga. They have brought some very good insights into this historic political moment in US national politics. I am a conduit, this evening, for their analytical wisdom and wit.
I don’t support anyone who is anti-union, against Reparations, against acknowledging and releasing the political prisoners held inside of the US, against a national free healthcare program, who supports Israeli Zionism, supports the continual blockade of Cuba, supports the continual use of imperial military force in the Middle East and Africa, who supports the continuation of the economic and human pillaging of Africa by way of the IMF, World Bank and blind uncritical support of megacorporations plundering Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, who continues to support a tax structure that taxes the poor and workingclass US citizen more that it does the rich and superrich, a candidate who will NOT dismantle Homeland Security, but find ways to beef it up, who is currently supporting counter-ecological policies thanx to his coal and megacorn farmers of Illinois and the Midwest....
We- as Blackfolk- have to go beyond the brother’s physical Blackness and look at his POLITICS. I know most of you would NOT vote for Candoleeza Rice for the US presidency, right...? We’ve gotten to see her beyond her physical Blackness and judge her by her POLITICS.
This does not mean that we throw our Black voting power behind a Hilary Clinton- whose record and attitude is far more fascistic than Obama’s. This means that we have to seriously rebuild our Black Social Justice movement from our neighborhoods up to a national level such that we can have a true Congressional Black Caucus instead of the current Carcass that is capitulating to white supremacy everyday.
Our political organizing energies must begin at the grassroots level and build to a national Black Political Summit similar- but more successful- to what happened in Gary, Indiana in 1972. That is to say, we must the very foundation for Black Liberation and Socialism for the long haul. And one part of the protracted building is to be analytical about the electoral politics of the US as well as the need to understand the very basics of US political economy. A politically educated Black Warrior is necessary for our Freedom.
This current one party system with its two wings is a flying dragon hellbent on burning and devouring us all. And the presidential campaign is its multibillion dollar charade to give us “citizens” a feeling of democratic participation.
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The Bushites (I & II) and the Clintonites have placed the US in its most precarious position since the Civil War. Since the Bush I Era, the young educated white voters have only known some form of national security lockdown and the impossibility of having a career that was a possibility for their parents (rather, just a series of jobs). Since the Bush I Era, they have seen this nation rapidly morph into a soon-to-be-colored nation that their children will be living in. While at the same time, they have seen this country morph into a dependent service-consumer nation inextricably connected to Africa, Asia and Latin America for everything essential for their aspiring and real bourgeois lifestyle. These young whites cultural upbringing has been and is based on forms of Black culture- old and new made palatable by the Cosby Show, BET/MTV, Rush Hour type movies, vicarious Gangsta HipHop Minstrelsy and “acceptable” 21st Century Mulattos like Tiger, Beyoncee, Alicia Keys, Haille Berry... and a softshouldered bigblackmammy figure like Oprah (refashioned for 21st century taste and PC like the new corporatized Aunt Jemima).
...And the under 40 Black voter has witness this from both the inside and out... with a constant barrage of misinformation about how this country is truly Free and Democratic in spite of racial profiling 24/7, in spite of Black male joblessness, in spite of the criminalization and the minstrelization of our Black youth, in spite of a deepened imperial policy towards the Caribbean and Africa... and thanx to the Clintons: having 30 additional ways to “legally” kill a Black man.
Everybody has been fed for the past 20-25 years larger doses of anti-intellectualism and anti-history to such a point that there is no connection between what people see in today’s politics to what happened in the 60s, 70s of any century before 2000. And they don’t care to know: it’s about the hedonistic consumer NOW. “I shop, therefore I am.”
So... Obama’s rhetoric and image brings the semblance of change to millions of US citizens desperate to get out this fear-debt-guilt laden treadmill of an existence. But what they don’t know is that he is the deliverer of a softer/kinder form of capitalist oppression than the Bushites and Clintonites.
We can embrace the romance of the Obama candidacy, with all of its accoutrements of media coverage of Michelle and his daughters, and we can embrace him as the least of the evils to choose from (even though Kucinich’s positions and John Edwards’s rhetoric shows more insight into America’s real problems), and we can always appreciate just the brother’s bottom-line innate gift of intelligence, sharpness and wit, and we can also take the awakening slaps from Black political pundits like Glen Ford who reminds us of Mr. Obama’s voting record.
We might question just why he is getting so much support from the America’s looter class, but amidst all of the pros and cons and hype and hoopla, Bro. Karenga here offers the most relevant reminder of all: There just is no easy path to the Promised Land we seek, even under the best of circumstances and with the best of intentions (which might include the “miracle” of Obama’s actual election to he White House). The quest for a Sweet Land of Liberty and Justice for all is not going to be achieved, as Maulana Karenga (An Ambivalent Embrace of Obama: The Maturity or Masking of America) points out so well, by electing a nonwhite president, if that miracle were to happen, whose electability arises from trading on his acceptability to “mainstream” America.
Karenga’s other main point: the possibility/probability of a majority of Americans voting with secret ballots for a Black man, a direct product of dreaded “miscegenation” between a Black Man and a White Woman, and having, for the first time in history, a distinctly non-Anglo-Saxon or Germanic surname (which even rhymes with Osama), to be America’s (brown) face to the world, and “the leader of the free world” with his (brown) finger on the Commander-in Chief button that controls the largest nuclear and conventional arsenal of weapons ever assembled in human history, is another point for serious consideration.
It is patently defeatist to declare Obama “unelectable” because of his “race,” just as it is naively misguided to think that Obama, if elected, would be asserting or representing any kind of distinctly “Black” agenda (even the Black agenda that has always served the country well by including ALL people in the demand for equality and justice). But Karenga’s timely reminder here is that those of us who claim to be serious, daring-to-hope and non-defeatist supporters of Obama for president must be prepared to fight a monumental struggle against widespread and entrenched racism between now and November. It’s one thing to get to the Super Bowl, which, true enough, is a great victory in itself, worthy of accolades, but it is another to win it. Going there to lose serves no purpose at all, and can even be a step backwards.
In the most objective terms, Obama captures the younger, more educated and most progressive segment of the population. Some would say that is a distinct minority. Curiously, at least in the primaries, his claim to the African American vote is no slam-dunk at all, as it may have been for other candidates in the past. Calling this election is like betting on a football game. Yeah, we sure do want to see the home team win, but with our money (and lives) on the line, we need to be real scientific in our thinking-- if we intend to win rather than just contribute to a noble cause (and our adversaries’ wealth). The ironic thing about Obama’s candidacy is that it is exactly what it is: a gamble, perhaps, that America can actually hold a non-racialized election, in which the winner will win primarily because of acceptability and a willingness to carry on business-as-usual.
What we are voting for in him is not, by any means, systemic or structural change, only the same ole stuff with a prettier face, a bit more dash and charm and wit, a bit less of the rabid cowboy fear-mongering, and just a slightly easier atmosphere to live in. Slightly.
With him, an invasion of Iran is not off the table. Oil companies and pharmaceutical giants will lose no winks of sleep whatsoever, education’s hurtle down the tubes might be slowed, but not stopped, ditto for the exacerbation of disparities in material wealth, a balanced budget will remain a pipe dream on the horizon, and disengagement from the murderous misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan will only happen as fast as American military forces can be replaced by privatized Blackwater surrogates, whose cost will surely be written of at taxpayers’ (much greater) expense.
Knowing that, we can vote with our eyes open for a slightly better life.
But as I said at the beginning, I see…this current one party system with its two wings as a flying dragon hellbent on burning and devouring us all. And the presidential campaign is its multibillion dollar charade to give us “citizens” a feeling of democratic participation.
For those of us seeking revolutionary change, this stylistic change only offers us a little better/larger breathing space to do our seditious work in every nook and cranny of this nation- and especially within Black America.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
A Word from Brotha Dinizulu On Education...
NOTE: from time to time, I will be publishing some comments/analysis from my Miami Brotha- Dinizulu Tinnie. He is a powerful Black artists and community activist as well as a great thinker who often provides soem very good insight into our Black Liberation efforts-- SEARe: Effect of Culture-Based Teaching Challenged
Of course, Sam, we know the implicit irony of this whole discussion. This article might be called a study of studies done on the effectiveness of culture-based teaching. It evaluates past studies and questions their conclusions, based, logically enough, on the presence or absence of "empirical data" or, even more incisively, on the designs of the studies themselves. (One of the great scientific insights, or philosophy-of-science insights, it might be more proper to say, is the awareness that the data produced by experiments [studies] is very much conditioned by the design of the experiment; as in journalism or any other investigative field, the quality of the answers one gets depends on the quality of the questions one asks.)
Is it not quite ironic, then, that this whole evaluation of culture-based teaching seem not to address two fundamental assumptions (which might be one and the same). One is the lack of recognition that ALL teaching is culture-based; the only reason that this is even a question or a category of thought is that there has been a healthy and growing awareness that there are different cultures within the national polity, and that each deserves to be respected equally. Or, more specifically, the cultures of "minorities" needs to be given the same value, as a foundation for the education of the children who share those cultures as the culture of the [putatively WASP] majority or "mainstream." The second assumption is that this evaluation in itself is somehow objective, neutral, scientific and not, in itself, culture-based.
Ever since I have been involved with these issues (going back to the matter of Black English Dialect being used, or at least recognized in schools as a valid basis upon which further learning can be built), the same devious discussion has been with us. Yeah, yeah, you can prove that more respect for a child's home culture will engage the child more effectively in the school experience, but can you prove that these children are really learning more of what they should be learning, which, ultimately, is the S.O.S.: the same ol' stuff of arrogant, white supremacist and self-congratulatory discourse, with the implicit assumption that the purpose of education is to produce "productive citizens" who are capable and willing to contribute to that agenda, i.e. corporate profits and the bourgeois/capitalist values that are required to generate the viability of this unquestioned and unexamined social order.
True enough, that is all a gross oversimplification, but it is none the less factual for all that. My Guyanese journalist friend once stated the matter in a forthright way. As he said, "In the rest of the world the purpose of education is assumed to be to learn how to live and t live with. In the United States, the purpose of education is to get a job." The very hysteria which our government and our society in general exhibits when their unquestioned superiority gets questioned (one is "unpatriotic," perhaps even a "communist" or a "terrorist" at worst, and at best "ungrateful" for all of the blessings that American citizenship has showered upon one) has marked us as a pariah state in the world community. Where else in the so-called "civilized" world (another assumption: that there are places that are NOT civilized, by our standards) is access to such vital and universal necessities as education, health care and justice contingent upon one's possession, or not, of money (with few questions asked about how one got it, unless, of course, if one is Black or otherwise identifiably of color)?
If "education" is considered, by the powers-that-be, to be the process by which another generation is turned into effective supporters and sustainers of this status quo, then it is very plain why culture-based teaching will be questioned. Back to my allusion to the days of the Black English craze of the 1970s (which saw a misguided and confused resurgence under the rubric of "Ebonics" in more recent times), the discourse then had the same devious character as we see now. We might note that the terminology here refers to "culture-based" rather than, say, "culturally-oriented." The assumption is that respect for and evocation of the home culture in the classroom can serve as a "base" for launching the child into the mainstream. Hence the critique of studies which measure and evaluate student engagement in reading without measuring the success of "outcomes." I suspect that Hawai'ian children learning to read and being exposed to books about King Kamehameha or the greatness of their ancestors will show quite different "outcomes" than if their enthusiastically acquired reading skills, once firmly in lace, got shunted over to the drudgery of the S.O.S.
What is at the heart of this debate is the unquestioned (at least as far as I could see in my perhaps-too-casual reading of this article) is the definition of education itself. That is obvious enough, but the point here is that the definition is not being made or settled by a process of scholarly and rational discussion, but rather by a political agenda. Schools are, after all, regulated by an accreditation process, which wields life-and-death power over their very existence. If "standards" (I won't even go to the standardized test fiasco) require a "knowledge" of George Washington, Shakespeare, and Mozart, but not of Kamehameha, Dunbar or Tupac, then are we educating, who are we educating, and for what are we educating the few (certainly NOT the majority) who pass the tests and meet the standards? THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH LEARNING ABOUT WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND THOSE OF EUROPEAN DESCENT WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE QUALITY OF LIFE THAT WE NOW EXPERIENCE. Why shouldn't all children know about that? But then, why not also know about all those, of ANY descent, who have detracted from our quality of life, and certainly why not know about one's own Ancestors? As it is, much schooling around the world follows this very model. The glaring exceptions are in the White-Supremacist world, of colonies, former colonies and in dealing with subjugated and formerly subjugated populations of different ancestry, and nowhere is this more evident than in the U.S. today.
With all the polite and fashionable rhetoric about "cultural diversity" and "multiculturalism," with wonderful analogies to salad bowls and mosaics and tapestries and the like, the underlying concern is with the maintenance of power and a social order that was corrupted and unnatural from its outset, and has only ever been maintained by an unrelenting regime of physical and psychic violence. Indian Removal and slavery were but the most glaring and visible examples. No less horrific, and maybe even more so by some reckonings, has been the brutish manipulation of the working and the "middle" class, playing on fears and myths ("race" being paramount) to maintain divisions and isolations that have ironically turned some of the most "successful" into the most enslaved. (One might need only consider the typical scenario of the upwardly mobile exec shopping his or her resume, who is judged more on the depth of need -- married? car/ house/ obligations?-- than on stated qualifications and experience because what is really wanted by those doing the hiring is control, not competition for their positions.) That violence continues today in the obvious form of a de-facto empire, with the largest arsenal of mass-destructive (or any other kind, for that matter) weaponry ever amassed in human history and an uninvited armed presence all around the world, and, more importantly, the actuality of using those weapons. But the violence is no less in its non-obvious forms, like the lockdown control of "education," despite its guise of "academic freedom" and the illusion of informed discourse. This article has the appearance of being a part of the established tradition of scientific peer-review and objective evaluation, but that tradition is in fact only one tribe's culture-based ritual, and that culture itself has been compromised to serve a psychopathic political agenda that, the ritual now dictates, must not be questioned or examined.
We got work to do..
Dinzulu
Is it not quite ironic, then, that this whole evaluation of culture-based teaching seem not to address two fundamental assumptions (which might be one and the same). One is the lack of recognition that ALL teaching is culture-based; the only reason that this is even a question or a category of thought is that there has been a healthy and growing awareness that there are different cultures within the national polity, and that each deserves to be respected equally. Or, more specifically, the cultures of "minorities" needs to be given the same value, as a foundation for the education of the children who share those cultures as the culture of the [putatively WASP] majority or "mainstream." The second assumption is that this evaluation in itself is somehow objective, neutral, scientific and not, in itself, culture-based.
Ever since I have been involved with these issues (going back to the matter of Black English Dialect being used, or at least recognized in schools as a valid basis upon which further learning can be built), the same devious discussion has been with us. Yeah, yeah, you can prove that more respect for a child's home culture will engage the child more effectively in the school experience, but can you prove that these children are really learning more of what they should be learning, which, ultimately, is the S.O.S.: the same ol' stuff of arrogant, white supremacist and self-congratulatory discourse, with the implicit assumption that the purpose of education is to produce "productive citizens" who are capable and willing to contribute to that agenda, i.e. corporate profits and the bourgeois/capitalist values that are required to generate the viability of this unquestioned and unexamined social order.
True enough, that is all a gross oversimplification, but it is none the less factual for all that. My Guyanese journalist friend once stated the matter in a forthright way. As he said, "In the rest of the world the purpose of education is assumed to be to learn how to live and t live with. In the United States, the purpose of education is to get a job." The very hysteria which our government and our society in general exhibits when their unquestioned superiority gets questioned (one is "unpatriotic," perhaps even a "communist" or a "terrorist" at worst, and at best "ungrateful" for all of the blessings that American citizenship has showered upon one) has marked us as a pariah state in the world community. Where else in the so-called "civilized" world (another assumption: that there are places that are NOT civilized, by our standards) is access to such vital and universal necessities as education, health care and justice contingent upon one's possession, or not, of money (with few questions asked about how one got it, unless, of course, if one is Black or otherwise identifiably of color)?
If "education" is considered, by the powers-that-be, to be the process by which another generation is turned into effective supporters and sustainers of this status quo, then it is very plain why culture-based teaching will be questioned. Back to my allusion to the days of the Black English craze of the 1970s (which saw a misguided and confused resurgence under the rubric of "Ebonics" in more recent times), the discourse then had the same devious character as we see now. We might note that the terminology here refers to "culture-based" rather than, say, "culturally-oriented." The assumption is that respect for and evocation of the home culture in the classroom can serve as a "base" for launching the child into the mainstream. Hence the critique of studies which measure and evaluate student engagement in reading without measuring the success of "outcomes." I suspect that Hawai'ian children learning to read and being exposed to books about King Kamehameha or the greatness of their ancestors will show quite different "outcomes" than if their enthusiastically acquired reading skills, once firmly in lace, got shunted over to the drudgery of the S.O.S.
What is at the heart of this debate is the unquestioned (at least as far as I could see in my perhaps-too-casual reading of this article) is the definition of education itself. That is obvious enough, but the point here is that the definition is not being made or settled by a process of scholarly and rational discussion, but rather by a political agenda. Schools are, after all, regulated by an accreditation process, which wields life-and-death power over their very existence. If "standards" (I won't even go to the standardized test fiasco) require a "knowledge" of George Washington, Shakespeare, and Mozart, but not of Kamehameha, Dunbar or Tupac, then are we educating, who are we educating, and for what are we educating the few (certainly NOT the majority) who pass the tests and meet the standards? THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH LEARNING ABOUT WESTERN CIVILIZATION AND THOSE OF EUROPEAN DESCENT WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE QUALITY OF LIFE THAT WE NOW EXPERIENCE. Why shouldn't all children know about that? But then, why not also know about all those, of ANY descent, who have detracted from our quality of life, and certainly why not know about one's own Ancestors? As it is, much schooling around the world follows this very model. The glaring exceptions are in the White-Supremacist world, of colonies, former colonies and in dealing with subjugated and formerly subjugated populations of different ancestry, and nowhere is this more evident than in the U.S. today.
With all the polite and fashionable rhetoric about "cultural diversity" and "multiculturalism," with wonderful analogies to salad bowls and mosaics and tapestries and the like, the underlying concern is with the maintenance of power and a social order that was corrupted and unnatural from its outset, and has only ever been maintained by an unrelenting regime of physical and psychic violence. Indian Removal and slavery were but the most glaring and visible examples. No less horrific, and maybe even more so by some reckonings, has been the brutish manipulation of the working and the "middle" class, playing on fears and myths ("race" being paramount) to maintain divisions and isolations that have ironically turned some of the most "successful" into the most enslaved. (One might need only consider the typical scenario of the upwardly mobile exec shopping his or her resume, who is judged more on the depth of need -- married? car/ house/ obligations?-- than on stated qualifications and experience because what is really wanted by those doing the hiring is control, not competition for their positions.) That violence continues today in the obvious form of a de-facto empire, with the largest arsenal of mass-destructive (or any other kind, for that matter) weaponry ever amassed in human history and an uninvited armed presence all around the world, and, more importantly, the actuality of using those weapons. But the violence is no less in its non-obvious forms, like the lockdown control of "education," despite its guise of "academic freedom" and the illusion of informed discourse. This article has the appearance of being a part of the established tradition of scientific peer-review and objective evaluation, but that tradition is in fact only one tribe's culture-based ritual, and that culture itself has been compromised to serve a psychopathic political agenda that, the ritual now dictates, must not be questioned or examined.
We got work to do..
Dinzulu
Sunday, December 16, 2007
St Clair Bourne (1943-2007) Joins the Ancestors
NYTIMES Lens- St. Clair Bourne VISION:
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=810af6e0e6dcc23b03a8178ac4ea977856ef0248
Sistas & Brothas, The tragic loss of Brother St. Clair Bourne is a massive one. He was a staunch revolutionary Black nationalist. And this was reflected in all of his work... even back to his days as a photographer. We have so few principled, committed, Black filmmakers (in any of the categories) here in the US that his joining the ancestors means a big big vacuum left in our fight for positive Black cinema and documentation of our powerful legacy of Struggle and Resistance inside the US. He was my Brother and Comrade-in-struggle for more than 40 years. He taught me how to frame a picture for my ambitions of being an amateur photographer. Up until he went into the hospital, we were making plans for an exhibit of his great fotos of the 1960's at the Brecht Forum as well as a panel to discuss the importance of visual documentation of social struggles. Below is a slice of his principled professional life. In Struggle, Sam Anderson
----------------------------------
FROM: panafricanfilms
When I received word about St. Clair’s passing, it was such a shock that I was at a loss for words, Please read the his bio below. May he rest in peace!
St. Clair Bourne was born on February 16, 1943 in Harlem, New York. While attending Georgetown University in the 1960s, he became active in the peace movement and left college to join the Peace Corps. Stationed in Lima, Peru, Bourne became something of a local celebrity when he took on the editing and publishing duties of the Spanish newspaper El Comeno. His work on the paper led to him being written up in a feature article in Ebony magazine.
After his service, Bourne attended Syracuse University where he graduated in 1967 with a dual degree in Journalism and Political Science. On a scholarship, Bourne continued his education at the Columbia University Graduate School for Arts where he studied filmmaking. He was expelled, however, after his involvement in a peace movement demonstration ended in the takeover of the administration building.
Not long after leaving the University, Bourne was recommended to executive producer, William Greaves, to work on a series called The Black Journal (notable for becoming the first black public affairs television series in the United States) for public television. Bourne started on the series as an associate producer and quickly worked his way up to full producer status. In his three year tenure on the series, Bourne helped the program to win an Emmy award and earned himself a John Russworm Citation for Excellence in Broadcasting.
Bourne left the program in 1971 to seek greater challenges and more creative freedom. To this end, he formed his own production company, Chamba. With Chamba, Bourne continues to write, produce, and direct award winning and highly acclaimed features and documentaries. Starting in 1972, Bourne also served as publisher of the highly regarded newsletter Chamba Notes. Bourne continues to contribute articles to major publications that promote discussion of political and cultural issues as well as the art of filmmaking.
By David Patterson
Scope and Content Note The St. Clair Bourne Collection serves to collect and preserve the creative printed works of filmmaker St. Clair Bourne as well as maintain an archive of clippings and articles pertaining to Bourne and his various works. The collection is divided into two major series: works that have been produced by St. Clair Bourne and works that have been produced about St. Clair Bourne. Works produced by St. Clair Bourne are broken up into sub-series of photographs and writings (including articles Bourne has contributed to various magazines). Works about St. Clair Bourne are divided into sub-series that include articles discussing general aspects of Bourne’s life and career and articles that discuss specific projects Bourne has worked on over the years.
Date of Deposit September 2002
Inventory List Box 1
Series: Works by St. Clair Bourne
Subseries: Carton Listings [Dated September 22, 1985]
Old Documentary Projects Carton Listing Old Features Carton Listing Other files Carton Listing
Subseries: Photographs
Bruchac, Joseph. “Three Days In Mississippi,” Levels Magazine. Vol. 1, Number 2, 1966, p.52-62. [Bourne is credited with the photography of this article] “Mississippi March 1966.” [Picture features a row of black activists stretching for miles down one lane of a highway in Mississippi in 1966] [6 copies on cardboard stock]
Subseries: Writings
Chamba Notes
Fall 1972 [photocopy; note: portions of page 3 are illegible] Spring/Summer 1973 Winter/Spring 1974 [photocopy] Winter 1977-1978 Spring/Summer 1978 Fall 1978 Spring 1979 [photocopy] Winter 1979
Articles
Bourne, St. Clair. “Black Filmmaking: Bright Moments.” Z Magazine. March 1989, p. 40-41 [photocopy; Bourne discusses Making of Do the Right Thing, his career, and the political climate in Hollywood towards making Black Films]
Bourne, St. Clair. “The Black Journal Series.” [photocopy, dated 23 Aug 2002; Bourne discusses the creation of Black Journal and the socio-political climate that influenced and affected the series]
Bourne, St. Clair. “Bright Moments: The Black Journal Series.” [photocopy; originally written for Independent Film and Video Monthly May 1988 issue and updated for presentation at Central Florida University 24 January 2001]
Bourne, St. Clair. “Flashback” (Spring 2001) [in an article written for IDA Magazine, Bourne discusses the influences and political climate surrounding his 1973 documentary, Let the Church Say Amen!”]
Bourne, St. Clair. “IRA Militant to BUF’s Daughtry: ‘We are Struggling Like the Blacks in America,’” New York Alliance. 5 Feb 1982 [photocopy; Bourne interviews Rev. Herbert Daughtry of the United Black Front about the civil unrest in Northern Ireland]
Bourne, St. Clair. “’Minority’ Programming on PTV,” Independent Film and Video Monthly. Vol. 3, no. 3, April 1980, p. 9. [photocopy; Bourne discusses the state of minority programming on public television]
Langston Hughes Review, The. Vol. 15, no. 2, Winter 1997. [Bourne is responsible for 8 interviews conducted with experts and scholars of Langston Hughes]
Willis, Deborah, ed. Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography. New York: The New Press [1994?], p. 147-153. [photocopy of cover page and article; book features article by Bourne: “The Continuing Drama of African-American Images in American Cinema”]
Screenplays
John Henrik Clark: A Great and Mighty Walk - A Documentary by St. Clair Bourne; Transcription: First Draft, 2/8/96 [printed copy]
Series: Works About St. Clair Bourne
Subseries: General
African Americans: Voices of Triumph: Creative Fire. Richmond, VA: Time-Life, 1994, p. 64. [Bourne featured on page 64 of this book in a highlight of his life and career]
Baimbridge, Richard. “Bourne to be Wild,” Independent Film and Video Monthly. March 1999, p. 34-37.
CNS. “The Best and Worst of Everything: On His Own,” Syracuse University Magazine. Vol. 4, no. 2, March 1988. [photocopy]
Coleman, Stephen. “St. Clair Bourne: 20 Years Filming the Black Experience,” Black Masks: Spotlight on Black Art. October/November 1990, p. 4-5, 20.
Current Biography. Vol 61, No. 6, June 2000, p. 3-9.
Cutner, Naomi and Donna E. Haupt. “Salute to Eight at the Top of the Arts and Their Observations on the Obstacles, Past and Present,” Life (Special issue). Spring 1988, p. 72-77. [Bourne featured on page 75 of this article under the heading “Documentary Maker”]
Grandjean, Pat. “People: St. Clair Bourne,” Connecticut Magazine. Nov 2000, p. 95-99.
Hope, Darrell. “Documentary Overview,” DGA Magazine [Directors Guild of America]. January 2001, p. 89-93.
“March 22 & 23 - St. Clair Bourne in Person: 20 Years of Black Independent Filmmaking” [photocopy; flyer advertising Bourne’s appearance at the American Film Institute Theater]
Sampson, Mary. “Minding Their Own Business: Reflections on the Documentary Marketplace,” Independent Film and Video Monthly. October 2002, p. 49-55. [Bourne featured on page 50 of this article under the heading “Bourne: A Call For Independents”]
“St. Clair Bourne: A Man Who Wears No Mask,” New Haven Arts. Vol. 10, no. 2, February 1997, p. 3.
St. Clair Bourne Interview with George Alexander (author of Why We Make Movies), Fall 2002. [Transcript, 49 pages]
Box 2
Taylor, Clyde. “St. Clair Bourne, Filmmaker,” Artists and Influence. Vol. 15, 1996, p. 47-63. [In an interview conducted by Taylor on 21 January 1996, Bourne discusses his life and career]
Thompson, Clifford. “Showing Complexity in Documentary Portraits: an Interview with St. Clair Bourne,” Cineaste. Vol. 26, Issue 3, Summer 2001, p. 36-37.
Thompson, Clifford. “St. Clair Bourne: Documenting the African- American Experience,” Cineaste. Vol. 26, Issue 3, Summer 2001, p. 34-
35.
Whitney Museum of American Art - The New American Filmmakers Series: Exhibitions of Independent Film and Video - St. Clair Bourne: 13-28 February 1988. [flyer; contains a career overview, brief biography, and a selected filmography of Bourne]
“Young Publisher With Problems: Brooklyn Peace Corps Volunteer Puts Out Spanish Newspaper in Slum of Lima, Peru,” Ebony. November 1965, p. 101-109.
Subseries: America - Black and White
Taylor, Clarke. “NBC White Paper: A Black’s Insights,” Los Angeles Times. [photocopy; dates unknown]
Subseries: The Black and the Green
“Arts & Entertainment,” New York Amsterdam News. Saturday, 30 April
1983. [photocopy; photograph of Bourne together with Congressman Ronald Dellums and wife at a Kennedy Center screening of The Black and the Green]
“The Arts: Ireland Through Black Eyes” [photocopy; dates & publication unknown]
Caldwell, Earl. “Black and Green in Land Stained Red,” Daily News. 16 March 1983. [photocopy; note: portions of photocopy are blurred and illegible]
Douglas, Pamela. “Culture: Going to the Heart of Ireland’s Crisis,” National Leader. 11 November 1982, p. 19-20. [photocopy; portion of article discusses Bourne’s filming of The Black and the Green]
“Film Clips,” In These Times, October 1984. [2 photocopies]
“FYI: Black and Green - United in Change,” Elan. Vol. 1, no. 1, April
1982. [photocopy]
Lacayo, Richard. “Arts & Leisure: Black Writers and Producers are Widening their Focus,” New York Times. Sunday, 29 May 1983. [photocopy]
Williamson, Mel. “TV Mailbag: ‘Black Creative People Have Always Had a Wide Focus’ - Why Blacks are Using a Wider Lens,” New York Times. Sunday, 19 June 1983. [photocopy; letter responding to Richard Lacayo’s ‘Arts & Leisure’ piece]
Subseries: Heritage of the Black West
“Member News,” International Documentary. Vol. 15, no. 5, July/August, 1995, p. 27.
Subseries: In Motion: Amiri Baraka
Corry, John. “TV: Documentary Film Examines Amiri Baraka,” New York Times, Tuesday, 28 June 1983. [photocopy]
Subseries: Langston Hughes, The Dreamkeeper
Caldwell, Earl. “Langston Hughes Captured on Film,” New York Daily News. Monday, 19 May 1986. [photocopy]
“Langston Hughes - Voices and Visions: Poet of the Black Experience is Presented,” Los Angeles Sentinel. 7 January 1988. [photocopy]
Salaam, Kalamu. “Langston Hughes Film To Air on Channel 12,” Louisiana Weekly. Saturday, 13 February 1988, Section 1, p. 8. [photocopy]
“Voice of His People,” New York Times. 11 February 1988. [photocopy; brief blurb from the ‘TV Highlights’ section giving channel and start time for Bourne’s documentary on Langston Hughes]
West, Sandra. “PBS’ Langston Hughes, The Dreamkeeper,” [photocopy; date and publication unknown]
Subseries: Let the Church Say Amen!
Sayre, Nora. “Seminarian is the Hero of Let the Church Say Amen!,” New York Times. [photocopy; date unknown]
Subseries: The Making of Do the Right Thing
Berman, Janice. “Movie Reviews: Documentary Does the Right Thing,” New York Newsday. Friday, 3 November 1989. [photocopy]
Brin. “Making Do the Right Thing (DOCU),” Variety. New York: 6-12 September 1989. [photocopy]
Cosford, Bil. “Spike Lee Through a Microscope: Documentary Give Insights Into His Do the Right Thing,” Miami Herald. [photocopy; date unknown]
Fleming, Robert. “Back to Film Future in Bed-Stuy: Pioneer Aims his Lens at Those Who Followed,” Daily News. Friday, 3 November 1989. [photocopy; note: bottom portion of photocopy is garbled]
Gallo, Hank. “Docu Does the Right Thing,” Daily News. Friday, 3 November 1989. [photocopy; note: on same photocopy page as Fleming’s “Back to Film Future” article]
“Making Do the Right Thing,” Producer Services Group, Inc. (PSG). [special promotional flyer to advertise the film]
Ringel, Eleanor. “Preview: Docu, Early Film Paint Interesting Picture of Spike,” Atlanta Journal. [photocopy; date unknown]
Thomas, Keith L. “Filmmaker Documents the ‘Right Thing.’” [photocopy; date and publication unknown]
“Making Do the Right Thing: A Film by St. Clair Bourne,” [photocopy] - Promo packet from First Run Features containing an introductory article, full cast and crew information, a biography of Bourne, and the following two articles:
Jones, Lisa. “The Tube: Bourne Again: A Black Documentarian Looks Forward and Back,” Voice. 23 February 1988. Fleming, Robert. “Back to Film Future in Bed-Stuy: Pioneer Aims His Lens at Those Who Followed,” Daily News. Friday, 3 November 1989. [photocopy; note: bottom portion is blurred] Subseries: On the Boulevard
“Arts & Entertainment: Bourne Films for PBS,” New York Amsterdam News. Vol. 76, no. 31, Saturday, 3 August 1985. [photocopy]
Bergmann, David. “Documentarian Enters New Arena with PBS Drama,” Variety. p. 13. [publicity; date unknown]
Taylor, Priscilla. “Producer Bourne Makes Fiction Filmmaking Debut,” Big Red News. 3 August 1985, p. 20. [photocopy]
White, Arnold. The City Sun. 31 July - 6 August 1985. [photocopy]
Subseries: Sea Island Journey
Grant, Brooke. “National Geographic Takes a Sea Island Journey,” American Cinematographer. January 1993, p. 70-74.
Subseries: Where Roots Endure
Edkin, Michael A. “Interviews: Where Roots Endure: Explores the Unknown in Our Own Back Yard,” TV Host Weekly. 11-17 February 1989, p. 13.
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