Far-Left linkage: Bloggers speak out against the war

It’s been four years since the invasion of Iraq and to mark this horrendous anniversary, there’s been rallies in major cities around the world this weekend. Of course, bloggers were there and catching the events on film. So, as part of the first ‘Far-Left linkage,’ I’ve got a selection of posts of the demonstrations from around the world.

In Sydney, a few hundred converged on Town Hall to call for the troops out as well as the release of David Hicks, an Australian locked up in Guantanamo Bay.

Washington DC played host to thousands of Christians holding a candlelight vigil outside of the White House to express their opposition to a war that was justified by Christian rhetoric.

Albuquerque was full of powerful and creative placards as around 1,000 people turned out to oppose the war.

Tens of thousands of protesters, including Cindy Sheehan turned out at the Pentagon to oppose the war.

Thousands marched in Los Angeles to compliment the rallies in other parts of the States.

Admin note: If any blogger out there has a post about the protests this weekend, let me know and I’ll see if I can add you to the links. I’ll be making this feature more regular in order to publicize the Far-Left’s presence in the Blogosphere, and also, Bloggers presence amongst the Far-Left.

Hello from the new guy…

I first came across the FLBU a week or so ago while browsing the internet. I’m usually read the blogs that focus more on the writing and less on shiny gizmos to distract me; the FLBU fit this profile. The site also caught my eye because of the words “far left” at the top, two words that are in the url for my own personal blog. I left a comment for Benjamin, he wrote a comment on my blog, we exchanged a few e-mails, and voila – here I am. It’s that easy, folks. So the real question is this – if you are a progressive and you enjoy writing and you’re reading this post right now – Why aren’t you writing for the FBLU as well?

My name is Shannon and I’m a public school teacher in Georgia. I’ve written on a blog called A la Gauche since 2004. Before that I created a website dedicated to exposing religious zealotry called BaptistWatch.org (although apart from the forum it is very rarely updated).

I’ve been interested in politics for as long as I remember. My first memories are actually of me being a Republican. I remember scrawling “Impeach Clinton” on one of my folders in Middle School back in 1992. Obviously I was a typical Republican – the man had only been in office for a few months. Gradually, and either despite or because of my rural surroundings, I became more and more liberal. And the shift hasn’t slowed since it started. I described myself as a Democrat for most of my college years, but began to grow disillusioned with the Democrats and with the two-party system shortly after I graduated from the University of Georgia.

Despite feeling left out, I was eager to work on a Senate campaign in 2004. I very much wanted to work in politics and what better way to get your foot in the door than by working on a Senate campaign. The problem was – we lost – miserably. I now call myself a socialist and feel even less represented than I did as a liberal Democrat.

The two-party system of government is one of the major problems in the United States, and arguably the world. To think that just two parties represent the beliefs and opinions of 300,000,000 people in the United States is ridiculous. How many Americans call themselves Republicans or Democrats because they don’t know of any other labels? After the Democrats and the Republicans, the next two most visible parties are the Libertarians and the Green Party. And what happens when they run a candidate? The MSM starts carrying stories about how they might spoil the election of one of the major party candidates. I could go on and on… And I will at some point, but not all in this one single post.

I hope to write about the failures of the two-party system, the love affair between the MSM and the government, how weak of a democracy we actually have in the United States, and the benefits of a socialist society. I’m glad to be a part of the FLBU and I hope that it continues to grow with both writers and readers. Cheers.

A new direction for the FLBU

There hasn’t been a post to this blog since last year’s atrocious war on Lebanon in July and so, by a new direction for the FLBU, I actually mean an actual direction as opposed to nothing. This blog was initially designed for bloggers who called themselves part of the ‘Far-Left’ to unite in one place and to express our views. The fact that there’s been a total of three bloggers posting here means that this is really not a blog of the Far-Left and it is something that needs to be turned around.

I think the main problem is in the fact that most Far-Left Bloggers have no idea that this thing exists let alone are convinced to become part of this. And for those bloggers who are waiting for a revival of the FLBU, it’s encouraged to get in contact with me and also to spread the word about the Far-Left Bloggers Union.

Also, I think what we want to do is to use this blog to look at blogging itself from a Far-Left perspective and how it impacts or is impacted by the real world. We need to use this connection to emphasize the need for political activity in real life and not just as isolated bloggers exchanging ideas through cyberspace. And this means getting involved in the other political blogs and online activities such as the Carnival of Socialism and to attend political rallies, meetings and even join a political organization that is committed to building demonstrations and movements.

Distinguishing the various Left positions on the current conflict.

Israelis clash with Hezbollah guerrillas – Yahoo! News

As the conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate and continues to mount casualties, it is important for Marxists to disguish themselves from other Left positions on the Palestinian struggle. Not doing so can result in confusion because make no mistake, opinions are divided and rather radically. I will try to explain three main positions – from a Marxist perspective, of course.

The Marxist position on Israel and Palestine has been quite clear from the creation of the Zionist state following the end of the second world war. The state of Israel does not have the right to exist. The state was founded on the dispossesion of Palestinians, the creation of an ethnically pure state and the backing and support from Western imperialist countries.

Marxists around the world, including many Jews, call for a one-state solution. The dismantling of the Israeli state in favour of a secular state where Jews and Arabs can live together, as they have done for hundreds of years before Israel existed. Under the current capitalist climate, this solution is very hard to acheive, and it is why the liberation of Palestinians can only be acheived through the creation of Socialism – in an international sense, and not the Stalinist distortion.

Another position among the Left, and probably the most popular, is the reformist, two-state solution. Let me make this clear, this is in no way, a solution. The source of the conflict comes from the Israeli state, and as long as it exists, there will be conflict. Even with the success of a cease-fire in the near future, there can be no long term solution via this position. There is also no redeamable solution in the incursion of UN troops. The UN, a farce in itself, has major influence from the U.S. and other major powers. These powers all see an advantage in having a watchdog, such as Israel in the Middle-East.

The final major position from the Left is an utterly insane one, and one that needs to be debunked and it is often confused with the Marxist position. This is the anti-semitist position. These are people who claim to be Left-wing. These racists are parties to more of the conspiracy theory, rather than a postion. They claim that Jews control the World Bank and various corporations. This nut job theory is actually not Left-wing at all. In fact, it is more suited the Nazis and fascists, and yet, many in the Left subscribe to this insane position, and it needs to be attacked with full-force.

This issue, and the various positions surrounding it, are complex and confusing. We cannot predict where this situation will go, and when it will come to end. We will keep you posted.

The kind of thing that blind-sides you on some idle Tuesday

This is an open question to the Eustonist tendency (for I doubt the problem is confined at Harry’s Place):

If the SWP and many other Trotskyite organisations are so fundamentally anti-semitic, why do they call themselves after an ethnic Jew?

Wikipedia has one answer: “Harry’s Place was originally started by Harry Hatchet (aka “Harry” – none of Harry’s Place writers use their full name), who was originally the sole writer. Harry was active in British anti-fascist and Marxist politics in the mid-to-late 1980s, and in this period was also a member of the Straight Left faction of the Communist Party of Great Britain. It is claimed that he took the pseudonym “Harry Steele” as a tribute to Harry Pollitt, former General Secretary of the CPGB, and the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (though Harry claims it was a “piss-take” and “not a hommage [sic] to anyone”). Under this name he contributed to a number of far-left message boards and mailing lists, including UK Left Network and “The Politburo”, a discussion board for British Communists, the latter of which he set up. In this period he became well-known among fellow contributors for his support for “orthodox” Soviet Communism and his attacks on Trotskyists, in particular the Socialist Workers Party. Some critics felt that his later views on the anti-racism movement were closer to the right-wing than to traditional left-wing politics.”

Using a George Orwell quote (“liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear”) seems an odd irony: Orwell was always comparing Stalinism to fascism. Today, the formerly loyal Stalinist spends a great deal of time and effort trying to compare Islam to fascism.

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Which leads me to another question, for those on the anti-Iraq-war left, for lack of a better term:

After Hitler, some ex-Nazis became Conservative politicians.

After Stalin, it seems that many of his international brigade have become the most dangerous of New Labour MPs, cynics or conservatives. To what degree the Stalinist movement was just the worship of power over people – for Stalin’s atrocities have been known about in Britain since the fifties – is unclear. Some Ex-Trots, by contrast, have become neo-conservatives or : in the exile from the left since the fall of the Soviet Union, political ideologies have changed hands so many times that in many cases they are obsolete.

Given that not even the “Third Way” label seems to work for Blair and Cameron, and the traditional labels of the left refer to the Cold War reality and are becoming ever more abstract as the original thinkers/politicians behind them are ignored – is it not time for us to devise a few more modern labels, which correspond to streams of thought which predominate today? Something equivalent to a Euston Manifesto for the British far left needs to define the post-Soviet consensus, to unite our aims and “sloganize” the way forward. Postmodern and impenetrable though the academic left might be sometimes, this does not need to be our public face.

Lebanon

Preface:

I usually try to avoid talking about Israel, because I have no wish to be accused of anti-semitism. The idea that Israel is a Jewish state established on “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State” (Declaration of the Establishment of Israel) is a big problem for the original inhabitants. However, most of those are without guilt today, and throwing them out of places where they predominate would merely to be perpetuating the same evil. A two – or three – state solution with Gaza and the West Bank gaining independence seems the only reasonable option, especially as Israeli paranoia (however justified by events) has led to the peoples of these regions living under military rule and effectively forbidden to trade with other nations, leading to a spiral of poverty and decay. I am no anti-semite, any more than I am anti-American: it is not the people of Israel who are in the wrong, but the government of Israel, and that is quite clear.

Current situation (via):

Lebanese Flag

Israel invades Lebanon (an illegal “cross-border raid”), and one of Lebanon’s governing parties (like Hamas, a terrorist group turned political party) holds two soldiers as prisoners of war. Israel calls this an act of war and invades Lebanon even more viciously – and the media’s reaction?

“Israeli troops enter Lebanon after Hizbollah seizes two soldiers” – Daily Mail
“Israeli troops enter Lebanon amid kidnap reports” – CNN
“Israel calls Hizbollah capture of soldiers act of war” – Reuters
“Lebanese Rebels Seize 2 Israeli Soldiers at Border” – New York Times
“Hezbollah seizes Israel soldiers” – BBC

Why are Hezbollah a terrorist group?

“For us Lebanese, and I can tell you the majority of Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national resistance movement. If it wasn’t for them, we couldn’t have liberated our land. And because of that, we have big esteem for the Hezbollah movement” – Emile Lahoud, President of Lebanon

Because of Israel’s occupation of Southern Lebanon, which required strong resistance to overcome. You can’t justify what the group has done, at least without recourse to religion, but the reason the group is so popular and powerful is because they helped to liberate their country. It is worth noting that many of the targets of the group were US military forces enforcing Israeli occupation. Hezbollah succeeded, and in May 2000, Israel finally withdrew from Southern Lebanon. Lebanon gained its independence from Syria, who controlled the state with their own armies and secret police forces, in 2005, following popular uprisings.

Why was Israel occupying Southern Lebanon in the first place? Because Lebanon was allowing Palestinian “terrorists” (members of the PLO) who had had their own country stolen from them to hide there.

Why does Iran feel such hostility to Israel and America? Because Lebanon is the one other country in the region which might be considered Shi’a, and it has felt Israeli and American dominance at first hand.

Beirut, capital of Lebanon and byword for anarchy before today’s democratic government came in

Hezbollah now control about a quarter of the seats in the Lebanese government. Since the Lebanese have gained independence, democracy has flourished. It is now much more safe, and religious minorities like Christians get better protection and play a bigger political role than practically anywhere else in the region.

Two kidnappings of invading soldiers today – worldwide condemnation
“The crisis for the Israelis was compounded by the airforce killing a family of nine people by dropping a 550-pound bomb on a house in a residential area of Gaza City early today. The bomb killed Nabil Abu Salmiah, a lecturer at the Islamic University described by Israel as a Hamas activist, his wife and their five daughters and two sons. Five of the dead children were aged between four and 11. The other two were in their teens.” – The Guardian today – nothing

An Israeli tank fires shells into Lebanon. The American-backed War on Democracy continues

On North Korea and the Bomb

Over at Harry’s Place, the pro-war left who claim that regime change from outside is humane and good (who are nicknamed the “Decent Left” by their adversaries because their viewpoint wouldn’t be out of place in polite society or colonial India) are once again hounding the anti-war left (“Stoppers” to their critics)

The “decents” here are claiming the moral high ground on three counts:

1) That the Communist Party of Britain support North Korea (and have supported all manner of nasty Stalinist regimes) and the Stop the War Coalition, and therefore all people who are against the war are tarnished by association.
2) That the Ku Klux Klan have organised an anti-Iraq War/pro-”white unity” demonstration and therefore all people who are against the war are tarnished by association.
3) That some of the Stop the War Coalition support the Iraqi resistance – therefore they are decisively “non-pacifistic” and all people who are against the war are tarnished by association.

First of all – why do Fascists and racists want to stop the war? For extreme racists like the KKK it can be simple: they don’t like white people getting killed in battle. Fascist organisations like the BNP are also against the war, but for another reason as well.

“[P]rivate enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation” – Mussolini
Fascism is basically an agreement between leaders of big business and government to exploit everyone else in a nation whilst keeping power by using powerful fears of alien groups and respect for symbols of authority, sentiment and patriarchy. In this sense, it might be considered an extremely efficient form of government from the point of view of those at the top. However, because this unchecked merger between state and corporate power is secured through means of racism: even though grabbing oil might enrich a nation and the corporations and leaders within it, the idea of having to share sovereignty over it with other races is a deterrent, at least to today’s hard core of Fascists. Mussolini’s colonial ambitions stretched to trying to take over Ethiopia, so we must conclude that once Fascists are in power, they are much more willing to compromise for the sake of their corporations.

Secondly, the few of the “Stoppers” who support the resistance are doing it because they have a belief that all people should be able to live in their own way unburdened by oppression from outside: the fact that those “Decents” at Harry’s Place unanimously support Israel’s use of force to oppress inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip makes their claim that Iraq should have been “liberated” from Saddam a rather hypocritical idea.

But in the comments section, we see a further argument:

4) North Korea can’t have nuclear weapons because they aren’t trustworthy.

Let’s look at the facts:

North Korea and Iran are both “extremist” – in that they’re not submitting to the West’s power.

North Korea is a state in which its leaders (we are told) have no cares about anything but their own lives and power. In North Korea, they are told that Western leaders do not care about anything but their own lives and power.

Both North Korea and the West claim that their leaders are honourable and can be trusted with nuclear weapons.

The West claims that North Korea and Iran will use nuclear weapons against it.
North Korea and Iran claim that The West will use nuclear weapons against them.

Neither Iran nor North Korea has ever attacked the West or its neighbours.
When the West attacked North Korea, 11.1% of the total population perished.
After the West overthrew Iran’s first democratically elected leader (for oil company BP), they were able to do it at the expense of only 300 Iranian lives and democracy in Iran – they instituted the brutal Shah as the dictator.
The West recently overthrew the Afghan and Iraqi governments and the death toll from this is still rising.

So why are North Korea and Iran seen as the biggest threats? Why is violence the only answer? And why is the West the only source of morality and political leadership that is acceptable?

Kim Jong-Il, anti-American dictator of North Korea. Unacceptable.

Saparmurat Niyazov, pro-American dictator of Turkmenistan. Acceptable.

Co-operation: I step into the breach.

“Now tell me how changing the world to make it more to your liking will solve the problem of human greed.” – Brackers

It won’t and it can’t solve the problem of human greed, just as social policy of any type cannot solve the problem of murder altogether. However, the attribute in itself and the trouble it causes can be minimised.

Here are a couple of ideas that aren’t necessarily original, but might help to reduce human greed and its effects:

1) Sharing out power more equally. You might think you live in a democracy, but you don’t (wherever in the West you live). Democracy implies public participation, public decision making and where there are votes, votes along fair lines. At the moment we have most media owned by rich people by definition, and representing more or less the opinions of rich people. In Britain, at least, all of the political parties would be inviable without the support of large corporations’ donations – so they get a large slice of the power over our elected representatives.

In many Third World countries, the IMF or World Bank has power over the elected government and can effectively make them strip the assets of a country and sell them to the rich world at knockdown prices. This is enough to destroy even the successful businesses of the poor world: and the reason is greed and power inequality between the rich and poor worlds. Military dictatorships are yet another example: the more polarised the power, the more room for greed.

Democracy can be extended until it becomes the way in which local communities agree upon the distribution, production roles, ethics and responsibilities that they have. Democratic dialogue by democratically chosen representatives of each locality to each region, from each region to each state and from each state to an international assembly can allow for the advances in each place to be repeatable elsewhere, for common goals to be achieved – say for example the worldwide abolition of slavery – and environmentally appropriate production to be planned.

2) “Property is theft” – by making everything public property and replacing the concept of “ownership” with that of “community”, you can also reduce human greed. The money system encourages black markets and mob violence to thrive by effectively paying for it. Disconnecting the consumer and producer relationship by two separate systems: a “consumer” system of credits which are only for completed products from community-run distribution centres and a “producer” system based upon a computer link-up of production and consumption figures all over the world to produce the economist’s Holy Grail, a “perfect market”.

Property being abolished, images, information and inventions would now be able to be distributed freely. Artists of all types could still live solely upon their craft if they could sufficiently convince any community of the advantages of subsidising them. The complete musical, artistic and literary catalogue would be freed for anyone to enjoy or learn from on the internet. Patents would be the owned by the human race, and all drugs would be generic – the subsidies to those on the research and development side of medicine would come from the international assembly.

No one need starve because someone else “needs” a Rolls Royce to show off. By providing initially for everyone’s needs but still allowing a credit system to function – subject to a possible penalty as one’s marginal value nears zero (for example, a man working a 23-hour day might not produce much more than another man working an 8-hour day, and certainly wouldn’t produce nearly 3 times as much) – people can if they want work more or less for more or less material “wealth”, but within reasonable limits, for the sake of both their community and the environment, which takes a hit every time someone within capitalism designs a new way to exploit it.

3) The treadmill of capital leads people to rank themselves by income and conspicuous expenditure. There are many better ways for people to discover their true worth, and these must be catered for within each community. Sporting events, intellectual events, exhibitions of creativity, efforts on behalf of the community and efforts to look after one’s own family: every way of advancing the individual, the community or the human race would be portrayed as valuable, instead of the present concept of the self-seeking man, valuable because of his misuse of power. Community news media will be returned to the community. National and international news media will be selected by the editors of each community news outlet, collected by anybody and collated through the means of the internet.

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Just a few ideas I’m throwing out for comments and meaningful criticism. All of you who call yourselves socialists but who reject the travesties we have seen in Burma, North Korea, Stalin’s Soviet Union etc., please write an article on your own blogs with a few more suggestions, and comment here so that I can link them all together.

(X-posted from http://jangliss.livejournal.com)

Just a note – Carnival of Socialism 5 is out now: check http://carnivalofsocialism.blogspot.com for more details)

US propoganda denies the plight of Gitmo detainees

Guantanamo suicides ‘acts of war’, smh.com.au

The latest suicide of three detainees in Guantanamo Bay are no surprise. And further still, the comments from US authorities come as no surprise either. They call these clear acts of desperation an act of war! They can’t look from behind their fucking stars and stripes for two minutes and see that this is not an attack on America. They are innocent victims of something far from any ‘War on Terror.’ The actions of the American government are clearly a war being played with terror. Nothing is off limits. Torture and Nuclear weapons, something once thought insane are now justifiable under Bush’s nationalist crusade.

Gitmo is a torture camp and for the detainees, there’s no escape. They don’t see a future and they don’t see justice being done. Gitmo needs to be closed and the ‘War on Terror’ needs to end now!

You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me

"There is a small but growing community of Christian and family-friendly video game developers," – Scott Scholler, Christian Game Developers Foundation

"There is warfare, [but] the Bible is full of warfare, [and] so are all the other great games that are on the market"; "as you pray, your soldiers are more prepared for battle." – Troy Lyndon, Left Behind Games

As the BBC has just noticed, Christianity has just taken on video game form. "No gore, no cursing" is the promise – just good, wholesome killing and maiming with guns. The new "Left Behind" game, based on the Christian book series of the same name, uses the impending apocalypse of Revelation as its starting point, and allows you, as a member of the "Tribulation Team", to personally destroy unbelievers and Satan's minions (practically indistinguishable, of course).

Religious music now makes up 7% of music sales in the United States, although many despise "Contemporary Christian Music" for taking on a secular form.

"They were certainly controlled by demons as they captured the affection of an entire generation with their “magical mystery” music and carried millions of young people along on their journey to eastern religion, atheism, drug abuse, and rebellion against established order."

"Bridges to the world are exceedingly dangerous…(i.e., 1 John 2:15-17; James 4:4)" – News Notes, Way of Life Ministry.

"Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (James 4:4) – translation of the latter.

Bridges to the world include much of latter-day culture. Extremist evangelical sites attack Christian musicians who cite The Beatles or The Red Hot Chili Peppers amongst their influences. One site even goes so far as to name the Fab Four as one of the three biggest evils today, alongside pornography and feminism. My point is that this is classic cult behaviour – a few extremist churches are beginning to set themselves up as the only purveyors of truth in the world, and attempting to mind-control their membership by preventing them seeing any possible opinion which conflicts with this, Christian or not. Which is why Christian video games are needed however much of a commercial failure they might be. In the US, there are extremist Christian television and radio stations, movies, places of worship, schools, newspapers, internet portals, workplaces, towns… but it is not possible to be completely cut off from at least a few dissenting opinions.

In contemporary America, despite Wal-Mart's self-censorship – pornography and albums with rude words or anti-Biblical opinions are kept out of extreme Christian enclaves – there are still some ways, video games and The Simpsons, for example, in which mild attacks on religion are still tolerated. Not for long.