Monday, April 25, 2011
My people are rising by Mohja Kahf
Syrian poet/novelist/professor Dr. Mohja Kahf is full of passion about current events in her beloved Syria and the Middle East. We love her and her work, especially her thesis that the Black Arts Movement is the foundation of Muslim American literature. She asserts that Marvin X's collection of poems Fly to Allah, 1968, is the seminal work in Muslim American literature.
Her classic poem My Little Mosque appears in the Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Issue, Guest Edited by Marvin X. A recent novel is The girl in the tangerine scarf, Carrol & Graf, 2006.
Mohja was born in Damascus, Syria, and came to the US as a child. An associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas, she is the author of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque, and winner of an Arkansas Arts Council award. Her first book of poetry, E-mails from Scheherazad, was a finalist in the 2004 Paterson Poetry Prize.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Toward North American African Statehood
Toward North American African Statehood
The dream of a Black Nation carved out of the USA is a notion that may one day become a reality. It is no more a dream than was the state of Israel, the coming state of Palestine, the Southern Sudan and elsewhere.
North American Africans have a human right to self determination and sovereignty, especially we never exercised such since our sojourn in the wilderness of North America, and yet our condition deteriorates with each passing day, yes, despite a so called black President, after all, he hardly ever utters the word black, so we must dismiss him as a charade, a puppet created by the Wall Street Bankers and Global financiers to expedite their scheme of global hegemony with a black face since the majority of the world is non white. What better way to hoodwink and bamboozle the non-white global majority than with a black face white man?
He has had his opportunity to bring the change he promised, but it is simply more of the same, the same old white supremacy BS in disguise of something new and progressive, although his policies never approach anything progressive, they simply appear as such to those suffering the myopia of blackness, blinded by their emotions at the presence of a Negro in the White House. And yet this Negro capitulates (his favorite word is compromise) at every turn, even when it is unnecessary. We are well aware compromise is the nature of politics, but when compromise becomes capitulation and surrender, this is a useless exercise of politricks.
When was the last time this Negro mentioned a job program to relieve the 30 million unemployed? How long shall America remain the biggest prison house in the world, 2.4 million incarcerated at fifty to sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year? For juveniles it is $200,000 per inmate per year. Has he the brain power to imagine a general amnesty, after all he knows most of the incarcerated are being held unjustly due to a racist criminal justice system that discriminates at every turn.
Wars and rumors of wars. We thought things would change after the Bush era, but they've actually gotten worse: wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and elsewhere. Is this the change he promised? For sure, it's not the change we need, maybe his generals need it, maybe the military-corporate-university complex needs it.
And yet world events are moving rapidly to alter the status quo in the global village. Any thinking person can see it is only a matter of time before revolution reaches the shores of North America. Are any political leaders preparing the America people for radical change? Such change will of necessity alter the economic state, bringing a most needed redistribution of the wealth stolen by the blood suckers of the poor, the greedy corporate bosses and the Wall Street bankers who only fund both sides of the political spectrum, Democratic and Republican, who are essentially two sides of the same coin, a coin tossed about by lobbyists who care less about any- thing other than their benefactors.
With all the above, where shall we find ourselves in the endgame? We are without any plan derived from independent thinking, for our socalled leaders have little time for such since they are beholden to this political/economic masters, leaving them no time for critical thinking outside the box of pax Americana, hence our people exist in perpetual crisis, a crisis in leadership, critical thinking that is independent and radical since our situation is radical. With the dire economic situation in the hood comes crimes for survival, pathological acts of desperation when men and women have no vision, no solution other than to engage in self destructive behavior that only complicates an already sad situation.
If we could only retreat to a space for a breath of fresh air, we might be able to see a way out of this nothingness and dread. Instead, we run south, north, east and west, up and down the mountain in the manner of Sisyphus, never reaching the mountaintop Martin Luther King, Jr. claimed he accomplished. If Obama represents us at the mountaintop, I suggest we descend to the valley, for it is crystal clear to me the Democratic nor Republican party will decide our future in this land.
No, we need a body of men and women grounded in African and spiritual philosophy, yet with a clear political ideology and economic perspective that can direct our people into the future, that can derive plans for the next fifty to one hundred years. We need planners and thinkers astute enough to see into the future, to realize we must have national independence apart from the the United Snakes of America.
Any clear thinking person knows we shall continue existing in a hostile environment until we decide to make a space for ourselves wherein we can live in peace. White America has no intention to give up the privileges of White Supremacy culture. And why should we call upon them to do so? Let them revel in their whiteness but let us be about the business of construction our own society based on our reality and meta physicality.
In fifty years, you witnessed the state of Israel become a powerful entity, so why cannot you envision yourself doing a similar state formation? What prevents you from the adventure into statehood is fear and sloth, mental laziness and magnetic attraction to the world of make believe perpetuated by the Monkey Mind Media, along with white supremacy education and socialization that has addicted you to the Great White Way!
No wonder your children dismiss elders as fools, for what path have we charted for them, what road map have we provided except the capitulation and passivity of second class status? We convinced them to attend college, yet they return home brainwashed talking gibberish and acting out white supremacy mythology. The supreme irony is that for every one black male who attends college four go to prison. And it is no long term solution that our women attend colleges in high numbers, for as Dr. Wade Nobles says, the women are imprisoned in academia, suffering the mental atrophy of the classic colonial elite education, many graduating with gender identity problems of the most severe nature, partly the result of not being able to fulfill their natural biological need for a mate to procreate. Many of our college educated women, and our women in general, are no longer thinking about marriage, especially with a husband from the rapidly deteriorating pool of black males stable enough to sustain a marriage.
In short, our problem is not reparations, for we possess within our community wealth that makes us the 16th richest nation in the world. What we need is mental reparations, to answer the call of the self accusing spirit that tells us we are wrong to continue down this path of nothingness and dread, in full blown denial that we are navigating a perilous mental landscape that is a total break with reality.
The healing needed is quite simple, for as Dr. John Henrik Clark told us, what made us great throughout the eons and allowed us to achieve the foundations of world culture and civilization were unity and high morals.
When we get it in our heads that there is no other way, no half stepping, no quick fix, no Miller Lite solution, no voting, no jobs at slave wages, no criminality, none of this will suffix until we conjure the ineluctable energy to unite for the greater cause and do so in the spirit of righteousness, justice and peace.
The hour is upon us to seize the land, to claim what is due us for the centuries of free labor, for the kidnapping, rape and plunder of our Motherland, and ourselves, the mental trauma and post trauma we suffer at this hour, and yet if we continue in denial, like the drug addict, things shall only go from bad to worse. Seize the time!
--Marvin X,
Prime Minister of Poetry,
First Poet's Church of the Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists
4/24/11
www.firstpoetschurch.blogspot.com
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
Saturday, April 23, 2011
On the Arab Revolt
A LUTA CONTINUA: 'If power is not seized, counter-revolution will rise': Vijay Prashad on the Arab revolt
Posted: 22 Apr 2011 09:16 PM PDT
Neogriot
'If power is not seized,
counter-revolution will rise'
Monday, 31 January 2011
Vijay Prashad is a prominent Marxist scholar from South Asia. He is George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut. He has written extensively on international affairs for both academic and popular journals. His most recent book The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (2007) has been widely acclaimed as the most authentic rewriting of the world history of the postcolonial Global South and the idea of the "Third World".
Pothik Ghosh (PG): In what sense can the recent events in the Arab World be called revolutions? How are they different from the colour revolutions of the past two decades?
Vijay Prashad (VP): All revolutions are not identical. The colour revolutions in Eastern Europe had a different tempo. They were also of a different class character. They were also along the grain of US imperialism, even though the people were acting not for US but for their own specific class and national interests. I have in mind the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. Otpor in the Ukraine, among others, was well lubricated by George Soros's Open Society and the US government's National Democratic Institute. Russian money also swept in on both sides of the ledger. These Eastern European revolutions were mainly political battles in regions of the world still unsettled by the traumatic transition from state socialism to predatory capitalism.
The Arab revolt that we now witness is something akin to a "1968" for the Arab World. Sixty per cent of the Arab population is under 30 (70 per cent in Egypt). Their slogans are about dignity and employment. The resource curse brought wealth to a small population of their societies, but little economic development. Social development came to some parts of the Arab world: Tunisia's literacy rate is 75 per cent, Egypt's is just over 70 per cent, Libya almost 90 per cent. The educated lower-middle-class and middle-class youth have not been able to find jobs. The concatenation of humiliations revolts these young people: no job, no respect from an authoritarian state, and then to top it off the general malaise of being a second-class citizen on the world stage - second to the US-Israel and so on - was overwhelming. The chants on the streets are about this combination of dignity, justice and jobs.
PG: Does the so-called Jasmine Revolution have in it to transform the preponderant character of the politico-ideological topography of oppositional politics - from Islamist identitarianism to an organic variant of working-class politics - in West Asia and the Maghreb? Under what circumstances can this series of general strikes, which seem to be spreading like a brushfire through the region, morph into a constellation of counter-power? Or, would that in your eyes merely be a vicarious desire of Leftists from outside the region?
VP: I fear that we are being vicarious. The youth, the working class, the middle class have opened up the tempo of struggle. The direction it will take is not clear. I am given over to analogies when I see revolutions, largely because the events of change are so contingent.
It is in the melee that spontaneity and structure jostle. The organised working class is weaker than the organised theocratic bloc, at least in Egypt. Social change of a progressive type has come to the Arab lands largely through the Colonels. Workers' struggles have not reached fruition in any country. In Iraq, where the workers movement was advanced in the 1950s, it was preempted by the military - and then they made a tacit alliance.
One cannot say what is going to happen with certainty. The Mexican Revolution opened up in 1911, but didn't settle into the PRI regime till the writing of the 1917 constitution and the elevation of Carranza to the presidency in 1920 or perhaps Cardenas in 1934. I find many parallels between Mexico and Egypt. In both, the Left was not sufficiently developed. Perils of the Right always lingered. If the Pharonic state withers, as Porfirio Diaz's state did, the peasants and the working class might move beyond spontaneity and come forward with some more structure. Spontaneity is fine, but if power is not seized effectively, counter-revolution will rise forth effectively and securely.
PG: What are, in your opinion, the perils if such a transformation fails to occur? Will not such a failure lead to an inevitable consolidation of the global neoliberal conjuncture, which manifests itself in West Asia as fascistic Islamism on one hand and authoritarianism on the other?
VP: If such a transformation fails, which god willing it won't, then we are in for at least three options: (1) the military, under Egyptian ruling class and US pressure, will take control. This is off the cards in Tunisia for now, mainly because the second option presented itself; (2) elements of the ruling coalition are able to dissipate the crowds through a series of hasty concessions, notably the removal of the face of the autocracy (Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia). If Mubarak leaves and the reins of the Mubarakian state are handed over to the safe-keeping of one of his many bloodsoaked henchman such as Omar Suleiman…. Mubarak tried this with Ahmed Shafik, but he could as well have gone to Tantawi….all generals who are close to Mubarak and seen as safe by the ruling bloc. We shall wait to see who all among the elite will start to distance themselves from Mubarak, and try to reach out to the streets for credibility. As a last-ditch effort, the Shah of Iran put Shapour Bakhtiar as PM. That didn't work. Then the revolt spread further. If that does not work, then, (3) the US embassy will send a message to Mohamed El-Baradei, giving him their green light. El-Baradei is seen by the Muslim Brotherhood as a credible candidate. Speaking to the crowds on January 30 he said that in a few days the matter will be settled. Does this mean that he will be the new state leader, with the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and certainly with sections of Mubarak's clique? Will this be sufficient for the crowds? They might have to live with it. El-Baradei is a maverick, having irritated Washington at the IAEA over Iran. He will not be a pushover. On the other hand, he will probably carry on the economic policy of Mubarak. His entire agenda was for political reforms. This is along the grain of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment part 2, viz., the same old privatisation agenda alongside "good governance". El-Baradei wanted good governance in Egypt. The streets want more. It will be a truce for the moment, or as Chavez said, "por ahora".
PG: The Radical Islamists, their near-complete domination of the oppositional/dissident politico-ideological space in the region notwithstanding, have failed to rise up to the occasion as an effective organisational force - one especially has the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in mind. What do you think is the reason?
VP: The Muslim Brotherhood is on the streets. It has set its own ideology to mute. That is very clear. Its spokesperson Gamel Nasser has said that they are only a small part of the protests, and that the protest is about Egypt not Islam. This is very clever. It is similar to what the mullahs said in Iran during the protests of 1978 and 1979. They waited in the wings for the "multitude" to overthrow the Shah, and then they descended. Would the MB do that? If one says this is simply the people's revolt and not that of any organised force, it's, of course, true. But it is inadequate. The ‘people' can be mobilised, can act; but can the ‘people' govern without mediation, without some structure. This is where the structured elements come into play. If there is no alternative that forms, then the Muslim Brotherhood will take power. That the Muslim Brotherhood wants to stand behind El-Baradei means they don't want to immediately antagonise the US. That will come later.
PG: What does the emergence of characters like El-Baradei signify? Are they really the "political face" of the resistance as the global media seems to be projecting?
VP: El-Baradei comes with credibility. He served in the Nasserite ministry of external affairs in the 1960s. He then served in the foreign ministry under Ismail Fahmi. One forgets how impressive Fahmi was. He resigned from Sadat's cabinet when the Egyptian leader went to Jerusalem. Fahmi was a Nasserite. For one year, El-Baradei served with Boutros Boutros Ghali at the foreign ministry. That was the start of this relationship. Both fled for the UN bureaucracy. Boutros Ghali was more pliant than Fahmi. I think El-Baradei is more along Fahmi's lines. At the IAEA he did not bend to the US pressure. Given that he spent the worst years of Mubarak's rule outside Cairo gives him credibility. A man of his class would have been coopted into the Mubarak rule. Only an outsider like him can be both of the ruling bloc (in terms of class position and instinct) and outside the ruling apparatus (i. e. of Mubarak's cabinet circle). It is a point of great privilege.
With the MB careful not to act in its own face, and the ‘people' without easy ways to spot leaders, and with Ayman Nour not in the best of health, it is credible that El-Baradei takes on the mantle.
PG: Is the disappearance of working-class and other avowedly Left-democratic political organisations, which had a very strong presence in that part of the world till a few decades ago, merely the result of their brutal suppression by various authoritarian regimes (such as Saddam Hussein's in Iraq, Hafez Assad's in Syria and Nasser's and Mubarak's in Egypt) and/or their systematic physical decimation by Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood? Or, does it also have to do with certain inherent politico-theoretical weaknesses of those groups? Has not the fatal flaw of left/ communist/ socialist forces in the Islamic, particularly the Arab, world been their unwillingness, or inability, to grasp and pose the universal question of the "self-emancipation of the working class" in the determinateness of their specific culture and historicity?
VP: Don't underestimate the repression. In Egypt, the 2006 budget for internal security was $1.5 billion. There are 1.5 million police officers, four times more than army personnel. I am told that there is now about 1 police officer per 37 people. This is extreme. The subvention that comes from the US of $1.3 billion helps fund this monstrosity.
The high point of the Egyptian working class was in 1977. This was the bread uprising. It was trounced. Sadat then went to the IMF with a cat's smile. He inaugurated the infitah. He covered the books by three means: the infitah allowed for some export-oriented production, the religious cover (al-rais al-mou'min) allowed him to try and undercut the Brotherhood, and seek some funds from the Saudis, and the bursary from the US for the deal he cut with Israel. This provided the means to enhance the security apparatus and further crush the workers' movements.
Was there even space or time to think about creative ways to pose the self-emancipation question? Were there intellectuals who were doing this? Are we in Ajami's Dream Palace of the Arabs, worrying about the decline of the questions? Recall that in March 1954 the major Wafd and Communist unions made a pact with the Nasserite regime; for concessions it would support the new dispensation. That struck down its independence. The unions put themselves in the service of the Nation over their Class. In the long run, this was a fatal error. But the organised working class was small (as Workers on the Nile
shows, most workers were in the "informal" sector). The best that the CP and the Wafd could do in the new circumstances was to argue that the working class plays a central role in the national movement. Nasser and his Revolutionary Command Council, on the other hand, heard this but did not buy it. They saw the military as the agent of history. It was their prejudice.
Posted: 22 Apr 2011 09:16 PM PDT
Neogriot
'If power is not seized,
counter-revolution will rise'
Monday, 31 January 2011
Vijay Prashad is a prominent Marxist scholar from South Asia. He is George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut. He has written extensively on international affairs for both academic and popular journals. His most recent book The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (2007) has been widely acclaimed as the most authentic rewriting of the world history of the postcolonial Global South and the idea of the "Third World".
Pothik Ghosh (PG): In what sense can the recent events in the Arab World be called revolutions? How are they different from the colour revolutions of the past two decades?
Vijay Prashad (VP): All revolutions are not identical. The colour revolutions in Eastern Europe had a different tempo. They were also of a different class character. They were also along the grain of US imperialism, even though the people were acting not for US but for their own specific class and national interests. I have in mind the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. Otpor in the Ukraine, among others, was well lubricated by George Soros's Open Society and the US government's National Democratic Institute. Russian money also swept in on both sides of the ledger. These Eastern European revolutions were mainly political battles in regions of the world still unsettled by the traumatic transition from state socialism to predatory capitalism.
The Arab revolt that we now witness is something akin to a "1968" for the Arab World. Sixty per cent of the Arab population is under 30 (70 per cent in Egypt). Their slogans are about dignity and employment. The resource curse brought wealth to a small population of their societies, but little economic development. Social development came to some parts of the Arab world: Tunisia's literacy rate is 75 per cent, Egypt's is just over 70 per cent, Libya almost 90 per cent. The educated lower-middle-class and middle-class youth have not been able to find jobs. The concatenation of humiliations revolts these young people: no job, no respect from an authoritarian state, and then to top it off the general malaise of being a second-class citizen on the world stage - second to the US-Israel and so on - was overwhelming. The chants on the streets are about this combination of dignity, justice and jobs.
PG: Does the so-called Jasmine Revolution have in it to transform the preponderant character of the politico-ideological topography of oppositional politics - from Islamist identitarianism to an organic variant of working-class politics - in West Asia and the Maghreb? Under what circumstances can this series of general strikes, which seem to be spreading like a brushfire through the region, morph into a constellation of counter-power? Or, would that in your eyes merely be a vicarious desire of Leftists from outside the region?
VP: I fear that we are being vicarious. The youth, the working class, the middle class have opened up the tempo of struggle. The direction it will take is not clear. I am given over to analogies when I see revolutions, largely because the events of change are so contingent.
It is in the melee that spontaneity and structure jostle. The organised working class is weaker than the organised theocratic bloc, at least in Egypt. Social change of a progressive type has come to the Arab lands largely through the Colonels. Workers' struggles have not reached fruition in any country. In Iraq, where the workers movement was advanced in the 1950s, it was preempted by the military - and then they made a tacit alliance.
One cannot say what is going to happen with certainty. The Mexican Revolution opened up in 1911, but didn't settle into the PRI regime till the writing of the 1917 constitution and the elevation of Carranza to the presidency in 1920 or perhaps Cardenas in 1934. I find many parallels between Mexico and Egypt. In both, the Left was not sufficiently developed. Perils of the Right always lingered. If the Pharonic state withers, as Porfirio Diaz's state did, the peasants and the working class might move beyond spontaneity and come forward with some more structure. Spontaneity is fine, but if power is not seized effectively, counter-revolution will rise forth effectively and securely.
PG: What are, in your opinion, the perils if such a transformation fails to occur? Will not such a failure lead to an inevitable consolidation of the global neoliberal conjuncture, which manifests itself in West Asia as fascistic Islamism on one hand and authoritarianism on the other?
VP: If such a transformation fails, which god willing it won't, then we are in for at least three options: (1) the military, under Egyptian ruling class and US pressure, will take control. This is off the cards in Tunisia for now, mainly because the second option presented itself; (2) elements of the ruling coalition are able to dissipate the crowds through a series of hasty concessions, notably the removal of the face of the autocracy (Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia). If Mubarak leaves and the reins of the Mubarakian state are handed over to the safe-keeping of one of his many bloodsoaked henchman such as Omar Suleiman…. Mubarak tried this with Ahmed Shafik, but he could as well have gone to Tantawi….all generals who are close to Mubarak and seen as safe by the ruling bloc. We shall wait to see who all among the elite will start to distance themselves from Mubarak, and try to reach out to the streets for credibility. As a last-ditch effort, the Shah of Iran put Shapour Bakhtiar as PM. That didn't work. Then the revolt spread further. If that does not work, then, (3) the US embassy will send a message to Mohamed El-Baradei, giving him their green light. El-Baradei is seen by the Muslim Brotherhood as a credible candidate. Speaking to the crowds on January 30 he said that in a few days the matter will be settled. Does this mean that he will be the new state leader, with the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and certainly with sections of Mubarak's clique? Will this be sufficient for the crowds? They might have to live with it. El-Baradei is a maverick, having irritated Washington at the IAEA over Iran. He will not be a pushover. On the other hand, he will probably carry on the economic policy of Mubarak. His entire agenda was for political reforms. This is along the grain of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment part 2, viz., the same old privatisation agenda alongside "good governance". El-Baradei wanted good governance in Egypt. The streets want more. It will be a truce for the moment, or as Chavez said, "por ahora".
PG: The Radical Islamists, their near-complete domination of the oppositional/dissident politico-ideological space in the region notwithstanding, have failed to rise up to the occasion as an effective organisational force - one especially has the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in mind. What do you think is the reason?
VP: The Muslim Brotherhood is on the streets. It has set its own ideology to mute. That is very clear. Its spokesperson Gamel Nasser has said that they are only a small part of the protests, and that the protest is about Egypt not Islam. This is very clever. It is similar to what the mullahs said in Iran during the protests of 1978 and 1979. They waited in the wings for the "multitude" to overthrow the Shah, and then they descended. Would the MB do that? If one says this is simply the people's revolt and not that of any organised force, it's, of course, true. But it is inadequate. The ‘people' can be mobilised, can act; but can the ‘people' govern without mediation, without some structure. This is where the structured elements come into play. If there is no alternative that forms, then the Muslim Brotherhood will take power. That the Muslim Brotherhood wants to stand behind El-Baradei means they don't want to immediately antagonise the US. That will come later.
PG: What does the emergence of characters like El-Baradei signify? Are they really the "political face" of the resistance as the global media seems to be projecting?
VP: El-Baradei comes with credibility. He served in the Nasserite ministry of external affairs in the 1960s. He then served in the foreign ministry under Ismail Fahmi. One forgets how impressive Fahmi was. He resigned from Sadat's cabinet when the Egyptian leader went to Jerusalem. Fahmi was a Nasserite. For one year, El-Baradei served with Boutros Boutros Ghali at the foreign ministry. That was the start of this relationship. Both fled for the UN bureaucracy. Boutros Ghali was more pliant than Fahmi. I think El-Baradei is more along Fahmi's lines. At the IAEA he did not bend to the US pressure. Given that he spent the worst years of Mubarak's rule outside Cairo gives him credibility. A man of his class would have been coopted into the Mubarak rule. Only an outsider like him can be both of the ruling bloc (in terms of class position and instinct) and outside the ruling apparatus (i. e. of Mubarak's cabinet circle). It is a point of great privilege.
With the MB careful not to act in its own face, and the ‘people' without easy ways to spot leaders, and with Ayman Nour not in the best of health, it is credible that El-Baradei takes on the mantle.
PG: Is the disappearance of working-class and other avowedly Left-democratic political organisations, which had a very strong presence in that part of the world till a few decades ago, merely the result of their brutal suppression by various authoritarian regimes (such as Saddam Hussein's in Iraq, Hafez Assad's in Syria and Nasser's and Mubarak's in Egypt) and/or their systematic physical decimation by Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood? Or, does it also have to do with certain inherent politico-theoretical weaknesses of those groups? Has not the fatal flaw of left/ communist/ socialist forces in the Islamic, particularly the Arab, world been their unwillingness, or inability, to grasp and pose the universal question of the "self-emancipation of the working class" in the determinateness of their specific culture and historicity?
VP: Don't underestimate the repression. In Egypt, the 2006 budget for internal security was $1.5 billion. There are 1.5 million police officers, four times more than army personnel. I am told that there is now about 1 police officer per 37 people. This is extreme. The subvention that comes from the US of $1.3 billion helps fund this monstrosity.
The high point of the Egyptian working class was in 1977. This was the bread uprising. It was trounced. Sadat then went to the IMF with a cat's smile. He inaugurated the infitah. He covered the books by three means: the infitah allowed for some export-oriented production, the religious cover (al-rais al-mou'min) allowed him to try and undercut the Brotherhood, and seek some funds from the Saudis, and the bursary from the US for the deal he cut with Israel. This provided the means to enhance the security apparatus and further crush the workers' movements.
Was there even space or time to think about creative ways to pose the self-emancipation question? Were there intellectuals who were doing this? Are we in Ajami's Dream Palace of the Arabs, worrying about the decline of the questions? Recall that in March 1954 the major Wafd and Communist unions made a pact with the Nasserite regime; for concessions it would support the new dispensation. That struck down its independence. The unions put themselves in the service of the Nation over their Class. In the long run, this was a fatal error. But the organised working class was small (as Workers on the Nile
shows, most workers were in the "informal" sector). The best that the CP and the Wafd could do in the new circumstances was to argue that the working class plays a central role in the national movement. Nasser and his Revolutionary Command Council, on the other hand, heard this but did not buy it. They saw the military as the agent of history. It was their prejudice.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Why Do So-called Progressives Support Dictators
Why Do So-called Progressives Support Dictators
It is amazing to know the long time support many progressives have given to rotten, slimy dictators around the world. Of course there is often a time lag in catching up with the one time revolutionaries who eventually discard their revolutionary garb to don the persona of the brutal dictator, president for life.
The former revolutionary did indeed liberate his people but then somehow decided he is the new messiah of his "children" who must be ruled with an iron hand, even after he has thrown in the towel of the consent of the governed.
There is no need to call names for you know who these pitiful former revolutionaries are, who came into political power decades ago but only of late decide to institute the fundamental item on their revolutionary agenda: land reform. There are a plethora of personalities on the African Continent who fit this description, in Asia, Middle East, Europe and the Americas.
We support all truly radical regimes but condemn reactionary governments and the leadership that hides under the revolutionary banner.
We are amazed to see how these reactionary, corrupt, dictatorial bastards stick together, yes, like birds of a feather. African proverb says one white dog will not bite another white dog.
But what is more amazing is how many socalled American radicals and progressives will chime in with the rats of the world, and yet we know many of them have ulterior motives, yes, many pledge allegiance to the rats because they are paid to do so.
There are those radicals who take money to promote the propaganda machine of rotten dog, oppressive leaders around the world. No matter how brutal they are, no matter how full their dungeons are with opposition leaders, poets, playwrights, journalists, these sycophants continue kissing ass for a few bucks. Even when opposition leaders are murdered in broad daylight, the sycophant media magicians continue perpetuating the world of make believe.
From time to time the opposition forces in various countries must speak directly to American so-called progressives to stay out of their business. Work on your own revolution in the belly of the Beast, since it is clear you have no understanding nor desire to understand our condition.
We talk about ideological clarity that is beyond revolutionary romanticism and idealism, but when reality stares us in the face we run and hide behind rose colored glasses. At the present hour the president we championed, although there were wise brothers and sisters who warned us not to do so, has turned into an imperialist of the worse kind, and yet there are those who refuse to criticize the brother because he is a brother. What difference does it make if the hangman is black?
The universe is calling upon us to get in harmony or get off the planet. All fakism, As-Salaam Afakum, pseudo revolutionary personalities that cover their darkness with word magic and the assistance of sycophants, must be rejected. And those who support them must be exposed and rejected as well for selling out truth for a mess of pottage.
--Marvin X, Prime Minister of Poetry,
First Poet's Church
www.firstpoetschurch.blogspot.com
It is amazing to know the long time support many progressives have given to rotten, slimy dictators around the world. Of course there is often a time lag in catching up with the one time revolutionaries who eventually discard their revolutionary garb to don the persona of the brutal dictator, president for life.
The former revolutionary did indeed liberate his people but then somehow decided he is the new messiah of his "children" who must be ruled with an iron hand, even after he has thrown in the towel of the consent of the governed.
There is no need to call names for you know who these pitiful former revolutionaries are, who came into political power decades ago but only of late decide to institute the fundamental item on their revolutionary agenda: land reform. There are a plethora of personalities on the African Continent who fit this description, in Asia, Middle East, Europe and the Americas.
We support all truly radical regimes but condemn reactionary governments and the leadership that hides under the revolutionary banner.
We are amazed to see how these reactionary, corrupt, dictatorial bastards stick together, yes, like birds of a feather. African proverb says one white dog will not bite another white dog.
But what is more amazing is how many socalled American radicals and progressives will chime in with the rats of the world, and yet we know many of them have ulterior motives, yes, many pledge allegiance to the rats because they are paid to do so.
There are those radicals who take money to promote the propaganda machine of rotten dog, oppressive leaders around the world. No matter how brutal they are, no matter how full their dungeons are with opposition leaders, poets, playwrights, journalists, these sycophants continue kissing ass for a few bucks. Even when opposition leaders are murdered in broad daylight, the sycophant media magicians continue perpetuating the world of make believe.
From time to time the opposition forces in various countries must speak directly to American so-called progressives to stay out of their business. Work on your own revolution in the belly of the Beast, since it is clear you have no understanding nor desire to understand our condition.
We talk about ideological clarity that is beyond revolutionary romanticism and idealism, but when reality stares us in the face we run and hide behind rose colored glasses. At the present hour the president we championed, although there were wise brothers and sisters who warned us not to do so, has turned into an imperialist of the worse kind, and yet there are those who refuse to criticize the brother because he is a brother. What difference does it make if the hangman is black?
The universe is calling upon us to get in harmony or get off the planet. All fakism, As-Salaam Afakum, pseudo revolutionary personalities that cover their darkness with word magic and the assistance of sycophants, must be rejected. And those who support them must be exposed and rejected as well for selling out truth for a mess of pottage.
--Marvin X, Prime Minister of Poetry,
First Poet's Church
www.firstpoetschurch.blogspot.com
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Crusader Hypocrisy
Crusader Hypocrisy in North Africa and the Middle East
The Crusaders have entered the freedom quagmire in North Africa and the Middle East. Oh, what a conundrum the Crusaders shall find themselves attempting to unravel. They have been caught off balance by the speed of events that their political and military strategists never imagined.
A single spark began in Tunisia and has now ignited a prairie fire from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The American and European Crusaders run here and there in a useless effort to stop the tide of freedom raging in the lands, cherry picking a nation to support, when we know all of those neo-colonial regimes that Euro-American Crusaders have propped up for decades must and will fall into the dustbin of history, it is only a matter of time and time is running out with each passing day, each hour.
Why would the Crusades attack Libya but not Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia? Why Libya, or perhaps this is only a test case, a trial balloon to figure a strategy for the climax sure to come soon in Saudi Arabia when its people cry Allahu Akbar and defy the guns, tanks, planes, bullets and tear gas supplied by the Crusaders to prop up decadent rulers who have been complicit with the Crusaders to allow oil to flow to the West in a sick siphoning of a people's resources to benefit the few. Hence the present crisis.
And yet the sick irony is that the Crusaders care nothing about the cry for liberation, only how to continue their addiction to white supremacy with oil as the necessary byproduct, for white supremacy cannot survive without the petrochemical drug so vital to a military and in food production that is essentially oil based, full of herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers to the degree the food is grown in oil not earth, leading the people directly from the petrochemists to the pharmacists , in a slow dance of death for the ten percent who rule the deaf, dumb and blind eighty-five per cent.
The people cry for freedom and justice, echos the Eloquent Peasant of 4,000 years ago in Egypt. But these present day pharaohs were not like the pharaoh who was bewildered and bemused by the eloquence of that ancient peasant, these modern pharaohs are hard headed and hard hearted. A ruler should know his time is up at the moment his people unite and rise up against him, yet, with the backing of the Crusaders, these modern pharaohs will dance until the midnight hour, until every grain of sand has slipped to the bottom of the hour glass.
The Crusaders shall not be able to save them because they shall be too busy fighting fires on their turf, as their people also rise up in the name of Ma'at, freedom, justice, balance, reciprocity, truth.
It is indeed a lesson that the first African president of the Crusader America has now attacked his fatherland. Now we see the matter is far beyond color. Imperialism has no color, nor does neo-colonialism. We know it is far beyond religion as well, for are not the Muslim nations in bed with the Crusader? He has been the supplier of weapons for their leaders to oppress and suppress the people now rising up throughout the lands of the Middle East and North Africa.
Why haven't the Crusaders entered Yemen on the side of the people? Why did not the Fifth Fleet of the Crusader support the suffering people of Bahrain? What is this selective suffering that chose Qadafy as the villain when so many other villains run amok, committing mass murder of their people, not to mention the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank?
Why do we think the Palestinians shall not again rise up in unity for their long deprived nationhood? Yet, the Crusaders shall block them at every turn until it is too late, for the Apocalypse shall await them at the precipice. The modern pharaohs are in bed with the Zionists and the Crusaders, they all dance together in the den of iniquity that shall be ephemeral.
--Marvin X,
Prime Minister of Poetry,
First Poet's Church
3/23/11
Monday, March 21, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Message from the Pope of Poetry, First Poet's Church
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Message from the Pope of Poetry, Imamu Amiri Baraka
Message from the Pope of Poetry, Imamu Amiri Baraka
The New Invasion of Africa
So it wd be this way
That they wd get a negro
To bomb his own home
To join with the actual colonial
Powers, Britain, France , add Poison Hilary
With Israeli and Saudi to make certain
That revolution in Africa must have a stopper
So call in the white people who long tasted our blood
They would be the copper, overthrow Libya
With some bullshit humanitarian scam
With the negro yapping to make it seem right (far right)
But that’s how Africa got enslaved by the white
A negro selling his own folk, delivering us to slavery
In the middle of the night. When will you learn poet
And remember it so you know it
Imperialism can look like anything
Can be quiet and intelligent and even have
A pretty wife. But in the end, it is insatiable
And if it needs to, it will take your life.
AB 3/21/411
www.firstpoetschurch.blogspot.com
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