mother's day for peace

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and by some counts it was the one-hundredth anniversary of Mother’s Day in the US . In 1870, social activist Julia Ward Howe wrote her Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament, a call to unite women to organize against war.

One of Howe’s inspriations was Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors. When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in 1908. From there, the custom caught on, and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Ironically, then, a holiday first intended to promote peace and reconciliation was turned instead to support nationalism and militarism.

But activists with Code Pink have revived Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation , and call for a reclaiming of Mother’s Day.

Maybe the Congress heard about this move, since last week a majority of House Republicans voted against a resolution in support of Mother’s Day, leading the Washington Post to run a headline reading "Republicans vote against moms; no word yet on puppies, kittens."

Anyway, Code Pink Portland held a rally yesterday, and the Code Pink website has a petition you can sign, asking Nancy Pelosi and the rest of Congress to put our money where their mouths aren’t, and to fund refugee support instead of the continuing Iraq war, which has created so many refugees, most of whom are women. More than 70 percent of the four million people forced out of their homes in the past five years in Iraq have been women and children.

Many observers, including  Nadje Al-Ali, have noted that, as she puts it, Iraq's women have become the biggest losers in the post-invasion disaster. Women in Iraq have been particularly hard-hit by poverty, malnutrition, lack of health services and a crumbling infrastructure. The lack of clean water, electricity, and vaccination services has led to a marked increase in the mortality of children under 5 in Iraq.  As in the humanitarian crisis during the sanctions period, women suffer particularly as they are often the last ones to eat after feeding their children and husbands. They often watch powerlessly as their sick and malnourished children do not obtain adequate health care.

But women in Iraq have also been working together to respond to the disaster. There has been a flourishing of locally based women’s initiatives and groups, mainly revolving around practical needs related to widespread poverty, lack of adequate health care, lack of housing, and lack of proper social services provided by the state. Women have also pooled their resources to help address the need for education and training, as well as income generating projects The organization MADRE recently released a tribute to some of the activists they’ve been working with around the world, including Yanar Mohammad, founder of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). Yanar has dedicated herself to meeting the needs of Iraqi women and families suffering as a result of the US invasion and the rising religious extremism it has unleashed. Together with MADRE, OWFI has founded a network of women’s shelters in Iraq. In addition, OWFI’s Freedom Space project brings together young poets and artists of varying religious and ethnic backgrounds to create art and express their hopes for a peaceful Iraq where human rights are cherished.

But today, of course, women are not just the casualties of war, and not just the mothers and wives and daughters of soldiers, they are also soldiers themselves, comprising 15% of US military enlisted personnel. As Barbara Ehrenreich has pointed out, in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib revelations, in light of what we know today, no one can think that the mere presence of women in the military will make it more humane; "a uterus is not a substitute for a conscience; menstrual periods are not the foundation of morality."

But some of the women who have been in the military have, like some of the men who have been soldiers, have also begun working for peace. Women like Eli PaintedCrow, a founder of the Service Women’s Action Network, a group of women veterans who have gathered to heal from the trauma of military service and war, to document their stories and to support their transformation from soldiers to peacemakers. They also work with the Women of Color Resource Center, which has a curriculum of peacegames for community education--some of which is available free on their website, including information on military recruiting and its targeting of women and of men of color.

Bad as things are for the women under occupation and who have lost loved ones in the current wars, things aren’t so great for the women in the US military, either. Representative Jane Harman of California, citing a recent Department of Defense report, has noted that women in the military in Iraq are “more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire,” though some of those who are raped are apparently also murdered by fellow soldiers . Moreover, if any of those rapes lead to pregnancy, the women have limited recourse, since military hospitals will not perform abortions. A recent federal court ruling allows women employed by defense contractor Halliburton/KBR to bring charages for sexual assaults by their coworkers, despite having signed a contract that Halliburton/KBR argued would have submitted such claims to binding arbitration rather than criminal trial.

But we cannot rely only on the legal system to make the world safe for mothers or people who have mothers. Let us, as Julia Ward Howe declared,

take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace...

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

 

torture as biopower

Neal Andrew on Foucault in Guantanamo:

Foucaultian methods can be used to analyse power in exactly the sites and practices that Schmitt clearly depends on, but only alludes to. In «Society Must Be Defended»Foucault gives an account of his methodology that reads like a step-by-step refutation of the Schmittian approach. First, not to look at power as if it has a single centre, but at its extremities, at its material means of intervention and actual apparatuses of violence. Second, not to analyse power at the level of intentions or decisions; not the ‘internal face’ of power, but the external points of exercise and application. Third, not to regard power as a homogenous mass of domination divided between the haves and have-nots. Power circulates in networks and is never terminal; individuals both submit to and exercise power. Fourth, not to begin analysis at the centre of power circulation downwards but from its infinitesimal mechanisms upwards. How are these micro-mechanisms colonized and annexed by more global mechanisms of domination? Fifth and finally, not to analyse mechanisms as mere appendages of ideology, but rather to explore how mechanisms get formed into ideologies and knowledges. Foucault summarises his general intention as to analyse not the juridical edifice of sovereignty, but its material operations, local systems and apparatuses of knowledge. [7]

of the communist hypothesis

Alain Badiou in New Left Review

What is the communist hypothesis? In its generic sense, given in its canonic Manifesto, ‘communist’ means, first, that the logic of class—the fundamental subordination of labour to a dominant class, the arrangement that has persisted since Antiquity—is not inevitable; it can be overcome. The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away. . . .

The virtue of courage constructs itself through endurance within the impossible; time is its raw material. What takes courage is to operate in terms of a different durée to that imposed by the law of the world. The point we are seeking must be one that can connect to another order of time. . . .

In many respects we are closer today to the questions of the 19th century than to the revolutionary history of the 20th. A wide variety of 19th-century phenomena are reappearing: vast zones of poverty, widening inequalities, politics dissolved into the ‘service of wealth’, the nihilism of large sections of the young, the servility of much of the intelligentsia; the cramped, besieged experimentalism of a few groups seeking ways to express the communist hypothesis . . . Which is no doubt why, as in the 19th century, it is not the victory of the hypothesis which is at stake today, but the conditions of its existence. This is our task, during the reactionary interlude that now prevails: through the combination of thought processes—always global, or universal, in character—and political experience, always local or singular, yet transmissible, to renew the existence of the communist hypothesis, in our consciousness and on the ground.

zulie says

(from icanhascheezeburger)

obamarama

Many progressive commentators have observed that Barak Obama’s rhetoric and supporters seem quite progressive, but his policies and record are much less so.

Responding to Obama’s speech last week on race in America, Steven Pitts in The Black Commentator observes that

the power of a speech lies not its words nor its deliverer. The power of a speech lies in the strength of the movement that inspires the speech and is inspired by the speech. Without such a movement, the spoken words are like the sound of a tree falling in a forest when no one is around. The challenge for Black progressives (and all progressives) [is] to use this moment and the incredible energy unleashed by the Obama candidacy to build a movement for social change that will make a lasting mark on U.S. society.

Similarly, addressing Obama’s record on the war, Joshua Frank in Dissident Voice notes that the Republican establishment deems Obama a serious threat because of his grassroots support, not his [purported] “antiwar views.” "Simply put: Obama is not antiwar but his following seems to be."

The World Socialist Web Site notes that Obama has vowed not to reduce the US military budget but rather to increase it; he has called for recruiting more soldiers for the Army as well as more Marines; and he has pledged to keep American forces in Iraq to defend ‘US interests’ and conduct ‘counterterrorism operations,’ a formula that would see tens of thousands of US soldiers and Marines continuing to occupy Iraq and repress its population for many years to come.”

On other economic issues, Ethel Long-Scott observes that although Obama’s March 18th speech was moving,

it did nothing to unravel the central contradiction of Mr. Obama’s candidacy. That contradiction is rooted in the fact that America has always needed a class of workers who are kept downtrodden and in poverty to make its economy work. That is a fact that has not changed, and none of the remaining presidential candidates are dealing with it.

Dan LaBotz in Monthly Review similarly notes that Senator Obama’s position is not unique to him, and the current economic crises are not the result simply of the current administration.

President John F. Kennedy's New Frontier, and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society with its War on Poverty, both failed to fundamentally change the situation of blacks and did not end poverty among whites, largely because they did not end corporate domination of American society. Under President Bill Clinton, the Democrats turned away from even those liberal programs and adopted the conservative (or neoliberal) policies long identified with the Republicans. Democrats have not proposed [. . . ] any fundamental changes in the social programs of the country. Today, there is a real question of whether or not the American capitalist system -- faced with problems of competitiveness, productivity, and profitability -- has the capacity to construct a liberal or social democratic system which would ameliorate [. . . ] the race and class systems of the country.

Certainly nothing in Senator Obama’s voting record suggests he will be a source of major economic improvement for most people. Matt Gonzalez in Counterpunch online and Pam Martens in the print edition have examined his record and his funding base—which, despite his campaign claims that he doesn’t take lobbying money nonetheless includes registered lobbyists as well as Wall Street financial firms, midwest mining companies, and other corporate donors.
Barak Obama has voted for legislation that will make it harder to bring class action suits against corporate abusers; voted against legislation to create the first federal cap on predatory credit card interest rates; voted to limit the recovery that victims of medical malpractice could obtain through the courts; and voted against collecting royalties from corporations that mine hard rock minerals on public lands, royalties that would have provided funding for the cleanup of these areas currently paid for by taxpayers rather than the mining corporations

As Ethel Long-Scott argues,

while major party politicians can talk about change, they are not likely to fight for the kinds of changes that would really end poverty. To do that, we the people must organize with new ideas and a new vision of justice. In the face of the growing encroachment on rights and democracy we, the people must gain the political power to direct society's resources so we can end the problems of poverty, national & women’s oppression, and this outrageous war. A new society is not only possible, but necessary.

old mole v snake

Hardt and Negri, from "Marx's Mole is Dead":

Marx tried to understand the continuity of the cycle of proletarian struggles that were emerging in nineteenth-century Europe in terms of a mole and its subterranean tunnels. Marx's mole would surface in times of open class conflict and then retreat underground again - not to hibernate passively, but to burrow its tunnels, moving along with the times, pushing forward with history so that when the time was right (1830, 1848, 1870) it would spring to the surface again. "Well grubbed old mole!"^[2] Well, we suspect that Marx's old mole has finally died. It seems to us, in fact, that in the contemporary passage to Empire the structured tunnels of the mole have been replaced by the infinite undulations of the snake. This is the image that Deleuze gives in his analysis of the passage from disciplinary societies to societies of control. (Deleuze claims that contemporary society had gone beyond the disciplinary forms that Foucault analysed. Today the disciplinary institutions, the school the family, the prison, the factory, are all in crisis. This doesn't mean that disciplinary logics are breaking down; what is breaking down rather are the institutional boundaries that once defined and limited their application to one social space. The disciplinary logics spread out across society, they are generalised and in some respects intensified. The generalised disciplinarity is what defines the society of control.) "The old mole", Deleuze writes, "is the animal of closed environments, but the snake is the animal of the societies of control. We have passed from one animal to another, from the mole to the snake, in the regime we live under, but also in our way of living and our relations with others." The depths of the modern world and its subterranean passageways have in postmodernity all become superficial. Today's struggles slither silently across the superficial, imperial landscapes. Perhaps the incommunicability of struggles, the lack of well-structured, communicating tunnels, is in fact a strength rather than a weakness - a strength because all of the movements are immediately subversive in themselves and do not wait on any sort of external aid or extension to guarantee their effectiveness. Perhaps the more capital extends its global network of production and control, the more powerful any singular point of revolt can be simply by focusing their own powers, concentrating their energies in a tense and compact coil, these serpentine struggles striking directly at the highest articulations of imperial order. Empire presents a superficial world, the virtual centre of which can be accessed immediately from any point across the surface. If these points were to constitute something like a new cycle of struggles it would be a cycle defined not by the communicative extension of the struggles but rather by their singular emergence, by the intensity that characterises them one by one. In short, this new phase is defined by the fact that these struggles do not link horizontally but each leap vertically, directly to the virtual centre of Empire.^[3] From the point of view of the revolutionary tradition, one might object that the tactical successes of revolutionary actions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were all characterised precisely by the capacity to blast open the weakest link of the imperialist chain, that this is the ABC of revolutionary dialectics, and thus it would seem today that the situation is not very promising. It is certainly true that the serpentine struggles we are witnessing today do not provide any clear revolutionary tactics, or maybe they are completely incomprehensible from the point of view of tactics. Faced as we are with a series of intense subversive social movements that attack the highest levels of imperial organisation, however, it may be no longer useful to insist on the old distinction between strategy and tactics. In the constitution of Empire there is no longer an "outside" to power and thus no longer weak links - if by weak link we mean an external point where the articulations of global power are vulnerable. To achieve significance, every struggle must attack at the heart of the Empire, at its strength. That fact, however, does not give priority to any geographical regions, as if only social movements in Washington, Geneva or Tokyo could attack the heart of Empire. On the contrary, the construction of Empire and the globalisation of economic and cultural relationships means that the critical centre of Empire can be attacked from any angle. The tactical preoccupations of the old revolutionary school are thus completely irretrievable; the only strategy available to the struggles is that of a constituent counter-power that emerges from within Empire.

clr james

Born in Trinidad in 1901, CLR James was a leftist writer and social theorist until his death in 1989.

In the 1930s, he worked for West Indian Independence, and moved to Britain, where he wrote a number of novels, and was the cricket reporter for the Manchester Guardian.

In the 1940s and early 1950s, he lived in the United States, and wrote about politics, film, literature, and literary criticism. Deported in 1953, he was much influenced by the 1957 revolution in which the former British colony of the Gold Coast became Ghana, and by the ensuing anticolonial and Black Power struggles of the 1950s and 60s.

Perhaps his best known work is The Black Jacobins: Touissaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Manuel Yang, writing in MR Zine, reminds us that this year is the 70th anniversary of this history of the successful slave rebellion that became the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803.

Its title refers to the Jacobins, the most radical element within the French Revolution who, like the former slaves who created Haiti, propagated. . . "extreme democracy and absolute equality."

James wrote The Black Jacobins to give inspiration to the then-struggling forces of pan-African revolt against European colonialism and racial oppression.

He said he wrote it while listening "most clearly and insistently" to "the booming of Franco's heavy artillery, the rattle of Stalin's firing squads and the fierce shrill turmoil of the revolutionary movement striving for clarity and influence."

Similarly, James’s 1936 play, also entitled The Black Jacobins, was intended to prompt the British labor movement to take a critical stance toward the Western imperialist collusion with Mussolini's fascist invasion of Ethiopia. In his essay "Abyssinia and the Imperialists," James underscored how imperialism destroyed the working class: ". . . all the money that the imperialists are making out of the country has to be paid for by labour, and the real sufferers are those millions who, unprotected by trade union organisation or any sort of organised public opinion, are driven off their lands, down into mines at a shilling a day, or working above ground for fourpence a day as in Kenya. . . ."

In order to prevent this destruction, which soon spread into the genocidal conflagration of a world war, James extracted two important insights from the Haitian Revolution.

One was the fact that the slaves recognized and organized themselves as a class of workers exploited under modern capitalist conditions: ". . . working and living together in gangs of hundreds on the huge sugar-factories which covered the North Plain, they were closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at the time, and the rising was, therefore, a thoroughly prepared and organised mass movement."

Another was the internationalism of this class whose collective labor made the wealth of empires and nations. . . . "'Servants, peasants, workers, the labourers by the day in the fields' all over France were filled with a virulent hatred against the 'aristocracy of the skin.' There were so many moved by the sufferings of the slaves that they had long ceased to drink coffee, thinking of it as drenched with the blood and sweat of men turned into brutes."

Both of these revolutions however soon foundered because this solidarity was not preserved and developed further. Although "[t]here were Jacobin workmen in Paris who would have fought for the blacks against Bonaparte's troops," once in power Touissaint "ignored the black labourers" and tried to appease the white elites. . . .

The term "Jacobin" had taken on authoritarian connotations because the French Jacobin leadership stopped listening to the workers and commoners and shut down their radical organizations -- much as Toussaint in power lost touch with the Haitian workers. In short, the Haitian and French Revolutions … failed to go as far as they could because the new rulers destroyed, in the interest of capital and empire, the original conceptions of democracy that the self-activity of workers had made possible.

Today we are facing a similar destructive moment in history. The presidential election is poisoned with anti-immigrant rhetoric seeking to divide and decimate the working class. Following the Bonapartist model, the American Empire is perpetrating this class destruction in Haiti as well. According to the Haiti Information Project, "the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency… helped create the Revolutionary Front for Advancement and Progress of Haiti" (FRAPH) who are "responsible for the rape and murder of thousands of Haitians after a brutal military coup forced then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile in 1991." U.S. aid to Haiti's brutal police force has reached $40 million. In this dark hour of ongoing crisis, reading The Black Jacobins … could give us the necessary "clarity and influence" to sustain our struggle against this new moment of war and imperialism.

And some comments from a 1949 essay by James on “The Price of Imperialism to the People”, in which he discusses

the attack which is being carried out against the civil liberties of the American people by the American bourgeoisie.

That the cause of this is the “danger of communism” is the familiar alibi of all despots, parasites and privileged groups. This was the ideological justification for the fascist dictatorships of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco-and for the police regime of Stalin, who merely substituted the word “Trotskyism” for communism. But there is one difference, a difference which speaks volumes on the subject of morality: Hitler smashed democratic rights as an open antagonist of democracy, while the American oligarchs abrogate the rights of the people in the name of the struggle against “dictatorship” and “totalitarianism.”

(or today, against terrorism)

The American bourgeoisie, first and foremost, and from first to last, is in mortal terror of the American people and, above all of the American workers. Let the stupid liberals put their fingers to their foreheads and wonder at the “hysteria” of the American government
…. Let them wonder at the constant betrayals in Congress of every promise made at the election. Let them be perpetually “astonished” at the apparently senseless persecution of … scientists. They will know only frustration and impotence until they recognize that the struggles over civil rights in the United States express the intensification of the irreconcilable class antagonisms of … capitalism. These struggles are an expression of the inevitable break-up of that society, a stage … in the transition from capitalism to a new social order.

Capitalism in its decline must destroy the democracy and civil rights which it brought into the world and nourished in its progressive days. The attack against civil rights is the defense of capitalism. The defense of civil rights … involves the attack against capitalism.

You can no more separate the crisis of civil liberties from the crisis of capitalist production and the . . . war than you can separate the arm which is administering the blows from the body [to] which it is attached.