Topic(s): Italy
Date Posted: 06.30.09

Berlusconi’s scandal, Italy’s tragedy
Geoff Andrews, 29 - 06 - 2009
The Italian prime minister's corrosion of the country’s public life means that even his departure would offer Italy no clear route to renewal, says Geoff Andrews.

29 - 06 - 2009

Silvio Berlusconi, the most successful populist politician of modern times, has long mastered the art of appealing over the heads of professional politicians to reach the "bellies" rather than the "brains" of ordinary Italians. In his three periods as Italy's prime minister (May 1994-January 1995, June 2001-May 2006, and from May 2008) he has seen off seven centre-left leaders to remain the dominant figure in Italy's political landscape. Berlusconi's ability to dominate the media and turn even critical attention to his advantage have been invaluable assets in this regard.

Could this pattern of domination now be changing? Is Berlusconi's long hegemony approaching its end? The most recent flurry of stories and scandals - concerning his relations with young women, beginning with Noemi Letizia, his 18-year-old friend from Naples who calls him "Papi" - are certainly among the most damaging he has faced; and there is great significance in the fact that he is no longer in control of events.

But there is a sense in which even Silvio Berlusconi's own fate has already become a secondary factor in what is happening. For the series of events which have engulfed the 72-year-old premier and which now dominate large sections of the press inside and outside Italy can no longer be reduced - if they ever could - to a question of his own personal behaviour. Rather, Berlusconi's crisis has become the peculiar tragedy of modern Italy itself.

The media-political storm

Silvio Berlusconi has attracted negative media coverage in the past. What looks different this time is that the near-daily exposures from young women, alleging that he paid for sex, reveal a web of deceit at the heart of Italian politics. True, the private and the public domains have - the prime minister's denials to the contrary - rarely been distinct in his career. What recent events reveal most vividly is the extent to which Silvio Berlusconi's own values have become embedded in Italian public life.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Mexico
Date Posted: 06.27.09

From Counterpunch:

Hyping Iran, Ignoring Mexico

The New York Times and Stolen Elections

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City.

A stolen election by an entrenched regime? Opposition charges that more votes were cast than ballots distributed to the polling places? That independent electoral observers were barred from witnessing the vote count? Demands for a recount to which election officials respond by offering to recount just 10% of the vote? A regime-controlled media that exalts the incumbent's victory and demonizes the loser? The use of alternative media by the opposition to get their side of the story out? Massive street protests by millions of peaceful demonstrators waving homemade signs and wearing bracelets displaying the color of their movement? At least 20 protestors gunned down by authorities and paramilitaries? Worldwide moral indignation stirred up by the international media?

Iran 2009? Yes!

Mexico 2006? Yes and no.

All aspects of the above scenario describe the Great Mexican Electoral Flimflam three years ago this July 2nd - save for the conundrum of worldwide moral indignation. Virtually ignored by the international media, the stealing of the Mexican presidential election by the right-wing oligarchy stirred little indignation anywhere outside of Mexico.

A comparison of coverage extended to both instances of electoral fraud by the New York Times, the "paper of record", is instructive.

NYT coverage of the upheaval in Iran has been overwhelming. During the first nine days of the electoral crisis, the Times ran at least one front-page story daily - from Election Day Friday, June 12th through Saturday, June 20th, the Iranian electoral sham occupied the right-hand column (the lead story) in the international edition on eight out of nine days. The Times also ran a second Iran story on the front page in six out of the nine editions reviewed - on four of those days, the stories were accompanied by a four and sometimes five column color photo, mostly of multitudes supporting the challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who made his mark in history back in the 1980s by receiving a Christian bible and a key-shaped cake from the emissaries of Ronald Reagan in exchange for funding the Nicaraguan Contras.

As the week wore on, many stories focused on street protests and violence inflicted by paramilitaries that reportedly left a score of demonstrators dead. In addition to the front-page stories, jumps ran inside over one or more pages daily, accompanied by additional photos.

The Times sent four by-lined reporters into Teheran for the festivities - Robert Worth, Michael Slackman, Neil MacFarquhar, and the Iranian Nazna Pathi, plus Eric Schmidt reporting from Washington. Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, flew to the Iranian capital to pen a daily journal. All of the Times' reporters in Teheran were housed in five-star hotels in the upscale north of the city where Mousavi has a substantial upper middle class base.

Meanwhile back in New York, the Times editorial board ran a pair of editorials during the first week of the upheaval decrying repression of peaceful protest and the purported vote fraud. At least seven op-ed screeds vilified incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose condemnations of Israel the Times assiduously combats, and celebrated the presumed victor Mousavi, albeit with varying degrees of caution.

In the wake of the tainted vote taking, the Times' conclusion that the election had been stolen was shared by many, including the veteran Middle East hand Robert Fisk, also reporting from Teheran. But writing in the London Independent on July 19th, Fisky began to have doubts. Popular support for Ahmadinejad in provincial cities and amongst the rural poor in the countryside, he speculated, could well have led to a landslide victory for the incumbent - although not perhaps by the 11,000,000 votes by which he claims to have thrashed the challenger.

The Mexican presidential election of July 2nd 2006 was perhaps the most starkly polarized in that neighbor nation's history pitting left against right, poor against rich, and brown against white-skin privilege, and the campaign was brutal, filled with invective and dirty tricks. The subtext of the election was Mexico's geopolitical standing - would it continue to be a slavish ally of Washington or join the anti-neo-liberal tsunami that was then sweeping Latin America?

In the run-up to the vote, the New York Times seemed to favor the candidacy of right-winger Felipe Calderon of the incumbent PAN party and turn up its nose at the leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the wildly popular mayor of Mexico City. Much like Iran, Mexico has a long tradition of electoral fraud. Unlike Iran, Mexico has a 1954-mile border with the United States of North America.

Covering the Mexican election for "the paper of record" were Ginger Thompson for whom the story would be her swansong after eight years in country (the Times plucked her from the Baltimore Sun) and rookie James McKinley, who came to Mexico from the NYT's Albany bureau. Bill Keller did not fly in for the party.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.27.09

As news wanes on Iran and the clampdown on protests seems to find success, what we are treated to are personal(ity) interest articles. This is French translated by Truthout.

The Three Lives of Moussavi
Thursday 25 June 2009
by: Sara Daniel | Visit article original @ Le Nouvel Observateur

Pillar of the revolution, then a technocrat for the Islamic Republic, he has become the hero of the reform camp. Opposite a regime at bay, the former Iranian prime minister claims he's ready for martyrdom.

He loves the Ayatollah Khomeini and the poetry of Garcia Lorca. Even during these times of extreme tension, each time Mir Hossein Moussavi brings his team members together - those who aren't yet in prison - he always begins by reading a poem. "Stay a true friend to your friends; use no violence towards your enemies ..." one of Moussavi's most fervent admirers, filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, recites from memory. The translation of these somewhat cloying verses doesn't temper the enthusiasm of an artist tortured for five years in the shah's jails and who would like to save his dear revolution: "Oh, if only our future president declaimed verses of poetry rather than diatribes about the Holocaust?" he dreams out loud.

The standard bearer for the "green revolution" is a discreet intellectual. Who searches for the words he finally murmurs. Who has hang-ups about a physique he deems a little unattractive. And who has long been suspected of running for the presidency a little bit accidentally. Wasn't it his wife, the couple's strong personality, who put him up to it? Or maybe even the Supreme Guide himself, judging that his charisma deficit and elocutionary shortcomings would leave him no chance opposite populist tribune Ahmadinejad?

The Gandhi of the "Dirt"

All that already belongs to the past. Mir Hossein Moussavi is no longer that timid and maladroit orator who seemed rather relieved when a defective sound system prevented him from pronouncing an electoral speech. Little by little, lifted by the human tide of his supporters who refused to leave the streets after the announcement of the results, he has changed. Now, he says: "I have grown." And it's true that one hardly recognizes him, so much has he become identified with this massive protest that has surprised the whole world. He is one with the crowd. He promised demonstrators to stay by their sides whatever happens. He now shares their fate. He is instilling them with his determination and also his prudence, even if it means bridling their impatience. And he's feeding on these neophytes' enthusiasm, drunk on a freedom they're ready to snatch at the peril of their lives. He has also taught them how to turn the regime's own breviary against it. They chant: "God is great," and people understand: "Down with the Guide!"

Modest, Moussavi acknowledges the path he has covered: "I'm nothing but a simple militant.... It's you who have made me aware of my responsibilities," admits the former apparatchik, who at the beginning of his campaign preached only timid reforms. How can anyone be surprised that he aroused so little enthusiasm at first? On the eve of the election, when they chanted his name in front of foreign journalists, his supporters were almost apologetic: "He's our own itty-bitty Obama! We didn't really have a choice." And every time, this anxiety came through: what if he gave up? "Where are you, Moussavi? Give us a sign; we're ready to die for you!" pleaded a young girl the day the results were announced. "He must be under his covers, terrified by this movement that's outstripping him," doubted one student who felt quite alone opposite the hordes of armed motorcycle police ready to charge even then. But no, Moussavi refined his discourse, with that concern for precision that character izes him. "Article 27 of the Constitution authorizes peaceful assembly. The duty of the police is to protect the demonstrators, not charge at them ..." he said after the violence that bloodied last Saturday. Today, Moussavi declares himself ready for martyrdom. Have those whom President Ahmadinejad described as "dirt" found their Gandhi?

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): indigenous
Date Posted: 06.27.09

Destroying Indigenous Populations
Saturday 20 June 2009
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

The Fort Laramie Treaty once guaranteed the Sioux Nation the right to a large area of their original land, which spanned several states and included their sacred Black Hills, where they were to have "the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation" of the land.

However, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, President Ulysses S. Grant told the army to look the other way in order to allow gold miners to enter the territory. After repeated violations of the exclusive rights to the land by gold prospectors and by migrant workers crossing the reservation borders, the US government seized the Black Hills land in 1877.

Charmaine White Face, an Oglala Tetuwan who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation, is the spokesperson for the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council (TSNTC), established in 1893 to uphold the terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. She is also coordinator of the voluntary group, Defenders of the Black Hills, that works to preserve and protect the environment where they live.

"We call gold the metal which makes men crazy," White Face told Truthout while in New York to attend the annual Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations in late May. "Knowing they could not conquer us like they wanted to ... because when you are fighting for your life, or the life of your family, you will do anything you can ... or fighting for someplace sacred like the Black Hills you will do whatever you can ... so they had to put us in prisoner of war camps. I come from POW camp 344, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We want our treaties upheld, we want our land back."

Most of the Sioux's land has been taken, and what remains has been laid waste by radioactive pollution.

"Nothing grows in these areas - nothing can grow. They are too radioactive," White Face said.

Although the Black Hills and adjoining areas are sacred to the indigenous peoples and nations of the region, their attempts at reclamation are not based on religious claims but on the provisions of the Constitution. The occupation of indigenous land by the US government is in direct violation of its own law, according to White Face.

She references Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

The spokesperson for the TSNTC declares, "We need our treaty upheld. We want it back. Without it we are disappearing. They might have made us into brown Americans who speak the English language and eat a different kind of food, and are not able to live with the buffalo like we are supposed to, but that is like a lion in a cage. You can feed it and it will reproduce, but it is only a real lion when it gets its freedom and can be who it's supposed to be. That's how we are. We are like that lion in a cage. We are not free right now. We need to be able to govern ourselves the way we did before."

Delegations from the TSNTC began their efforts in the United Nations in 1984 after exhausting all strategies for solution within the United States.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Neoliberalism
Date Posted: 06.26.09

The new executive politics: a democratic challenge
Saskia Sassen
26 - 06 - 2009

A generation of neo-liberal policies continues to feed the growing power of the executive branch within the west's political systems. A mapping of this process is essential if parliaments and citizens are to create a better democracy, says Saskia Sassen.

The institutional balance within modern democratic systems is disturbed and dysfunctional. Some of the unhappiness of citizens in many a western state about their political leaders' remoteness, corruption, or lack of accountability can be understood as a thwarted recognition of this problem. This an old history. But there are specific features in the current alignments that we can trace back to the type of political economy that has dominated since the 1980s. The financial meltdown of 2007-09, has generated a bit of a crisis in this model, and with it the ground might be laid for reforms that address it.

The heart of the issue is what has come to be the overweening power of the executive branch in contemporary democracies, and the corresponding loss of power by the legislature. In this sense those who argue that the major task for parliaments is to strengthen their capacity to demand accountability from the executive branch are right. This is indeed a critical issue.

The growing power of the executive branch is often attributed to contingent circumstances such as a response to national-security threats and abuses of power by particular leaders. But there is a deeper process at work that begins in the 1980s with the implementation of neo-liberal policies across historic left-right political divides. It is, in fact, part of the structural evolution of the liberal state (see Territory, Authority, and Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages [Princeton University Press, 2006]). These structural conditions make the issue even more worrisome for the future of democracy.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iraq
Date Posted: 06.26.09

With all of the news of US troop pullout. I thought this could be interesting. -rg

A Withdrawal in Name Only
by Erik Leaver & Daniel Atzmon

On November 17, 2008, when Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker signed an agreement for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, citizens from both countries applauded. While many were disappointed about the lengthy timeline for the withdrawal of the troops, it appeared that a roadmap was set to end the war and occupation. However, the first step — withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 — is full of loopholes, and tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers will remain in the cities after the "deadline" passes.

The failure to fully comply with the withdrawal agreement indicates the United States is looking to withdraw from Iraq in name only, as it appears that up to 50,000 military personnel will remain after the deadline.

The United States claims it's adhering to the agreement, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), even with so many troops being left in the cities. But the United States is changing semantics instead of policy. For example, there are no plans to transfer the 3,000 American troops stationed within Baghdad at Forward Operating Base Falcon, because commanders have determined that despite its location, it's not within the city.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.25.09

I like this article by Jack, because it works in the greys. I do not agree with the broad strokes of collapsing all into 'theocracy' etc... (my own doubts about the concept of secularity); nevertheless, even if the revolts are absolutely real, there are many players and many unforeseen consequences to many different intentional actions. I have also been looking for a text that is a bit more sceptical about the rhetoric around the new technologies being deployed. Found via counterpunch.-rg

Iran, Social Media and the Rise of Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

The Fog Machine

By JACK Z. BRATICH

Occasionally, an event gushes through media channels, spectacularly belying the notion that news outlets have major ideological differences. The current surge is a Green Wave, emanating from Iran. But there is more going on here than a uniform support for the anti-Ahmadinejad forces. We are witnessing something older, what media scholars have called the “technological sublime”. In this quasi-mystical sentiment, each media development brings with it a promise for a new age, even revolutionary. The twittering enthusiasm over the role of social media in the election protests has invoked this archaic link.

Let me say upfront that

1) I’m not interested in supporting Ahmadinejad’s regime nor the theocracy that would be preserved whether he or Mousavi were elected. These internecine battles within a religious state, resulting in a palace coup at best, are not my concern.

2) I don’t disagree that there are democratic aspirations circulating on the streets and in the air from Iran. Any mass mobilization of opposition will contain these and a variety of other impulses, including patient Shah-era vestiges and neoliberal/traditionalist hybrids. The point is to not mythically dissolve these differences into a wave.

3) Most importantly, I do believe that networks, technical and social, have a role to play in composing and organizing oppositions. I fully support a number of domestic cyberactivist projects, so there’s no use Luddifying me. Rather, the point is to understand the contexts and alliances that shape an event. Every network has a number of layers: it’s time to unpeel one that involves some not-so-new patterns.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.24.09

There are some claims that this text may not be real and has not been authored by Zizek. Included in those assertions are his characterization of Ahmadinejad as an Islamo-fascist or his collapse of Berlusconi with Ahmadinejad into the same kind of figure. Are they demagogues? Possibly, but I do find these parts of the text simplistic. And it is possible that the text itself is simply not so insightful, but I do find that it does have some merits, among them outlining all the possibilities of scepticism in relation to these revolts and shooting them all down. I also have listened to his recent talks at Birbeck and if indeed this text is not written by Zizek, it tracks a lot of the arguments made in his talk.

To listen to the talks you can visit:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/category/academic-service/academic-service-archive/
-rg

WILL THE CAT ABOVE THE PRECIPICE FALL DOWN?
Slavoj Zizek

This piece is copyright-free. Please distribute widely.

When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, its dissolution as a rule follows two steps. Before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy, its exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down…
In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard Kapuscinski located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroad, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman simply withdrew; in a couple of hours, all Tehran knew about this incident, and although there were street fights going on for weeks, everyone somehow knew the game is over. Is something similar going on now?

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.23.09

From Counterpunch:

New Tricks to Confront State Power

What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

By AL GIORDANO

It is impressive to some and immensely frustrating to some others that so much of the international left has lined up against the purportedly left-of-center but authoritarian Iranian regime during the historic post-electoral struggle that is underway.

English-language, liberal-leftish journals from The Nation to The Huffington Post to the rank-and-file blogger army at the Daily Kos have rallied in solidarity with the millions of protesters in the streets of Iran.

That the events in Iran have caused a schism on the right is well established. There are neocons freaking out that they may not have Ahmadinejad as a convenient prop to inspire fear and justify warlike policies. In recent days, they’ve succeeded in marginalizing themselves in the same ways that some sectors of the left unwittingly accomplished for so many years, causing an infrequent alliance between what might be called the Reagan right and the libertarian right, which shares the world’s – including the majority on the left’s - shock and horror at the violent response of the Iranian regime to peaceful protest and speech, and our pleasure at seeing People Power rise up against it.

Virtually identical to those neoconservatives on the right are some on the left who do not celebrate that the Iranian regime teeters. What do they have in common? It is a nostalgia for the Cold War and an inability to break out of its dualist mode of thought: one in which the world is divided between two ideological poles (the dinosaur left and the neocon right disagree only on which pole is “good” and which is “evil” but the rest of their analyses line up seamlessly together).

The current situation resonates strongly with what occurred in the 1930s. There came a turning point in the international left when a critical mass turned against its flirtation with Benito Mussolini’s regime in Italy and “that other guy in Europe” whose name can’t be spoken without invoking Godwin’s Law. Woody Guthrie’s legendary guitar, upon which he wrote, “this machine kills fascists,” is a wonderful emblem for that historic shift. Those on the left that continued their flirtation with the German and Italian experiments long after they had slid into fascism are not remembered very fondly by history. It seems to me that we are at a similar crossroads today.

Belief in a bipolar world in which “good” countries ally against “evil” ones internalizes the bipolar cycle of mania and depression among its adherents. It disregards what those of us on the left ought to understand better than most: that global capitalism has made the nation-state a secondary player on the world stage. One of the reasons that George W. Bush’s “war on terror” did not last as a new operating principle for the planet is that it did not snugly fit with such Cold War thinking: when the opposing force is not itself a nation state, there’s no longer a clear dualism. Nation states have a very difficult time when they choose to battle with amorphous networks that do not themselves have flags or capital cities. The same flailing that occurred from Bush’s corner in his inept attempt to deal with Al Qaida is inverted today. The Iranian state is in a similar spasm in trying to deal with an amorphous nonviolent network of communications and resistance by its own citizens. It’s confusion can be seen in this statement, yesterday, by its Revolutionary Guard bureaucracy:

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.22.09

18 June 2009
why are the iranians dreaming again?*

[The following is a guest post from Ali Alizadeh, Researcher at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University]

This piece is copyright-free. Please distribute widely.

Iran is currently in the grip of a new and strong political movement. While this movement proves that Ahmadinejad’s populist techniques of deception no longer work inside Iran, it seems they are still effective outside the country. This is mainly due to thirty years of isolation and mutual mistrust between Iran and the West which has turned my country into a mysterious phenomenon for outsiders. In this piece I will try to confront some of the mystifications and misunderstandings produced by the international media in the last week.

In the first scenario the international media, claiming impartiality, insisted that the reformists provide hard objective evidence in support of their claim that the June 12 election has been rigged. But despite their empiricist attitude, the media missed obvious facts due to their lack of familiarity with the socio-historical context. Although the reformists could not possibly offer any figures or documents, because the whole show was single-handedly run by Ahmadinejad’s ministry of interior, anyone familiar with Iran’s recent history could easily see what was wrong with this picture.

It was the government who reversed the conventional and logical procedure by announcing a fictitious total figure first – in four stages – and then fabricating figures for each polling station, something that is still going on. This led to many absurdities: Musavi got less votes in his hometown (Tabriz) than Ahmadinejad; Karroubi’s total vote was less than the number of people active in his campaign; Rezaee’s votes were reduced by a hundred thousand between the third and fourth stages of announcement; blank votes were totally forgotten and only hastily added to the count when reformists pointed this out; and finally the ratio between all candidates’ votes remained almost constant in all these four stages of announcement (63, 33, 2 and 1 percent respectively).

Moreover, as in any other country, the increase in turnout in Iran’s elections has always benefitted the opposition and not the incumbent, because it is rational to assume that those who usually don’t vote, i.e. the silent majority, only come out when they want to change the status quo. Yet in this election Ahmadinejad, the representative of the status quo, allegedly received 10 million votes more than what he got in the previous election.

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.22.09

people reloaded: why mass protest in iran is true politics worth supporting

Morad Farhadpour and Omid Mehrgan [translators and philosophers based in Tehran]

This piece is copyright-free. Please distribute widely.

In the past two weeks, the majority of people in Tehran and other cities in Iran (including Shiraz, Ahwaz, Tabriz, Isfihan) have been on the streets, protesting against the theft of the presidential election by a handful of state’s agents at the top level. It was not a rigging in the usual western sense, no added votes or replaced ballot boxes, the election went on properly, the votes were taken and probably even counted, the figures transmitted to the ministry of interior, and it was there that they were totally disregarded and replaced by totally fictitious figures. That is why all the opposition forces (Sazman-e-Mojahedin-e-Enghelab, Mosharekat party...) together with people called it a coup d’état.

Global public opinion and, especially, the body of (leftist) intellectuals, Inspired by recent events in the middle Asia and east Europe, mostly regard this Iranian mass protest as another version of the well-known, newly invented, neo-liberal, U.S.-sponsored, colour-coded revolutions, as in Georgia and Ukraine. But is it the case in Iran? This article intends to clarify the issue, to reveal the properly political essence of current mass movement, and to demonstrate that this movement has the potentiality of a self-transcendence, of surpassing its actual demands, of traversing its current phantasy. To do this, we shall first examine the contemporary tradition of radical politics in Iran. Without these references, the current movement, which truly deserves this title, can not be understood correctly.

People, whether consciously or not, are frequently recollecting the 1979 Revolution and the 1997 Reform Movement. Many of their slogans are transformed slogans of the '79 Revolution. The paths of demonstrations are symbolically significantly, the same as those against Shah. But this does not mean that people are imitating the '79 Revolution: there are many new possibilities and creativities, many formal and thematic inventions. As for the 1997 Reform Movement, and its aftermath (the crushing of student protest in 1999), the affinities are even more obvious. Khatami, along with Mir Hossein Mousavi, is one of the most significant leaders and supporters of the protest. It is as if people are trying to redeem the 2nd of Khordad (May 23, 1997), to revive the unfinished hopes and dreams of those days. But this time, the protest is by no means limited to students and intellectuals. Although Khatami in 1997 was elected with 20 million votes from the most varied sections of the nation, the movement was characterized by the political and cultural demands of the middle-class, of students and educated people. But, apart from this, what is the true significance of the 2nd of Khordad Front for politics in Iran?

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.16.09

Robert Fisk: Iran's day of destiny
Fisk witnesses the courage of one million protesters who ignored threats, guns and bloodshed to demand freedom in Iran

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

A demonstrator who was shot during a protest demonstration in the streets of the capital Tehran today

It was Iran's day of destiny and day of courage. A million of its people marched from Engelob Square to Azadi Square – from the Square of Revolution to the Square of Freedom – beneath the eyes of Tehran's brutal riot police. The crowds were singing and shouting and laughing and abusing their "President" as "dust".

Mirhossein Mousavi was among them, riding atop a car amid the exhaust smoke and heat, unsmiling, stunned, unaware that so epic a demonstration could blossom amid the hopelessness of Iran's post-election bloodshed. He may have officially lost last Friday's election, but yesterday was his electoral victory parade through the streets of his capital. It ended, inevitably, in gunfire and blood.

Not since the 1979 Iranian Revolution have massed protesters gathered in such numbers, or with such overwhelming popularity, through the boulevards of this torrid, despairing city. They jostled and pushed and crowded through narrow lanes to reach the main highway and then found riot police in steel helmets and batons lined on each side. The people ignored them all. And the cops, horribly outnumbered by these tens of thousands, smiled sheepishly and – to our astonishment – nodded their heads towards the men and women demanding freedom. Who would have believed the government had banned this march?

The protesters' bravery was all the more staggering because many had already learned of the savage killing of five Iranians on the campus of Tehran University, done to death – according to students – by pistol-firing Basiji militiamen. When I reached the gates of the college yesterday morning, many students were weeping behind the iron fence of the campus, shouting "massacre" and throwing a black cloth across the mesh. That was when the riot police returned and charged into the university grounds once more.

At times, Mousavi's victory march threatened to crush us amid walls of chanting men and women. They fell into the storm drains and stumbled over broken trees and tried to keep pace with his vehicle, vast streamers of green linen strung out in front of their political leader's car. They sang in unison, over and over, the same words: "Tanks, guns, Basiji, you have no effect now." As the government's helicopters roared overhead, these thousands looked upwards and bayed above the clatter of rotor blades: "Where is my vote?" Clichés come easily during such titanic days, but this was truly a historic moment.

Would it change the arrogance of power which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demonstrated so rashly just a day earlier, when he loftily invited the opposition – there were reported to be huge crowds protesting on the streets of other Iranian cities yesterday – to be his "friends", while talking ominously of the "red light" through which Mousavi had driven. Ahmadinejad claimed a 66 per cent victory at the polls, giving Mousavi scarcely 33 per cent. No wonder the crowds yesterday were also singing – and I mean actually singing in chorus – "They have stolen our vote and now they are using it against us."

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.16.09

These dispatches are of course peppered with a vision of an Iranian-American student and contain reflections befitting that position. It gives you insight into a certain cross-section that he would come into contact with. Most likely a part of the Iranian people which has felt disenfranchised and betrayed by their own version of democracy. This betrayal has its history in previous elections in which reform candidates were excluded from elections and many people decided to boycott elections. I think the most difficult part of these protests is to understand where class resides in this. The students in the text below would like to see it as the kind of choices Americans have faced in their recent elections. This may be have some truth, in that at the end, no choice (in the US) has yet to present itself as a decisive rethinking of the the state, its economic logic of supporting banks and corps over people, its wars of influence, ... . Nevertheless, as Obama presented in the US, there was a clear decision on the part of many people, even powerful elite, that the reputation of the country and its overall political direction were headed toward disaster. And to avert disaster, a significant change had to be embraced, part gesture to re-instill hope for a future, and also an act of belief in redressing past crimes. What the results of this will be in the US and elsewhere still remain to be seen. But is what is taking place in Iran today the same? Clearly, the effects of Obama's election on politics are far more powerful semiotically / symbolically than through any material policies his administration enacts. And time will tell this to us more decisively. This election appears to be but one of those ripples. But what creeps up for me is also the question, "What if some of these differences (in Iran) mirror what has also taken place in Latin America over the last elections. That is, a society which is increasingly polarized between a quasi-middle class tired of their country's enclosed-ness and ready to be a part of the world (even in its corporate globalized version) and disaffected poor which are still looking for the redistribution of wealth which was promised in 1979 when the Shah was ousted and the revolution took shape." From what I am reading, this may not be the case anymore, and rich, unemployed, poor, educated, or not, there is a significant multitude that has had enough. And this is truly inspiring. This question remains outstanding and I have yet to read anything which does not fall into cliches and analyzes the situation from different perspectives. Will the results of these protests mean that a legitimate power will replace an illegitimate one. I hardly think that it is so clearly a black and white story, although all indications appear to point that Mousavi is for real. But whatever the case, what is taking place on these streets is a significant portion of the people of Iran taking responsibility for their own future, and telling their government, not this way, not that.
-vv

[Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Iran
Date Posted: 06.16.09 Trying to find an article that does not portray the struggle between the two sides as good vs. evil is difficult. The people on the streets of Iran are expressing their sincere anger, anymore than that is speculation and foggy.... [Continue Reading]

Topic(s): Interviews
Date Posted: 06.07.09

Interview with Judith Butler:
"Gender Is Extramoral"
by Fina Birulés
Essayist, thinker and professor in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, Butler is best known for her studies of gender and sexuality, in which she examines the question of what it means to remake, to resignify, the restrictive normative concepts of sexual life and gender.

Is it possible to establish any relation between the political transformations deriving from the events of 11 September 2001 -- the decline in nation-state sovereignty and the centrality of security policies -- and transformations in political subjectivity and gender? In her latest writings the philosopher Judith Butler has outlined an "ontology of vulnerability" that is moving in this direction.

Her work, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), apart from being one of the most widely read texts in feminism, is also considered to be one of the founding texts of Queer Theory, a current within gay and lesbian studies that sets out to flee from theoretical impositions and from culturally and socially determined notions about the difference between the sexes.

Unwilling to speak in terms of 'post-feminism', Butler takes as her starting points the conceptual and political resources that form part of the feminist tradition so as to rethink the category of gender in terms that go beyond the difference between masculine and feminine, instead reformulating the question around the idea of "that which is human". The US philosopher emphasises the need to resist the temptation to resolve the discrepancies into a unity, since, in her opinion, it is precisely dissension that keeps thought and political struggle alive.

This interview took place in February 2008 on the occasion of talk by Judith Butler at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB).

F.B.: Could you explain your conception of critical thought and its relation with Foucault's famous words: "I do not know if today it is necessary to say that critical work still implies faith in the Enlightenment; I consider that it must always work on our limits, that is, a patient labour that forms the impatience for freedom"? In one of your latest texts you refer to this; perhaps you could relate the task of critical thought and its connection with feminism.

J.B.: The critical task demands a preoccupation with limits, and Foucault was particularly interested in the problem of how this delimited field shapes the subject. Thus, if we are formed as obedient subjects, if the state or some other regulated form of power imposes itself on us and we accept it, we become obedient subjects. But in the moment we begin to ask ourselves about the legitimacy of this power we become critical, we adopt a point of view that is not completely shaped by the state and we question ourselves about the limits of the demands that can be placed on us. Foucault is very clear in this respect: questioning the demand for obedience made of us by the state means questioning our ontology as subjects.

[Continue Reading]