Zeroes & Heroes

Many actors played different roles in shaping the ups and downs of last year events. Some usual suspects who left already their print in previous years have proven to be resiliently present in 2007. Others have emerged as new figures. Here are the makers and breakers who caught my eye in ‘07.

The Zeros

The gangster administration in Washington

Responsible for the killing (in a way or another) of well over one million Iraqis (according to the most conservative estimates) and the displacement of more than four million others, the Bush administration has persevered in manipulating the facts and succeeded in stirring up factional and sectarian divisions within Iraq. Divide and rule as the old adage goes. The puppet regime in Baghdad, a rubber stamp of what ever Washington decides has shown complete incompetence and subservience and proved to be completely disconnected from the Iraqi people. Although one can only be pleased by the relative decrease in the number of terrorist attacks (from whatever source they might come) and casualties among civilians, the fact remains that Iraq is still under occupation by a colossal number of foreign troops, backed by some hundred thousands mercenaries; and that its oil resources have now been de facto mortgaged by major American oil companies through the euphemistically called Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs).

The Apartheid regime in Israel

Israel has shown, yet again, to those who had a shred of doubt about its real -barely hidden- intentions, that it is not, had not and will not be prepared to pay the price of JUSTICE, the only and genuine road-map for PEACE. Its lobby and supporting “think” tanks have shown, beyond any reasonable doubt how influential they were in shaping American foreign policy towards the question of Palestine. Scholars have yet again been silenced and the systematic accusation of anti-Semitism has been brandished to all those who dared challenging the received wisdom about Israel branded as the “only democracy in region,” when it is the only remaining apartheid state in the World. The Gaza concentration camp has been squeezed into a cruel embargo which is aimed at collectively punish the Palestinians for having democratically voted in the wrong way. A stooge government has been anointed: “the legitimate government of Palestine,” effectively playing the role of the I’D'F in oppressing the occupied people in Palestine. Signed agreements (remember Annapolis?) have been dishonoured and more illegal settlements have been built up on equally illegal colonies planted on the land stolen from the Palestinians.

Arab despots and potentates (without exception, from the Atlantic to the Arabian-Persian sea)

At the very root of the complete tragedy experienced by Arabs and Muslims all over the world, the Arab regimes, 22 in total, managed to stay in power in large part because (or thanks to) the Western support. These are the most incompetent, backward, inept, power-obsessed and megalomaniac heads of states on the planet. Of course, the peoples have only the kind of government they deserve.” This is true to a large extent, and one should not easily put all the blame on external conspirators, although the conspiracy is not all theoretical. Taha Hussein, the dean of contemporary Arabic literature and a pioneer of enlightenment in the Arab World (according to ArabWorldBooks.com) once said:

“We want to be free people in our countrie[s], free of foreigners such that they cannot oppress us or treat us unjustly, and free with respect to ourselves, such that no one of us can oppress or treat another unjustly.”

Religious fanatics of all sides

Since 9/11, religious fanaticism has been thriving. Alqaeda found in the actions of the Bush administration, which has mainly gained the white house -especially in its second term-thanks to the very “generous” support of very influential Christian fundamentalists -most of them openly Zionists-, the more powerful recruitment argument for its campaign of terror and nihilist destruction. Extremes have always campaigned for each other!

The Heroes

President Hugo Chavez

The Venezuelan president has won more democratic and transparent elections, and more popular referenda than any other living leader. He is independent and pro-people, hence the hostility of the Western establishment towards him. More power to you Chavez!

Illan Pappé

The courageous Israeli historian has published at the beginning of this year, the English version of his book “”Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine.” A refreshingly honest account of how Israel seeks, as it had always sought to, to systematically and methodically kill, harass, terrorise and push the Palestinians to the edge so that they lose hope and renounce their rights and eventually leave their homeland.

Norman Finkelstein

Another victim of the Israel lobby in America, forced to resign from his position for no reason other than being forensically objective about the realities of the middle east. Fascism is still alive and kicking!

John Pilger

Award-winning independent journalist and a renowned documentary film-maker. “The War on Democracy” is his latest opus. A startling reminder of the ravages that capitalism has already caused in Latin America, considered for decades to be the American (USA) preserve. Based on an arrogant imperial vision of the world and on the so-called Washington Consensus which theorized and underpinned the neo-liberal policies for the last two or three decades, successive American administrations made sure that no genuine democracy springs in the southern half of the continent: putting absolute potentates at the head of States, overthrowing democratically elected governments and sponsoring a class of plutocrats monopolizing their country’s wealth at the expense of impoverished populations.

Aboubakr Jamaï

The founder of the most popular Moroccan magazine, Le Journal Hebdo, was forced earlier this year, to leave Morocco in order to avoid paying a record breaking fine of $350,000, that would otherwise bankrupt his magazine. He is one of the most popular and charismatic young journalists that the country has ever produced, and one who marked the recent Moroccan journalistic scene by bringing a revolutionary new style of professional investigative journalism. He openly challenged the monarchy and the military and literally paid the price. In November 2005, Jamaï wrote a ground-breaking open letter to Mohamed VI in which he urged the monarch to grab the opportunity of his political virginity and his capital of popular sympathy to put the country on the tracks of reform. The letter fell on deaf ears.

Happy new year to all.

Bring Mehdi Back! (Part III)

Mehdi Ben Barka & the Tricontinental
(Final Part)

René Gallissot
October 2005
In Le Monde Diplomatique

[If you find this (paraphrasing) translation poor or inappropriate, you can read the original piece in full here (fr).]

There is little doubt that the Moroccan state (up to high ranking officers and officials) bears a heavy responsibility in the abduction and subsequent murder of Mehdi Ben Barka. The year 1965 starts with violent events that will further exacerbate the sensitivity of the state and eventually trigger a brutal repression: March 22 and 23, students demonstrate against the newly introduced schools admission quotas which they consider discriminatory. They are later joined in the streets by their parents. The demonstrations are repressed in blood by the infamous Gen. Mohamed Oufkir, the then-ministry of Interior. The state of emergency is decreed. Second phase: Hassan II (seemingly) offers an overture to Ben Barka by hinting to the possibility of accepting the idea of a national unity government. Ben Barka deplores the absence of the conditions for a genuine democratic transition and reiterates the views he previously exposed in the message-report he wrote in 1962 for his party’s second congress, under the title: “Revolutionary Option in Morocco.” In June the fake offer is retreated. Secret and frenzied concertations start between the palace and the secret services under the supervision (and that’s an understatement) of United States officials (as it is now widely documented,) and the active “help” of the Mossad (Israel secret services.) In the meantime, Ben Barka dedicates himself to preparing the Tricontinental Conference, the preparatory committee over which he presides [...]

Ben Barka defines his objectives: helping national liberation movements notably in Palestine; intensifying the struggle against occupation -including armed struggle- on the three continents; supporting Cuba; getting rid of foreign military bases; opposition to nuclear weapons, to the Apartheid regime and to racial segregation. The end goal being “total liberation.” In late September, Ben Barka visits Havana to finalize the arrangements and preparations for the upcoming Conference, scheduled in January 3th, 1966.

Eliminating Ben Barka was obviously becoming a major and pressing demand for those who wanted to put an end to mounting third-world insurrection. Already in June 1965, Ben Barka loses the Algerian support after Boumediène accessed power through a military coup. To make things even worse, President Sukarnu of Indonesia loses his power in September 30th, depriving the Tricontinental from one of its major bases.

To understand the motives behind the murder of Ben Barka, one needs only to examine the pattern of political assassinations and coup d’etat perpetrated during this sinister period: the Iranian Premier, Ali Mansour, is assassinated in January 21; Humberto Delguado, the leader of the Portuguese opposition, in February 13; Malcolm X, in February 21; the deputy defense minister of Guatemala, Ernesto Molina, in May 21, etc…

In October Mehdi is murdered; in 1967 Che Guevara is executed [in Bolivia under orders from Washington]; Martin Luther King is killed in April 1968; Amiclar Cabral (the major theorist of African liberation) in January 1973…

Thus, a kind of “world class warfare” was taking place in which those who wanted to reestablish a reactionary order used all means of violence, political assassinations, death commandos and imposed absolute dictators and awful regimes, fomenting conflicts and instigating wars of intervention.

Movements of liberation were pushed forward by their quest for a genuine emancipation and the Tricontinental tried to capture this progressive potential. Those who assassinated Ben Barka wanted to kill this perspective of world liberation.

Rest in Peace Mehdi.

Bring Mehdi Back! (Part II)

Mehdi Ben Barka (1920-1965) is the charismatic leader (amongst others) of the anti-colonial movement which led Morocco to formal independence from France in 1956. He founded the National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) in 1959. He later was accused of plotting against the regime and forced to exile. The Moroccan authorities condemned Ben Barka to death in absentia in 1964. He was kidnapped in Paris -in broad day light- in October 29, 1965. His body was never recovered.

I’ve read many papers and commentaries on the life and death of Mehdi Ben Barka, but the one piece, I think, that has cleverly put the circumstances of the murder of the Moroccan leader in its appropriate perspective, both local and international, was this article published exactly two years ago in Le Monde Diplomatique by Rene Gallissot, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Paris.

I apologize in advance if my (paraphrasing) translation sounds poor or inappropriate. In any case, you can find the original piece in full here (fr).

Mehdi Ben Barka & the Tricontinental
(Part I)

René Gallissot
October 2005
In Le Monde Diplomatique

1956 was a vertiginous year: turmoil within the communist bloc, a Franco-British “expedition” in Suez. July 26, president Gamal Abdel Nasser decides to nationalize the Suez Canal and everyone predicts the collapse of Egypt; the opposite happens, along with a surge in independence struggles. The Bandung conference had already predicted in April 1955, this upsurge of national emancipation movements which will indeed occur first in Asia and Africa, then in Latin America , the former Portuguese colonies in Africa and eventually in South-Africa.

Who remembers today July 14, 1958, when the Republic was proclaimed in Baghdad, radiant, with no religious veils, renewing the French Revolution’s declaration of 1789, secular, federating all minorities, promising pluralism of thought and expression? The French war in Algeria continued unabated, but Algerians were standing firm. For Africa, the epicenter was then the Congo, freed at last from [the cruel] grasp of Belgium domination. [In the beginning of the 60's,] the Tricontinental was a de facto reality.

Mehdi Ben Barka, at the very moment of his assassination in October 1965, was working on making the liberation movements in the “third-world” converge, by preparing the Tricontinetal Conference which was scheduled to take place in Havana in January 1966 [...]

The institutionalisation of the regimes following independence [from western colonial powers,] raised the problematic of distinguishing State strategies for [controlling] power on the one hand from the international liberation movement on the other. In 1961, in opposition to so-called “moderate” states, the Group of Casablanca assembled representatives from states known as progressive: Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Libya and Morocco under the advocacy of Abdallah Ibrahim’s left leaning government (which will soon after be revoked) [...]

Due to two condemnations to death in Morocco, Ben Barka was constantly in exile, often travelling between Cairo and Geneva. During his six months stay in Algiers, he engaged in the laborious task of bringing about an internationalist perspective for the conjunction of the national liberation movements [...]

The Algerian capital had become the intellectual home for the international revolutionary contestation [...]

Breaking up underdevelopment was not only a national project, it was also a concerted action against dependency to the Capitalistic system, the dominant poles of which are various but fundamentally linked to the economic and political hegemony of the United States. “Africa is the Latin America of Europe,” repeatedly said Ben Barka. Federating the Maghreb and Africa was taking an anti-imperialistic dimension. We are here far from national-developementalism which eventually transformed the left -in the context of the emerging states- into [a lifeless] technocratic elite. The Tricontinental movement was independent from the Soviet Union and Ben Barka wanted to establish an autonomous dynamic [...]

In Algiers, Ben Barka launched a new publication for information, agitation and reflexion for the anti colonialist commission of the OPSAA (The Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa and Asia established in Accra-Ghana in 1957), titled “la Revue Africaine.” His interest turned then towards Cuba and Latin America. He was particularly impressed by the Cuban [tremendously successful] literacy campaign, dreaming of a similar experience in his own Morocco. He decided to work in establishing a documentation and studies Center on national liberation movements and -convinced as he was by the revolutionary potential amongst third-world youth- he set up the outline for a Tricontinental University [...]

American attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro, led the Cuban leader to get closer to Moscow. Followed the “Cuban Missiles” crisis and the cruel US economic blockade over the island. In 1962 Cuba was expelled from the Organization of the American States and Castro summoned “the people of the world to get moving.” That was the precise objective of the Tricontinental. In October 3th, 1965, Ben Barka declared during a media conference, preliminary to the Havana Conference that “both currents of the world revolution will be represented: that stemming from the October revolution (or Bolshevik revolution) and that from the national liberation revolution.”

The profound cause of the abduction and murder of Ben Barka can only be elucidated within this revolutionary and Tricontinental context.

To Be Continued…

Capitalism: the Latin American Experiment

The War on Democracy by John Pilger

John Pilger is an award-winning independent journalist and a renowned documentary film-maker. “The War on Democracy” is his latest opus. A startling reminder of the ravages that capitalism has already caused in Latin America, considered for decades to be the American (USA) preserve. Based on an arrogant imperial vision of the world and on the so-called Washington Consensus which theorized and underpinned the neo-liberal policies for the last two or three decades, successive American administrations made sure that no genuine democracy springs in the southern half of the continent: putting absolute potentates at the head of States, overthrowing democratically elected governments and sponsoring a class of plutocrats monopolizing their country’s wealth at the expense of impoverished populations. Watch how America tries now to regain the political power it has lost by ways very incompatible with the portrait of an America spreading “democracy and freedom” throughout the world; an image ostentatiously exhibited to justify the unjustifiable.

Here’s a link to one of the earliest Pilger’s works: “The Year Zero,” which reveals a facet of the Vietnam war seldom exposed in western media.

And to further understand the pernicious nature of corporate capitalism, the fundamental motor behind American imperialism, this is Mark Achbar’s “The Corporation” which desecates the mechanisms of the boundless corporation greed:

(I must give credit to eatbees who inspired me on this one through his latest post)