The Mess Hall, Chicago.

Mess Hall is an experimental cultural space. Located in the Roger’s Park in Chicago, Mess Hall is a place for visual culture, creative urbanism, sustainable ecology, food democracy, radical politics, and cultural experimentation. Mess Hall runs on the generosity of those who use it. This allows us to provide everything for free - from food and drinks to workshops and events.

Over the past five years, hundreds of events have taken place from art shows, film screenings, discussions, meetings, potlucks, sewing rebellions, performances, and everything in between.

Mess Hall links:

Mess Hall website:
http://www.messhall.org/

(BRAND NEW!) Mess Hall blog:
http://messhallarchive.wordpress.com/

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Give up art and save the starving?

If art and design is understood as the expression and reflection of a particular set of values, systems and interests, then most artistic practice today tends to express the interests of the class that controls and profits from society — the bourgeois or corporate class and their markets. It is these interests that dominate and control the standards of value in art — that defines its emphasis, and excludes its more subversive, egalitarian alternatives. Likewise, when our society places so much importance on the individual, technical virtuosity of an artist instead of the social motivations and commitments of that artist, one doesn’t have to look much further than the world of art and culture in our society to see where fascism breeds.

These are heavy and rather confrontational definitions of mainstream art, but one only needs to experience the fishbowl of a typical art opening to take them as truisms.

But what of alternatives? For practitioners of a completely different kind of art, these dominant understandings make using the term ‘artist’ rather problematic. Are we artists, or something else? Should we separate ourselves from the term ‘art’ altogether — or reclaim it for an entirely new set of standards and values, values in tune with our political, social and economic realities? Or, do we completely destroy the separation of art and everyday life, as the Situationists tried before us? Do we take it one step further, to ‘give up art and save the starving’, to ‘paint all the paintings black and celebrate dead art’, as Tony Lowe would have us do. And why not? Capitalism and the global financial crisis continues its drunken march of exploitation, playing havoc with the millions of working people who always suffer the effects of the hangover while never being invited to the party. For practitioners truly willing to empower more than just themselves — the barricades — and not the gallery, may be the new canvas on which to create.

Of course, practitioners with any kind of decent analysis should already be ‘on the barricades’. Cultural production plays an integral role in the current way of life — it is the means by which a monopoly of content and control by a few over the many is kept in check. Consumption, and the spectacle of consumption, contribute to the alienation and social poverty we currently experience. And yes, that includes hip, avant-garde, ‘edgy’, political work supposedly with ‘something to say’ while continuing to hang upon the white (or brick) walls (or pages) of our capitalist utopia.

If we decide not to leave art for dead, and instead embrace its omnipotent potential for radical, social change — it will be important to collectively create perspectives and values which clearly illustrate the realities of everyday, working life, and the possibilities of libertarian alternatives. Rearrangement of our institutions — cultural ones included — is simply evasive. A tree that has turned into a club cannot be expected to put forth leaves. Any artistic practice short of advocating the abolishment of capitalism and replacing it with logic, frankly, should be left to die.

Alec Icky Dunn, Thicket. 1 color block print.

Artist. Aboriginal. Anti-Capitalist — the works of Dylan Miner

It's such an empowering and exciting experience when you come across great things for the first time — books, ideas, friendships — and in my case, revolutionary printmaking. Sadly, as time moves on, we often overlook those things which meant so much to us at a particular time. So when it pops back up to remind you of that initial buzz — to relive the experience all over again — it's a bit like finding a $20 note hidden away in that rather obscure inner pocket in the depths of ones overcoat. Sweet.

Stumbling upon Dylan Miner's personal website was an experience not dissimilar.


I first came across Dylan's work in 'Wobblies: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World' — his illustrations accompanied the chapter headers in a bold and distinctive black and white style, easily managing to stand out amongst the other amazing graphical historiographies which also littered the pages. I eventually found more online at Justseeds.org, and now, his personal site.

His use of various printing techniques, the bold block colours and IWW and anarchist revolutionary content easily won an adherent, but what I really like is his line work. I'm no art critic (as you can tell), but there's something inherently human in the odd, humorous and sometimes warped interpretations Dylan presents — the portrait of 'Bakunin' for instance, or "Power in a Union'. The physical weight of the linework, the boldness, the jerks and jaggered woodcut strokes — and yet at the same time, the personality of his mark making — often makes me smile, even when conveying such confrontational and political themes. And I think for folks making such charged and meaningful work, that has to be a good thing. There is a place for alienating and negative work, but there's also a (rather large) place for work which can challenge and deconstruct the ideas of the viewer in a positive and empowering way. To that end, the work of Dylan Miner serves as a worthy example.




View links for more work.

As We (Still) See It!

1 — Throughout the world the vast majority of people have no control whatsoever over the decisions that most deeply and directly affect their lives. They sell their labour power while others who own or control the means of production accumulate wealth, make the laws and use the whole machinery of the State to perpetuate and reinforce their privileged positions.

2 — During the past century the living standards of working people have improved. But neither these improved living standards, nor the nationalisation of the means of production, nor the coming to power of parties claiming to represent the working class have basically altered the status of the worker as worker. Nor have they given the bulk of mankind much freedom outside of production. East and West, capitalism remains an inhuman type of society where the vast majority are bossed at work and manipulated in consumption and leisure. Propaganda and policemen, prisons and schools, traditional values and traditional morality all serve to reinforce the power of the few and to convince or coerce the many into acceptance of a brutal, degrading and irrational system. The ‘Communist’ world is not communist and the ‘Free’ world is not free.

3 — The trade unions and the traditional parties of the left started in business to change all this. But they have come to terms with the existing patterns of exploitation. In fact they are now essential if exploiting society is to continue working smoothly. The unions act as middlemen in the labour market. The political parties use the struggles and aspirations of the working class for their own ends. The degeneration of working class organisations, itself the result of the failure of the revolutionary movement, has been a major factor in creating working class apathy, which in turn has led to the further degeneration of both parties and unions.

4 — The trade unions and political parties cannot be reformed, 'captured', or converted into instruments of working class emancipation. We don't call however for the proclamation of new unions, which in the conditions of today would suffer a similar fate to the old ones. Nor do we call for militants to tear up their union cards. Our aims are simply that the workers themselves should decide on the objectives of their struggles and that the control and organisation of these struggles should remain firmly in their own hands. The forms which this self activity of the working class may take will vary considerably from country to country and from industry to industry. Its basic content will not.

5 — Socialism is not just the common ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. It means equality, real freedom, the end of oppression based on restrictive male/female social roles, reciprocal recognition and a radical transformation in all human relationships. It is people's understanding of their environment and of themselves, their domination over their work and over such social institutions as they may need to create. These are not secondary aspects, which will automatically follow the expropriation of the old ruling class. On the contrary they are essential parts of the whole process of social transformation, for without them no genuine social transformation will have taken place.

6. A socialist society can therefore only be built from below. Decisions concerning production and work will be taken by workers' councils composed of elected and revocable delegates. Decisions in other areas will be taken on the basis of the widest possible discussion and consultation among the people as a whole. This democratisation of society down to its very roots is what we mean by ‘workers' power’.

Self-managed institutions and collectivities will be the living framework of a free society. There can be no socialism without self-management. Yet a society made up of individual self-managed units is not, of itself, socialist. Such societies could remain oppressive, unequal and unjust. They could be sexist or racist, could restrict access to knowledge or adopt uncritical attitudes towards 'expertise'. We can imagine the individual units of such a society - of whatever size or complexity (from chicken farms to continents) - competing as 'collective capitalists'. Such competition could only perpetuate alienation and create new inequalities based on new divisions of labour.

Genuine freedom will only be possible when our lives are no longer the object of economic, cultural and political forces which we experience as external to ourselves, and which constantly tend to regenerate capitalist or authoritarian social relations. A socialist society would therefore abolish not only social classes, hierarchies and other structures of domination, but also wage-labour and production for the purpose of sale or exchange on the market. Th fulfil their needs and desires, people would live and work in free co-operation. The national frontiers of armed states would be replaced by a democratic human community, on a world scale. The elimination of competition (and the decay of competitive attitudes) would have profound social effects which we can hardly imagine today.

7 — Meaningful action, for revolutionaries, is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self-activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them and the degree to which they can therefore be manipulated by others - even by those allegedly acting on their behalf.

8 — No ruling class in history has ever relinquished its power without a struggle and our present rulers are unlikely to be an exception. Power will only be taken from them through the conscious, autonomous action of the vast majority of the people themselves, The building of socialism will require mass understanding and mass participation. By their rigid hierarchical structure, by their ideas and by their activities, both social-democratic and bolshevik types of organisations discourage this kind of understanding and prevent this kind of participation. The idea that socialism can somehow be achieved by an elite party (however 'revolutionary') acting 'on behalf of' the working class is both absurd and reactionary.

9 — We do not accept the view that by itself the working class can only achieve a trade union consciousness. On the contrary we believe that its conditions of life and its experiences in production constantly drive the working class to adopt priorities and values and to find methods of organisation which challenge the established social order and established pattern of thought. These responses are implicitly socialist. On the other hand, the working class is fragmented, dispossessed of the means of communication, and its various sections are at different levels of awareness and consciousness. The task of the revolutionary organisation is to help give proletarian consciousness an explicitly socialist content, to give practical assistance to workers in struggle, and to help those in different areas to exchange experiences and link up with one another.

10 — We do not see ourselves as yet another leadership, but merely as an instrument of working class action. The function of SOLIDARITY (or any libertarian socialist group—Ed.) is to help all those who are in conflict with the present authoritarian social structure, both in industry and in society at large, to generalise their experience, to make a total critique of their condition and of its causes, and to develop the mass revolutionary consciousness necessary if society is to be totally transformed.

The above text is the aims and principles of Solidarity UK (1961 - 1992), a great libertarian socialist group close to council communism and class struggle anarchism. The aims and principles are still, if not more, relevant today. See 'For Workers Power' for a majority of their collected texts, or find some of them online here.

TypeSHED11 — Design Escapism 101

As typographers, graphic fashionistas, advertising moguls and the elite of the visual communication world come together in Wellington this week for 'TypeSHED11', I thought it might be fitting to revisit my earlier text on an alternative graphic design practice. Of course, design, or more specifically typography, is off the radar for the majority of everyday, working people — so it may seem an odd topic to focus so much attention on. Yet it is a profession that has a huge impact on the lives of working people whether they understand the complexities of typography or not — mainly in the mass consumption and the spectacle of the capitalist society to which both design and our everyday lives belong.

"Graphic design has predominately been, and still is, the tool which beautifies, communicates and commodifies a set of ideas, ideals or products within various tenets of our social and economic relations. Unfortunately, it is fair to say that this creative tool is overwhelmingly used in an economic/commercial sense — consciously or unconsciously using its talents to exploit — to raise profit margins and material wealth for the benefit of a select clientele. While graphic design lends its talents outside of the commercial realm in the form of an informative and communicative visual language, and in academic or self-authorship, research-based practices — the primary role of graphic design as a medium is that of the visual instrument of the powerful; the seller of sales, the convincer of consumers — employed by the corporate body or state-sanctioned by capitalist/socialist totalitarian governments in order to perfect and reinforce their hegemonic positions. And while design academia can wax poetic about the virtues of graphic design and its specialised visual language — conveniently side-stepping more tangible issues — the design industry practitioner, whether one chooses to acknowledge his/her role or not, must realise that their labour is nothing more than the harbinger of consumerism, used in the service of monolithic capitalism and all of its ails. Without graphic design those who sustain these ills of society have no face, no visual identity, no point of reference, and most importantly, no effect.

If one takes the above view, which I obviously do, then to analyse the worth of such a conference as 'TypeSHED11' is a valid one. From a brief look the program on their website, there seems to be no space dedicated to any kind of social change work. There is one workshop called 'Bridging Culture' which mentions the latest conflicts in Palestine (for research purposes), but to use the their own words, the workshop sounds more like a pep talk in globalisation and diversity of the market. "Technology, mass media and the global village concept have made the world smaller and the cross-cultural audience bigger for the design profession. It is becoming a must for designers to think beyond their local boarders and to be able to create visual communication materials that makes sense to a diverse audience." Of course I could be wrong, but I sincerely doubt that there will be discussion on how graphic design could alleviate, instead of activate the current exploitative system we live in — or the complex situation facing the people of the middle east.

"Design then, must explore the peripheral space outside of advertising; totally devoid of any commercial use — or more specifically, for the movement towards a more humane and libertarian society, that is to say, a more autonomous existence based on self-management, mutual aid, solidarity and direct participation and control over one's affairs. As the potential producer, educator and visual face of social change, graphic design could weld its creative future with more important and pressing concerns than market shares, profit margins and consumption rates."

If there in fact WAS talk of social justice work in Wellington this week, then that would be a tentative start. But, like the 'First Things First Manifesto' of 2002, we should question the locality and the direction of that way of thinking.

"While proposing 'a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting, and democratic forms of communication', the manifesto falls short in recognising any kind of tangible and radical change. The 'First Things First Manifesto' of 2002 fails to recognise that the 'uncontested' and 'unchecked' consumerism they wish to re-direct is so engrained in the very system we participate in, that anything short of the complete transformation of social priorities, structures and organization will never effect true social change. Proposing the shifting of priorities within the system rather than the shifting of the system itself — as history has proven in both state/democratic socialism, and the farce of parliamentary democracy — will do nothing more than file down the rough edges of our chains. The fact that rampant globalisation and totalitarian corporate hegemony go hand in hand with the current system is the real issue concerned graphic designs could be questioning. In fact these systems, "far from being a guarantee for the people, on the contrary, creates and safeguards the continued existence of a governmental aristocracy against the people."

So, what is the alternative, if any, that graphic design could play towards radical, social change? This is the crux of my original text, and the topic of a type of praxis we could undertake as practitioners interested in a more egalitarian way of existing.

The everyday individual or anarchist design practitioner, through the basic act of joining their libertarian principals with their material production, should, and could, greatly contribute to the transformation of everyday life — towards a more just and humane existence. As educator and mediator, it is the responsibility of anyone with an understanding of visual communication to instill in people's minds a broader sense of possibility, using the communicative powers of artistic imagery to empower, encourage and enrage. It is important to shift societies' many urgent concerns from the fringes and into the public realm, in a direct and unavoidable manner. However, purely negative and angst-ridden critique (while sometimes useful) can only go so far — it is the sense of positive possibilities that need to be associated with the ideas of anarchist communism. The marginality of current grassroots movements must be overcome — the isolation of both activist groups and concerned individuals thoughts must be rendered public, transparent, and shared.

Mainstream media do a rather convincing job of keeping our private thoughts as seemingly isolated and illogical. It is an important task to illustrate that the critical and questioning ideas we may be having individually are, more often than not, shared as a whole, rather than letting them be diffused and disarmed by hegemonic structures and institutions such as the popular media, the church and the state. Graphic design can publicly and prolifically become the visual manifestation of these shared ideas. "Ideally, art can inspire hope, encourage critical thinking, capture emotion, and stimulate creativity. It can declare another way to think about and participate in living. Art can document or challenge history, create a framework for social change, and create a vision of a more just world. When art is used in activism it provides an appealing and accessible entry point to social issues and radical politics".9 As the initial point of contact with more in-depth and varied forms of activism, graphic design can act as the essential catalyst for further education, involvement, and more importantly, direct action.

However, images alone are not enough. Further exploration of participation and facilitation in design and the design process can only set the basis for future non-hierarchical, organic organisation. Structures and ways of working with others raised in ones practice could essentially form patterns and guides for the self organization of a more libertarian society. Therefore the act of making work could be as empowering as the visual message itself. Both collective and personal processes of making work could lead the way in eventual liberation on a more macro level, exploring the 'unlimited perfectibility' of both design activity and social organization."

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Treaty of Waitangi (or Tino Rangatiratanga) for beginners

From Arena.

Conversations around the Treaty of Waitangi tend to generate a lot of heat, but not much light. Some Maori people and their supporters claim that the Treaty has not been honoured. Those with somewhat redder necks say the Treaty should be scrapped because "after all, we're all one people, aren't we?" Many fair-minded people stay silent during these conversations, because they feel the Treaty is too complicated and they don’t have enough knowledge to challenge some of the claims made for or against it. This article is for those people.

In fact, the issues raised by the Treaty are very simple and easy for everyone to understand. The Treaty was an agreement between the British Crown on the one hand and Maori chiefs on the other. For the purposes of the Treaty, the British recognized those Maori who signed it as representing the whole of Maoridom as a nation. It was first signed at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands on February 6, 1840, and there were basically two versions, one in English and one in Maori. Most of the chiefs signed the Maori version.

There are basic differences between the English and the Maori versions, since the Maori version is not a literal translation of the English Treaty. However, under the terms of international law, which governs the signing of agreements between nations, only the Maori version has any legitimacy. This is important, because the differences in the translation are crucial to understanding why many Maori feel the Treaty has not been honoured.

The Treaty of Waitangi consists of a preamble and three basic clauses, called "Articles". (Some Maori signed a version of the Treaty with four articles, but there is little disagreement about the meaning of the fourth, and we can safely ignore it, at least until we have an understanding of the first three.)

In the English version, Article one signs the rights of sovereignty in New Zealand over to the Queen of England. That means that the power to make and enforce laws over the whole country was given to the British Crown. But in the Maori version, something very different, called "kawanatanga", was granted to the Crown in Article I.

An understanding of what is meant by the term kawanatanga is crucial to an understanding of the Treaty, and of the role of Pakeha people and Pakeha institutions in Aotearoa/New Zealand today.

Kawanatanga is a transliteration of the English word "governorship". The difference between kawanatanga and sovereignty is at the heart of many disputes over the Treaty. The present Government cites Article I of the English Treaty as the basis of its claim to sovereignty - the right to rule - in New Zealand. But the claim just doesn’t stand up. Maori who signed the Treaty were led to understand that the status of kawanatanga granted to the British in Article I was a good deal less than that of full sovereignty, or tino rangatiratanga. In their view, they were certainly not signing away their sovereignty when they signed Article I.

So what did they think they were signing? According to records made at the time the Treaty was signed, a missionary by the name of Williams, who had translated the Treaty into Maori, explained the difference between kawanatanga and tino rangatiratanga in terms of the Biblical story of Pontius Pilate. Pilate was the Governor of Judea at the time of Christ’s crucifixion, and as such he was said to exercise "kawanatanga" – governorship. The Maori chiefs were led to understand that Pilate did not have the power of life and death over those he governed. His kawanatanga was something a lot less than the tino rangatiratanga - the chiefly authority - that the Chiefs themselves exercised.

Further, the phrase tino rangatiratanga had previously been used to translate the word "sovereignty" in the 1835 Declaration of Maori Independence. This document, signed five years before the Treaty, was an agreement in which the British Crown had recognized the sovereignty of Maori chiefs in New Zealand. Many of the same chiefs who signed the Declaration also signed the Treaty and would have recognized the use of the phrase from that.



So Article I of the Maori version granted something less than complete sovereign authority to the British, but there is some confusion about what it actually did grant. Fortunately, the confusion is easily cleared up.

The preamble of the Treaty refers to creating good order and harmonious relations between settlers and Maori. That’s because relationships between Europeans and Maori up to that point had been less than ideal. Settlers tended to be a rowdy, uncultured lot who nevertheless considered that the colour of their skin made them superior to the "savages" they encountered in Aotearoa. Maori communities close to European settlements like Kororareka (today called Russell) suffered from frequent looting, rape, general drunkenness and disrespect from white visitors. Defensive measures taken by Maori often resulted in military reprisals. Attempts to bargain with representatives of the British Crown for stricter enforcement of behaviour standards got nowhere because the British Crown was powerless - legally and physically. Despite being able to commandeer the British Navy to punish Maori villages who had dealt summary justice to a lawless whaler, the Crown was unwilling to establish a police force for white folks, because it didn’t have any legal authority in Aotearoa.

The British Resident at the time, a man called James Busby, advised the Chiefs that no-one had any recognized legal authority in Aotearoa. He recommended that the Chiefs get the British Crown to recognize their authority.

That was how the Declaration of Maori Independence came into being. In this document, the British Crown recognized, as noted earlier, that Maori Chiefs exercised sovereignty (tino rangatiratanga) in Aotearoa. But the fact that the British Crown recognized Maori sovereignty did not mean that the settlers were going to follow suit. The lawlessness continued. After another five years, Maori chiefs around Northland had had enough. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in an attempt to give the British Crown authority over settlers in Aotearoa.

In this way, Article I of the Treaty granted the limited authority of kawanatanga over the Pakeha population of Aotearoa to the British Crown.

Just to make the position absolutely clear, Article II was completely unequivocal in the Maori version. Article II reserved tino rangatiratanga - full sovereign authority - over their lands, forests, fisheries "me o ratou taonga katoa" (and everything they valued) to the chiefs. It further stipulated that any land bought by settlers could not be bought directly from Maori, but had to be acquired by the British Crown first. This carries the clear implication that land acquired by the Crown became land over which British kawanatanga would be exercised. The rest of the land would remain under Maori law.

Article III stated that everyone in Aotearoa would have the rights and privileges of British subjects, but clearly avoided handing Maori any responsibilities or duties to the Crown.

As each chief signed, Governor Hobson is reported to have said to them: "He iwi tahi tatou" (we are one people). It is significant that he said this in Maori, since in the intervening years, most people have taken his words to mean that Maori should become brown-skinned Pakeha, rather than that Pakeha were now to become more like Maori.

After the initial signing at Waitangi, the Treaty was taken to various places around the country and eventually collected signatures from over 500 chiefs. Governor Hobson however, became bored by the process at one stage and claimed the South Island by "right of discovery". Some major tribes, including the Waikato tribes (united in later years under the Maori King) and Tuhoe, to name just two, never signed the Treaty.

Today, many people think that the Treaty gives Maori certain rights. It does not. The rights of sovereignty which Maori exercised for at least 800 years before the arrival of the Pakeha could not and still cannot be "granted" by the Crown. The British Crown officially recognized those rights in the 1835 Declaration of Maori Independence, and that recognition was reaffirmed in Article II of the Treaty. In effect, the Treaty does not give Maori any rights they didn’t already have, but it does give Pakeha certain limited rights - the rights covered by the term kawanatanga.

The Treaty of Waitangi is today the only legal basis for the presence of non-Maori settlers here in Aotearoa/NZ. Maori never gave up their rights (as the Crown claims), nor were they ever conquered, despite several attempts. If we take away the Treaty, the legal right of non-Maori people to live in this country is removed with it. The Treaty of Waitangi is actually about Pakeha rights, not Maori rights. And those rights do not include the right to rule Maori people or Maori land.

That is why many Maori feel the Treaty has not been honoured.

From Arena.

Another gem from Justseeds.org

Roger Peet — Why Do We

Another pithy inspirational motivator. As you climb down into the pit, the pit climbs also down into you. Originally appeared in a Bread & Roses exhibit in NYC a couple of years ago, Josh has been bugging me since to print it for Justseeds. And lo!

Two-color silkscreen print
16"x20"
Heavyweight cover paper
Signed/numbered edition of 46

See more at justseeds.org.

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Happy New Year from Katipo Books!

Katipo Books is part of a developing workers co-operative. We are in the process of setting up a not for profit radical bookshop and publishing group based in Christchurch / Otautahi. The majority of our stock is sourced from small independent publishers — not from the corporate giants! Visit www.katipo.net.nz.

Katipo Books is hoping to find its own space soon (so we won't just be operating out of Jo's garage)...we are looking for somewhere with room to have workshops in screenprinting, linux and publishing as well as the info and book shop. Please contact us if you can help us with our search. Ideally it would be best for us to be inner-city, but it also needs to be affordable and accessible to the public so we can't be too picky.

There is also an idea being floated around at the moment for a radical book library in Otautahi so hopefully we'll see lots of new stuff happening in Christchurch this coming year.

Would you or anyone you know like to get involved in the co-op? If so we would like to extend an invitation to come along to a meeting... we normally meet once a fortnight, and it's a fairly relaxed sort of thing. We always need more people to run stalls, upload books onto the website, posting and packaging orders and we are going to need more folks when we get the info and book shop happening, so please get in touch with us if you are at all interested!

Thanks to everyone for your support so far and for buying books from us. It enables us to pay our bills and to keep developing as a co-operative workers organisation.

Peace and love for the new year!
from Katipo Books
Jo, Amanda, Dan, Jared and Kerry.

Image above by Justseeds.org.

“Sometimes we shoot the same way” – the attack on Gaza, internationalism and the Left

A great anarchist communist perspective on the situation in Gaza has just been written by a member of the Anarchist Federation (UK). To view the article with its links and sources intact, please visit here at libcom.org.

Here is a snipet from the main text:

"It is ultimately futile to debate the responsibility for starting the conflict. According to Haaretz, the Israeli attack has been in the planning stages since the signing of the original ceasefire. Like any military force, the IDF had military options prepared from the beginning, which have been implemented in order to break Hamas, stop its embarrassing rocket attacks, and to deliver an electoral boon to the ruling party. Hamas’ rockets were clearly already lined up and ready to strike Israel’s civilian population. Both sides required a spark in order to launch the conflict and advance their internal aims – Hamas to consolidate their position by forcing the collaboration or elimination of rival factions, Israel in order to provide a spectacular PR win prior to the elections and to slow down the confrontation between the state and the settlers. This was provided by the Israeli cross-border raid on the 4th of November."

"Against this background, internationalists always have an important role to play. At every instance, we must plainly and clearly state that solidarity with the victims of war as real concrete human beings does not mean solidarity with capitalist factions in a war from which they seek to benefit, does not mean supporting a cross-class, abstract national collective and its ethnic “rights” to lands, and does not mean abandoning coherence to support a victory for a facile “anti-imperialism”. The defense of clear internationalist positions against leftist hysteria is of vital importance. It is for the benefit of those drawn into the demonstrations out of disgust at the attack on Israel, but repulsed by the hypocrisy of claiming to be anti-war whilst supporting one of the sides in it."

Or click 'Read More' to view the full text.

A libcom user and Anarchist Federation member analyses the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict, and the response of the left to events.

Israel’s brutal attack on the Gaza strip has elicited widespread revulsion, and has led to protests across Britain and the world. It is clear that the Israeli state has committed atrocities which anyone with an ounce of humanity would seek an end to. Its savage bombing of one of the most densely populated places on earth has resulted in over a thousand deaths. Nowhere is safe – Mosques, schools and UN sites have been attacked by the IDF. Even by the “civilised” standards of warfare between nation-states, which allow for a reasonable degree of “collateral damage”, several incidents stand out for their brutality. There is mounting evidence that the IDF is following its senior partner, the US, in using white phosphorous as an offensive weapon in civilian areas. Banned under international law, white phosphorous munitions are chemical weapons with a pattern of splash damage similar to cluster bombs, but which spread blazing chunks of phosphorous and smoke laced with burning particles. The result is either death from suffocation or from severe burns, sometimes down to the bone. The IDF is responsible for herding civilians into a building before shelling it, killing scores of civilians in attacks on UN schools, shelling aid convoys, and destroying aid stockpiles during an attack on the UN headquarters in Gaza. The attack has displaced over 90,000 people, and combined with the crippling blockade of Gaza which preceded it, utterly destroyed Gaza’s economy and infrastructure.

It is ultimately futile to debate the responsibility for starting the conflict. According to Haaretz, the Israeli attack has been in the planning stages since the signing of the original ceasefire. Like any military force, the IDF had military options prepared from the beginning, which have been implemented in order to break Hamas, stop its embarrassing rocket attacks, and to deliver an electoral boon to the ruling party. Hamas’ rockets were clearly already lined up and ready to strike Israel’s civilian population. Both sides required a spark in order to launch the conflict and advance their internal aims – Hamas to consolidate their position by forcing the collaboration or elimination of rival factions, Israel in order to provide a spectacular PR win prior to the elections and to slow down the confrontation between the state and the settlers. This was provided by the Israeli cross-border raid on the 4th of November.

Following the launch of the brutal airstrikes and ground invasion, the sides behaved precisely as could be expected. Hamas, unsurprisingly, have shown themselves not to be consummate humanitarians. There have been a number of reports of refugees being held at the Rafah border crossing , preventing them accessing medical care in Egypt. Egypt blames Hamas, whilst Hamas claims that the injured refugees restrained themselves out of contempt for Egypt, refusing the care of the medical teams on the other side of the border (despite their not refusing the aid the IDF is obliged to provide, and despite the Gazan hospitals being devastated). Both sides were shown for the hypocrites they are when Gazan refugees breached the border themselves, to be faced by Egyptian border guards firing their rifles into the air. The capitalist factions in Gaza and the West bank have used the desired opportunity provided by the conflict to move against each other – Hamas has been killing, kneecapping, imprisoning and beating its rivals in Gaza, whilst Fatah has been doing the same to Hamas in the West Bank, on top of banning protestors from confronting checkpoints or the IDF. Rather than join the “resistance”, ordinary Palestinians in Gaza have been fleeing en masse. It seems that the factions are moving to a ceasefire now their perceived aims have been met. And the price for this has been a mountain of dead working class Palestinians.

The conflict has spawned international revulsion, and a protest movement in Britain which has undertaken demonstrations in most major towns and cities, receiving a good deal of media coverage, especially after minor rioting in London on the 10th of January. Though there has been a genuine grassroots response to the conflict, many of the demonstrations have been organised by either the Stop the War Coalition, associated in the minds of many with the defeat of the campaign against the Iraq war, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The atmosphere of the protests has differed from place to place, from demonstrations of a more humanitarian nature demanding the end of the bombings to virulent nationalism and support for Hamas. Most demonstrations contained a mixture of both. Libertarian Communists, anarchists and other internationalists have been involved from the start, seeking to provide an alternative on the ground to the nationalist ideologies which are pervasive within the anti-war demonstrations. The Sheffield and Manchester Anarchist Federation groups produced a leaflet which they distributed at demonstrations in the cities, and which were circulated in various forms by comrades in the Solidarity Federation, Organise!, No Borders and the libcom group in a display of fraternalism within the movement. Anarchists in London organised a distinct bloc against all nation states and the wars they wage, whilst another internationalist leaflet was produced and circulated at demos by the ICC.

At the same time, there is plenty of opportunist leftist politicking around the issue. The Socialist Workers Party once again aligned itself with various liberal voices, demanding that the UK expel Israel’s ambassador and recall its embassy staff from Israel. The stupidity and opportunist posturing involved in asking Britain, which is responsible for maintaining an occupation in Iraq which has resulted in 1,033,000 deaths in the past 6 years, to bring Israel in line with civilised international behaviour isn’t lost on most people with critical faculties.

But there are more fundamental qualities to the demonstrations which are alarming, and which stand in stark contrast to the attempts to spread an internationalist perspective on the conflict. As important as our efforts in this regard are, they represent a minority view in opposition to leftist “common sense”. To suggest that being anti-war might mean opposing both the capitalist factions engaged in it might not be that controversial to ordinary people, but is met with hysterics from leftists. As a result, there has been much in the anti-war movement that is troubling. Support for overseas nationalist movements has been common currency amongst leftists since the early twentieth century, and the belief that “national liberation” forces can strike a blow against “imperialism” and therefore open a space for an advance in the global struggle against capitalism remains common.1 For many leftists, “imperialism” comes down to US foreign policy and that of its proxies and allies such as Israel, and whatever force stands in opposition to this is “anti-imperialist”. For them, imperialism is not the tendency of the “anarchic” system of nation states to create a situation where states must assert themselves often against an empirical economic advantage (as in Iraq, where exploitation of resources could have taken place through cutting a deal with Saddam, rather than an expensive occupation which comes down to control of strategic resources). So where we might see a smaller imperialist scheme in opposition to a larger one, such as in the conflicts between US and Venezuelan or Iranian foreign policy, many leftists see “imperialism” confronting “anti-imperialism”. By a similar logic, to leftists, Hamas isn’t a bourgeois faction with its own aims and the agency to pursue them, but a “resistance” movement fighting an Israeli attack. As such even the Trotskyists who claim that they provide no political support to Hamas laud its “heroic” resistance – a resistance which has been utterly futile, and has consisted mostly in killing Israeli civilians, including (not that it matters) Arab-Israelis, and giving the IDF an excuse to slaughter the civilian population in Gaza.

Of course, part of this thinking is as a result of basic liberal democratic arguments on international relations – a “nation” which is attacked has a “right” to “resist”. And following on from this, for many leftists, if you dispute this frame of reference, you are a “collaborator” with the “aggressor”. This is added to rhetoric about Hamas being “democratically elected” (as if the Israeli government wasn’t). This view is common, and fundamentally reactionary in that it requires not a class analysis, but a national one.

But the crudest leftist defence of Hamas has come in the form of the argument that, if there was a left/socialist/anarchist (delete as applicable) presence in Gaza, we and Hamas would be “shooting the same way”. Presumably they don’t mean at civilians, but at “Israel”. This overlooks Hamas’ aims and actual activity when faced with rivals, but ultimately leads to the position that we should side with the less powerful bourgeois faction when they are fighting one another, even if in this case this is in a context where “resistance” means being obliterated by one of the most advanced militaries on the planet.

Firstly, no-one with any interest in the working class improving its own conditions and ultimately taking political power for itself should have any interest in defending Hamas. Beyond the fact that they peddle a reactionary, mystifying, sexist, homophobic and anti-working class ideology, their track record in repressing workers is open to see. Teachers’ struggles have been caught between the hammer of the Hamas government and the anvil of Fatah aligned unions. Armed Hamas police have escorted teachers back into the classroom, whilst their bosses have sacked them and replaced them with loyal Hamas supporters. Hamas have closed medical facilities when faced with doctors’ strikes. The unions in the Palestinian territories are factional and bureaucratic, as all are, but the fact that the same unionists have been attacked by both factions shows how independent working class struggle would fare against these groups. Hamas offer as little to working class people as their rivals in Fatah, whose allies in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades attacked Palestine Workers Radio for “stoking internal conflicts”.

The AF’s leaflet arguing that “On both sides of the conflict, the idea that opposing Israel has to mean supporting Hamas and its ‘resistance’ movement” was met with criticism for claiming that support for Hamas is rife. But beyond the Hamas flags, which aren’t uncommon at demos, every call to support the “Palestinian resistance” means support for these factions. There is no vague, amorphous resistance to support, but real groups with real policies carrying out real actions in the real world. For this reason it is necessary to say precisely who and what you are supporting. The internationalists have been clear in stating their support for the victims of war, for self-organised campaigns such as those in the West Bank against the wall, for Israeli refuseniks and those who struggle against the war machine in Israel. Those who laud “the resistance” and chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are either unthinking or disingenuous when they say this doesn’t mean supporting Hamas, however “critically”.

As an example of the easy translation of "soft" support into outright support for Hamas, a group from the Trotskyist Alliance for Workers Liberty2 who turned up at a demonstration in Sheffield recently with a placard reading “No to the IDF, no to Hamas”, were assaulted by Palestine Solidarity Campaign organisers (who also have a record of attacking the liberal gay rights group Outrage!, fronted by the well known media stuntist Peter Tatchell, for raising a dissenting voice at demonstrations). The SWP contingent, including local Respect candidate Maxine Bowler, cheered the assault on, and lectured the AWL for being “scabs”. Similarly, genuine internationalists have met accusations of "elitism", that they offer Palestinians nothing, as if leftists were offering anything other than (ultimately meaningless) political support. Most of them aren't stupid enough to try to get arms and funds to the "resistance" they celebrate. But its not uncommon to see leftist impotence translate into overinflated self-importance.

But on top of the dubious nationalism which is commonplace, there has been a resurgence in classical anti-Semitism. Following earlier attacks on Starbucks, in the same night a Tesco store was attacked in East London the area was daubed with graffiti reading “kill jews.” Graffiti reading “free Palestine, kill the jews” has gone up in South Manchester. Such statements simply mirror Hamas’ own anti-Semitism and conspiratorialism, which can be seen in its propaganda and charter. But there is also the more structural anti-Semitism which is common in leftist discourse, especially concerning the (demonstrably false) view that US foreign policy is a product of a pro-Israel lobby in the west, which has already been argued against well. The common comparisons between the Israeli attack and the systematic and industrialised extermination of Jews during the holocaust, beyond its appalling inaccuracy (was the invasion of Iraq a "holocaust"?), feeds into this.

Against this background, internationalists always have an important role to play. At every instance, we must plainly and clearly state that solidarity with the victims of war as real concrete human beings does not mean solidarity with capitalist factions in a war from which they seek to benefit, does not mean supporting a cross-class, abstract national collective and its ethnic “rights” to lands, and does not mean abandoning coherence to support a victory for a facile “anti-imperialism”. The defense of clear internationalist positions against leftist hysteria is of vital importance. It is for the benefit of those drawn into the demonstrations out of disgust at the attack on Israel, but repulsed by the hypocrisy of claiming to be anti-war whilst supporting one of the sides in it.

Django, 18/01/2009

No state solution in Gaza

Statement produced by the Manchester and Sheffield Anarchist Federation (UK) branches on the conflict in Gaza, in solidarity with the victims of the conflict, and for internationalism.

One thing is absolutely clear about the current situation in Gaza: the Israeli state is committing atrocities which must end immediately. With hundreds dead and thousands wounded, it has become increasingly clear that the aim of the military operation, which has been in the planning stages since the signing of the original ceasefire in June, is to break Hamas completely. The attack follows the crippling blockade throughout the supposed ‘ceasefire’, which has destroyed the livelihoods of Gazans, ruined the civilian infrastructure and created a humanitarian disaster which anyone with an ounce of humanity would seek an end to.

But that's not all there is to say about the situation. On both sides of the conflict, the idea that opposing Israel has to mean supporting Hamas and its ‘resistance’ movement is worryingly common. We totally reject this argument. Just like any other set of rulers, Hamas, like all the other major Palestinian factions, are happy and willing to sacrifice ordinary Palestinians to increase their power. This isn’t some vague theoretical point – for a period recently most deaths in Gaza were a result of fighting between Hamas and Fatah. The ‘choices’ offered to ordinary Palestinian people are between Islamist gangsters (Hamas, Islamic Jihad) or nationalist gangsters (Fatah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades). These groups have shown their willingness to attack working class attempts to improve their living conditions, seizing union offices, kidnapping prominent trade unionists, and breaking strikes. One spectacular example is the attack on Palestine Workers Radio by Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, for “stoking internal conflicts”. Clearly, a “free Palestine” under the control of any of these groups would be nothing of the sort.

As anarchists, we are internationalists, opposing the idea that the rulers and ruled within a nation have any interests in common. Therefore, anarchists reject Palestinian nationalism just as we reject Israeli nationalism (Zionism). Ethnicity does not grant “rights” to lands, which require the state to enforce them. People, on the other hand, have a right to having their human needs met, and should be able to live where they choose, freely.

Therefore, against the divisions and false choices set up by nationalism, we fully support the ordinary inhabitants of Gaza and Israel against state warfare – not because of their nationality, ethnicity, or religion, but simply because they're real living, feeling, thinking, suffering, struggling human beings. And this support has to mean total hostility to all those who would oppress and exploit them –the Israeli state and the Western governments and corporations that supply it with weapons, but also any other capitalist factions who seek to use ordinary working-class Palestinians as pawns in their power struggles. The only real solution is one which is collective, based on the fact that as a class, globally, we ultimately have nothing but our ability to work for others, and everything to gain in ending this system – capitalism – and the states and wars it needs .

That this seems like a “difficult” solution does not stop it from being the right one. Any “solution” that means endless cycles of conflict, which is what nationalism represents, is no solution at all. And if that is the case, the fact that it is “easier” is irrelevant. There are sectors of Palestinian society which are not dominated by the would-be rulers – protests organised by village committees in the West Bank for instance. These deserve our support. As do those in Israel who refuse to fight, and who resist the war. But not the groups who call on Palestinians to be slaughtered on their behalf by one of the most advanced armies in the world, and who wilfully attack civilians on the other side of the border.

Neither one stare nor two states, but no states.

No matter which state wins, the working class loses.

Type rest of the post here

Shepard Fairley is straight up sad!

From Justseeds.org by Favianna Rodriguez

I have recently been asked about why it is that I dislike Shepard Fairey. Its actually not that I dislike Shepard as a person, its more that I have a big problem with his practices. I find them to be unethical and I believe that the political spectrum of people trying to make social change in the world will ultimately not benefit from his art. I believe that as artists and activists, we should be open about critiquing each other and open to changing how it is that we do things. That is what movements did before us .The Black Panthers consistently criticized each other in order to make assessments, and grow, as people, as an organization, and as a movement. We should never be closed to critique because in doing so we are doing ourselves a disservice. I would love to have the opportunity to talk to Shepard about my critiques, but the word on the street is that he does not like to debate about this stuff. Again, I have to say that this is not a personal attack, Shepard is actually in a book I co-edited with Josh MacPhee (also part of Just Seeds), Reproduce and Revolt, and it's not my intention to smear him nor censor him. Rather, my intention is to provide a look at his practices from the perspective a woman of color, an artist activist, and a person who thinks our capitalist system is very flawed.

Today a friend shared an article which you can read by clicking here. The title of the article is "Consumers of the World Unite," based on the phrase, "Workers of the World, Unite!" The title itself says alot of Fairey's practices, which is, that he commodifies political movements with the intention of making HUGE profits from them. Read the article and judge for yourself. It's sad to me that me that in our ultra consumer world, EVERYTHING is up for grabs when it's about profit. Very similar to how Hip Hop started in our communities, was even illegal in some forms, then repurposed, and is now sold back to us, by the very forces that also put our people in jail, deport our families, and push for bail outs in which the people ultimately pay the price. The article starts like this:

"SHOPPING, these days, is a political act. If you are brave enough to buy a $2,000 Prada handbag, you might rationalize that you are helping to stimulate the economy. Solidarity, people!"

Read more about Shepard Fairey's practices:

This article here was researched by a few of us in Just Seeds (Jesus Barraza, Josh MacPhee, and myself) as well as other notable voices in the world of political posters:
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

This article here was written by my fellow co-editor and JustSeeder, Josh MacPhee:
http://www.justseeds.org/blog/2007/12/a_response_to_obey_plagiarist_1.html

This article was written originally for release in Mother Jones, but Mother Jones then refused to run it, and then instead ran a very pro-Fairey piece:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/06/97988.html

Here is an open letter to Shepard from a powerful sister who works at KPFK, Aura Bogado.
http://tothecurb.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/i-have-a-name-an-open-letter-to-shepard-fairey/re

Type rest of the post here

Celebrate People's History!

My text for the upcoming Labour History Project newsletter.

I never wanted to be a graphic designer — at least not in the traditional sense. An important part of my artistic practice has been to explicitly avoid the design industry and all that it encompasses — advertising, profitability, marketing, consumption, and ultimately, the advancement of our current exploitative and illogical system — capitalism. By setting myself up independent of this mainstream conception of design, I have been lucky enough to participate in projects, which, in my mind, have been far more worthwhile and productive than encouraging profit margins, consumer culture, and an elitist design minority. Work for the Labour History Project, in the form of Blackball and May 68 posters, as well more recent work for the ‘Celebrate People’s History’ project initiated by Justseeds (a collective of US based printmakers and illustrators) reflects the sort of artistic endeavors I see particular value in.

As my interest in the role graphic and cultural work can play in political agitation and education has grown, I’ve come into contact with other like-minded practitioners home and abroad. Justseeds Visual Resistance Artists’ Co-Operative, like myself, realize that cultural production plays an integral role in the continuation of values and systems that prevail today — including our sense of identity, and equally important, our understanding of history. Hence the ‘Celebrate People’s History’ project — an ongoing collection of educational and agitational posters designed to illustrate aspects of our past often marginalized, overlooked and outright ignored.

When I was asked to contribute to the project I immediately knew I wanted to concentrate on an aspect of Aotearoa’s past, or more specifically, our vibrant labour history. A poster on the ‘Red Feds’ and the influence of the I.W.W (Industrial Workers of the World) in Aotearoa seemed a natural choice.

It’s fitting that my growing understanding of labour history in Aotearoa (especially militant ones such as the forming of I.W.W locals and the advocating of direct action tactics) was stoked by the Blackball celebrations of 2008, hosted by none other than the Labour History Project. Before that I had tended to look elsewhere for evidence of agitation and class struggle, for traces of politics similar to my own — understandable, considering the relative obscurity of radical labour history in my own (and the majority of people’s) upbringing and education. To find concrete evidence of syndicalism, revolutionary unionism and class struggle outside of the parliamentary arena right here in Aotearoa was a truly empowering experience — one I felt I had to share.

So, a growing consciousness of labour history, Erik Olssen’s ‘The Red Feds’ and the opportunity to empower thanks to Justseeds has meant a slice of Aotearoa’s working class history will be printed and shared with the wider world — in an edition of 4000. And not just as a nostalgic fragment of a past long gone. For me, this type of historical awareness is a reminder that we still live in a society deeply divided by class. The actions of the ‘Red’ Federation of Labor, the various Wobbly locals, and other militant individuals between 1908-13 in Aotearoa stand as an inspiring, but unfinished movement to continue to build upon in our present situation.

I hope to encourage and take part in similar work in the future, including the screen-printing of my Waihi poster ‘Black Tuedsay’, as well as future projects in collaboration with the Labour History Project and the Christchurch branch I, among others, have helped to form. I understand the printing of this poster offshore may be somewhat of a first for Aotearoa labour history, but I sincerely hope it won’t be the last.

Check out more on the the Labour History Project at www.tuhp.org.nz.

John Pilger on Gaza

Writing in the New Statesman, John Pilger calls on 40 years of reporting the Middle East to describe the 'why' of Israel's bloody onslaught on the besieged people of Gaza - an attack that has little to do with Hamas or Israel's right to exist.

“When the truth is replaced by silence,” the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, “the silence is a lie.” It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia’s incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, “Israel’s right to exist”. They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine’s right to exist was cancelled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous “Plan D” resulted in the murderous de-population of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as “ethnic cleansing”. Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, “What shall we do with the Arabs?” Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, “made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them’. The order to expel an entire population “without attention to age” was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world’s most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya’ari noted “how easily” Israel’s leaders spoke of how it was “possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war... we are appalled.”

Every subsequent “war” Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Uri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. “It seems,” wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, “that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system... Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government , this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanise the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide].”

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. “Is it an irresponsible overstatement,” asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, “to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.”

In describing a “holocaust-in-the making”, Falk was alluding to the Nazis’ establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today’s holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion’s Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound “smart” GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making “aid”, give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia’s war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama’s silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings “Think”, her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama’s inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: “Gaza!”

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now “Operation Cast Lead”, which is the unfinished “Operation Justified Vengeance”. The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush’s approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane’s Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the “green light” to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel’s secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labour Party’s enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine’s agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane’s, needed the “trigger” of a suicide bombing which would cause “numerous deaths and injuries [because] the ‘revenge’ factor is crucial”. This would “motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians”. What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their “trigger”; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda “trigger”. A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators - was shattered by the Israeli attack and home-made rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were “cleansed”. The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel’s charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.

Behind this sordid game is the “Dagan Plan”, named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organisation, Dagan is the author of a “solution” that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan’s achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organisation devoted to Israel’s destruction and to “blame” for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. “We have never had it so good,” said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. “The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine.” In fact, Hamas’s real threat is its example as the Arab world’s only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians’ oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as “Hamas’s seizure of power”. Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the “reality” of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a “monstrosity”.

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a “1948-style solution” – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller “cantonments” and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, “a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed... Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it.”

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. “Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic,” she wrote on 31 December. “But I’m not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I’m referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years... Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn’t get more anti-Semitic than this.” She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. “I am in the midst of a genocide,” wrote Corrie, “which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible.”

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of “responsibility”. Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than “intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries”?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers’ Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs Nabokov: “The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are.”

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilised society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people’s courage and resistance and their “luminous humanity”, as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.

Protest the Murder in Gaza this Saturday!

Thursday, 15 January 2009, 11:53 am
Press Release: Justice for Palestine Christchurch
Christchurch Rally And March Against The Killing In Gaza This Saturday

This Saturday at 12 noon a diverse range of political, community and religious groups (as well as individuals) will be holding a demonstration against the brutal Israeli assault on the people of Gaza, starting outside the Canterbury Museum before marching to Cathedral Square.

The newly formed group "Justice for Palestine", which is organising the protest, is calling for an immediate end to the Israeli invasion which has so far claimed the lives of over 1 000 Palestinians - including over 400 women and children - and severely injured more that 5000 - mostly civilians. It is also calling for the lifting of the 2 year-old blockade of Gaza, which prevents the Palestinian population from receiving vital food and medical supplies as well as exercising the basic human right to freedom of movement.

"We are calling on people in Christchurch to turn out on Saturday to show their opposition to what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza," says Justice for Palestine spokesperson Tim Bowron. "We are also encouraging them to join in a complete boycott of all commercial and sporting ties with the state of Israel."

Responding to recent remarks by NZ Foreign Minister Murray McCully about the need for both Hamas and Israel to disengage, Mr. Bowron says that as far as the protest organisers are concerned "talk of a ceasefire is meaningless unless the injustices of the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the theft of Palestinian land are also addressed".

"There can be no lasting peace without justice for the Palestinian people."

ENDS

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Posters, posters, posters....

Some posters I have done here and there...

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