Naamloos

23 y/o - brussels

[deathandmysticism]

Buddhism in Christendom, or, Jesus, the Essene, 1887

[deathandmysticism]

[markv5]

Котики на закате 😊

Котики на закате 😊

[aiminoes]

Mike Davis on COVID-19: The monster is at the door

This history – especially the unknown consequences of interactions with malnutrition and existing infections - should warn us that COVID-19 might take a different and more deadly path in the slums of Africa and South Asia.  The danger to the global poor has been almost totally ignored by journalists and Western governments.  The only published piece that I’ve seen claims that because the urban population of West Africa is the world’s youngest, the pandemic should have only a mild impact.  In light of the 1918  experience, this is a foolish extrapolation.  No one knows what will happen over the coming weeks in Lagos, Nairobi, Karachi, or Kolkata.  The only certainty is that rich countries and rich classes will focus on saving themselves to the exclusion of international solidarity and medical aid.  Walls not vaccines: could there be a more evil template for the future?

[aiminoes]

Panagiotis Sotiris

The battle against HIV, the fight of stigma, the attempt to make people understand that it is not the disease of ‘high risk groups’, the demand for education on safe sex practices, the funding of the development of therapeutic measures and the access to public health services, would not have been possible without the struggle of movements such as ACT UP.

One might say that this was indeed an example of a biopolitics from below. And in the current conjuncture, social movements have a lot of room to act. They can ask of immediate measures to help public health systems withstand the extra burden caused by the pandemic. They can point to the need for solidarity and collective self-organization during such a crisis, in contrast to individualized “survivalist” panics. They can insist on state power (and coercion) being used to channel resources from the private sector to socially necessary directions. And they can demand social change as a life-saving exigency.

[aiminoes]

I told him that I’d met Andile Mngxitama. Roche seemed surprised and intrigued—Mngxitama was the clearest representation of the forces he had set himself against. I told him that, as I saw it, their politics weren’t really so different—that they both saw the post-apartheid South Africa as an unfinished revolutionary project, one that had brought nominal political equality but had left the basic economic reality of white supremacy intact. I said that I thought the white nationalists and the black radicals understood power as a much more concrete substance than Western liberals had been willing to see it over the past several decades. The two groups of South Africans didn’t see a world where constant growth and globalization would solve all problems by default. They saw power as a finite, divisible resource—to which the obvious corollary was that it was something that could be fought over, and won. I said that I thought this was more or less the way the world was headed, and I said that lately I found it easier to trust and talk to people who saw things in these clear terms, because I felt as though I’d grown up in a world that had been lying to itself, pretending that the realities of power and limited resources didn’t exist. And I said that, to be totally honest, there was a large part of me that wouldn’t care at all if history finally caught up to the white South Africans, the revolution finally came, and they were either forced to bend the knee or flee the country. But I knew that if white people in the United States—even liberals who like to congratulate themselves for being such fine antiracists—had to face an imminent, concrete, and irrevocable loss of economic and political power, they might suddenly find themselves feeling far less solidarity with the oppressed than they’d like to imagine. This is the true reality of confronting white supremacy that I’d learned in South Africa: it means white people giving things up.

https://harpers.org/archive/2019/03/the-myth-of-white-genocide-in-south-africa/

[aiminoes]

Under Duterte’s authoritarian rule, the Philippine left is faced with new difficulties.

[aiminoes]

[aiminoes]

They say [disapprovingly] that we were Cold Warriors. Yes, and a bloody good show, too. A lot of people weren’t Cold Warriors – and so much the worse for them. Robert Conquest, quoted by Jay Nordlinger in National Review, 9 December 2002

[aiminoes]

Adam Tooze’s book, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World has been one of the most-admired books on economics in recent years.

[aiminoes]

Torab Saleth: Revolution and counter-revolution in Iran, 1979

[aiminoes]

Bolsonarism and “Frontier Capitalism”

The rise of Jair Bolsonaro and his political agenda—mixing economic ultraliberalism with racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, and militaristic leanings (including the apology of dictatorship and torture)—provoked as much political unrest as theoretical helplessness.

[aiminoes]

Shame and Misery: A Materialist History of Gay Politics

With its origins in the onset of the free labor system, Gus Breslauer traces the history of gay politics from the development of capitalism, through WWII, Gay Liberation, AIDS, and Queer Theory.

[antoine-roquentin]

last friday, an agreement between israel and hamas meant that, for a brief period, oil and wages, paid by qatar, flowed into gaza. they were able to run their power plant for 12 hours a day, a shockingly high amount given how little power gaza usually receives. supposedly, this was in exchange for hamas’ police force keeping a lid on protests. israel’s true reasoning behind this deal was soon clear, when they dispatched a special forces assassination squad on sunday to kill a general in hamas’ military wing, the qassam brigades. hamas fought them off, losing 7 and killing one IDF soldier, which the guardian memorialized in the absurd headline “Israeli officer killed during Gaza raid in which 7 Palestinians die”, later replaced with “Eight dead in undercover Israeli operation in Gaza”.

the objective was clear. a night time covert raid would cause a hamas backlash which could then be painted in the international media as hamas breaking a ceasefire, given the international press pays no attention whatsoever to what palestinians say. instead, hamas fought off the raid and responded with an incredibly well-targeted ATGM strike. rather than kill all the soldiers on the bus, in the video above, the operators wait for each soldier (a bus full of soldiers is a legitimate target in war) to exit before striking, killing none and injuring one. israel referred to this bus as a civilian bus, but the message was clear. hamas has gained a level of military discipline it did not have before.

israel responded with the usual airstrikes on buildings in gaza. palestinians launched nearly 500 rockets and mortars in response, all from a central command uniting every faction in gaza, something that has never before been witnessed and shocking israeli commanders. the new strategic prowess of hamas was encapsulated in this quote: “If we had intensified the attacks, rockets would have been fired at Tel Aviv,” senior cabinet officials said. overall, hamas managed to prevent a war that would have been seen as regular only a few years ago.

defense minister avigdor lieberman jumped ship right after agreeing to a renewed ceasefire in private. he saw the chance to get the jump on netanyahu by proclaiming himself the renewed war party. israel looks weak agreeing to a ceasefire without major bleeding by the palestinian side, but it would look weaker if it took serious casualties. netanyahu knows he’d suffer going into early elections if this were the case, so he agreed to continue the prior arrangement, lieberman, however, realized he could steal votes from war-supporters if he criticized netanyahu as weak, and left his position to do so. netanyahu now has to appoint his biggest opponent on the right, naftali bennett, to the post of defense minister to avoid an election.  he will probably accede, but reap the consequences quite soon, given that his coalition now only has a one seat majority. israel’s rapidly moving between a rock (the israeli populace’s appetite for war and ethnic cleansing) and a hard place (the strategic position of hamas and hezbollah).

[aiminoes]

'The Workers Invented a Concept for Socialist Transformation'

On November 9, 1918, the revolution began in Germany. We spoke with historian Ralf Hoffrogge about the role of the "Revolutionary Stewards."

[aiminoes]

A Revolution to Remember • Commune

One hundred years later, the forgotten German Revolution remains a powerful image of what might have been.

[aiminoes]

Brazil's March to Barbarism

Brazil and Latin America have been shook by the stunning results for the far right in Brazil's election as well as the horrifying prospect of a Bolsonaro Presidency. How did we get here and what can we expect in the months and years to come?

Against Bolsonaro the candidate of the Left is Fernando Haddad, a moderate politician from the right-wing of the PT. Jacobin in its recent interview describes Haddad as someone who essentially painted bike lanes and is now the likely defender of democracy in Brazil. They briefly mention the 2013 protests as being “anti-corruption” and so linking them to the right-wing anti-pt protests which emerged in 2015 and afterwards. However it was precisely Haddad’s austerity measures and specifically the price hikes in transportation which provoked that initial wave of protests in 2013 that marked a popular rupture with the PT. Haddad did not hesitate to side with the Military Police and the right wing PSDB Governor Alckmin as police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and executed mass arrests of protesters. 2013 marked a turning point as the PT found itself incapable of reconciling the dictates of capital for more austerity with the interests of the Party’s social base and supporters.

[aiminoes]

Brazil's March to Barbarism

Brazil and Latin America have been shook by the stunning results for the far right in Brazil's election as well as the horrifying prospect of a Bolsonaro Presidency. How did we get here and what can we expect in the months and years to come?

Against Bolsonaro the candidate of the Left is Fernando Haddad, a moderate politician from the right-wing of the PT. Jacobin in its recent interview describes Haddad as someone who essentially painted bike lanes and is now the likely defender of democracy in Brazil. They briefly mention the 2013 protests as being “anti-corruption” and so linking them to the right-wing anti-pt protests which emerged in 2015 and afterwards. However it was precisely Haddad’s austerity measures and specifically the price hikes in transportation which provoked that initial wave of protests in 2013 that marked a popular rupture with the PT. Haddad did not hesitate to side with the Military Police and the right wing PSDB Governor Alckmin as police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and executed mass arrests of protesters. 2013 marked a turning point as the PT found itself incapable of reconciling the dictates of capital for more austerity with the interests of the Party’s social base and supporters.