[L-I] Congo
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 16:27:16 + To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: James Heartfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip The assassination of Congo president Laurent Kabila was greeted with ill-disguised glee amongst Western commentators. It was not always thus. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described Kabila as a 'beacon of hope' and a 'strong new leader' when he took power from the ageing dictator Mobutu in 1997. Then Kabila was supported by the State Department's favorite regional dictators Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda - the three lionised as a new generation of African leaders. But since then Kabila, Museveni and Kagame fell out, and the Rwandan army that had taken him to power, took arms against him, plunging the country into war. Most surreal of all the comments on Kabila is the bandying about of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's assessment of Kabila's role in the Congo wars of the 1960s. Very few present-day politicians would have met the Cuban guerilla leader's exacting standards, but Guevara's critical comments on Kabila are regularly quoted by newspapers that have no sympathy with Guevara's goal of ridding the Congo of imperialism. Indeed, Richard Gott, who republished Guevara's Congo diaries as a blast against Kabila at the same time charges him with having 'alienated foreign investors by refusing to make payments on the gigantic foreign debt of $14bn incurred by his profligate predecessor' (Guardian January 19, 2001). The truth is that the future of the Congo continues to be decided by forces outside its borders. On independence, the United Nations' own envoy Conor Cruise O'Brien charged the UN with complicity in the murder of radical prime minister Patrice Lumumba. The United States backed dictator Mobutu's regime as a base for attacks on the radical nationalist movement in Angola. Kabila's own rise to power was not popular, but simply better supported. His subsequent fall was decided not in the Congo, but Washington. -- James Heartfield ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Congo
En relacin a [L-I] Congo, el 21 Jan 01, a las 11:52, Yoshie Furuhashi dijo: Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 16:27:16 + To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: James Heartfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip The assassination of Congo president Laurent Kabila was greeted with ... Well, I know that not everybody on L-I has a liking for Heartfield, and yours truly has personally clashed with him on first acquaintance. But this posting is at least as enlightening as Patrick's. Never runs smooth the path of true love, or something like that... Nstor Miguel Gorojovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] (Spanish) A Catholic physician against the World Bank and its neoliberal health plans
Cdes. and friends, A central piece of the offensive of De la Ra against the working class is his attack on the so-called "Obras Sociales", basically the health system administered by the Unions since the very good centralized public health system was systematically destroyed in Argentina after the mid-60s. This answer of the unions to the needs of their affiliates provided a good terrain for graft and corruption of many of the union leaders, but at the same time offered a fairly good service to the workers, who would otherwise been unable to pay for them. The source of riches that this mass of services represents has long been targeted by the multinational corporations of health and insurances, as well as by reactionary politicians who try to diminish the importance of the unions in our everyday life. This will be a bone of contention during 2001, and is a part of the whole attack against the unions that the government is waging (following the steps of Alfonsn and Menem, not to speak of the different military-oligarchic dictatorships after 1955, 1966 and 1976). I append an article, written by a Catholic medical doctor, which appeared in a very important newspaper of Crdoba, Argentina. The article is useful on many fronts, because it is also an exponent of the general ideas of the union leaders in Argentina today, and their criticisms to the capitalist system such as it is. I sometimes believe there is a very short leap to give. But this leap is, of course, terribly hard to be given. Article follows: OBRAS SOCIALES SINDICALES: MS QUE UNA CAJA. (Nota de opinin del mdico Jorge DallAglio, publicada en el matutino La Voz del Interior de la ciudad de Crdoba, en la edicin del 18 de enero del actual). Existen dos grandes concepciones en el desarrollo de la forma en que los hombres fueron dando respuesta a la resolucin de las contingencias propias de la vida. Y ambas obedecen a las corrientes filosficas que han caracterizado la puja de la humanidad hasta nuestros das. Darwin y su teora sobre la evolucin de las especies, dio respaldo cientfico al liberalismo tanto econmico como poltico, en la medida en que, al sostener que la preservacin de las especies se fundaba en la preeminencia del ms fuerte sobre el ms dbil, justificaba que la parte supuestamente ms capacitada deba ser la depositaria de los destinos del conjunto al que perteneca, y que su seleccin como tal se alcanzaba por la confrontacin y la competencia. En este marco, la unidad es el resultado de la compulsin y la totalizacin se alcanza por exclusin. La lgica de esta visin es el egosmo como motor del ordenamiento social y por el cual uno hace por uno a expensas de los otros, convencido de que est obrando a favor de los dems. El resultado ha sido, en lo econmico, un creciente proceso de concentracin de la propiedad, tanto de las riquezas como del dinero y del conocimiento, con su contrapartida de grandes sectores del pueblo sumergido en la pobreza y la exclusin. En lo poltico, con sistemas en los que la decisin se concentra en las minoras y a las mayoras les queda slo el papel de meros convalidantes; y, en lo social, la ddiva, que niega el derecho de los hombres a su dignificacin como personas, institucionalizada mediante la beneficencia privada o el asistencialismo del Estado. Concepciones diferentes. Por su parte, la concepcin cristiana de la vida se basa en que los mejores desarrollos son en aquellas especies y experiencias humanas en que se apel a la colaboracin social y al apoyo como manera de resolucin de los conflictos propios de las formas concretas de la existencia. En este marco conceptual, todas las partes son importantes a la hora de la realizacin del conjunto y tiene como presupuesto el reconocimiento de la identidad de cada una de ellas a partir de identificar la funcin que cumple en dicho conjunto. La consecuencia es que la unidad es por integracin y la totalizacin por armona y complementacin de intereses. Esta visin se basa en la solidaridad y el resultado es, en la economa, la tendencia hacia la propiedad distribuida; en lo social, propender a la dignificacin del hombre como expresin del derecho elites sirven en su instrumentacin y desarrollo. El liberalismo tuvo una etapa en la que el capital estaba prioritariamente comprometido con la produccin de bienes y, desde esta perspectiva, tena una relacin interactuada con los pueblos, las naciones y la naturaleza. La concentracin del capital, en la que se basa la economa capitalista, era el resultado de la consideracin del trabajo como una mercanca sujeta, como ellas, a la especulacin del mercado, y que por lo tanto haca posible la apropiacin de la plusvala. En estas circunstancias el hombre, en s mismo, adquira un valor econmico y por ello poda ser marginado pero nunca excluido. Por el contrario, dicho valor econmico, fundado en la necesidad de incrementar su capacidad productiva y la puja desencadenada por los trabajadores por participar de los beneficios del desarrollo
Re: [L-I] Congo
Well, I know that not everybody on L-I has a liking for Heartfield, and yours truly has personally clashed with him on first acquaintance. But this posting is at least as enlightening as Patrick's. Never runs smooth the path of true love, or something like that... Nstor Miguel Gorojovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] On the back of the November 2000 issue of the University of Kent Newsletter is a diary item by Frank Fredi--Heartfield's guru--about worries on the eve of his appearance on British radio. It reads in part: 'Tuesday: I am in a quiet state of agitation. The headlines are dominated by the outbreak of violence in the Middle East and no matter how hard I try, I cannot remember the name of the right-wing Israeli politician, whose visit to the Muslim shrine (whose name I can also not recall), sparked the whole thing off. 'Wednesday: More violence in Israel. But things are looking up -- the debate on sex education is in the news. That's more my kind of issue. Now if only there was another nice controversy about something with a sociological edge. 'Thursday: I am feeling depressed. The violence in the Middle East dominates the news. The media have dropped the sex education debate.' Despite their pleasant demeanor on various progressive Internet forums, people like James Heartfield are Thatcherites who choose to use Marxish verbiage as the need arises. Their big concern is "freedom"--freedom to say whatever they like just like P.J. O' Rourke or any other libertarian. Or the freedom for big corporations to make a profit without interference from Green groups. To try to salvage their reputation because they oppose intervention in the Congo makes about as much sense as supporting George W. Bush who is also committed verbally to get out of the "humanitarian interventions" business. Heartfield's LM was the British counterpart of such outfits as the Reason Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute or the Cato Institute. The only difference between the Furedi cult and these groups is that he had dispensed with the Cold War rhetoric. When you stop and think about it, that kind of rhetoric had outlived its usefulness anyhow. The LM'ers have formed a new outfit called the Institute of Ideas to replace the magazine. One of their first activities was to sponsor a debate on smoking with Forest, a pro-smoking group funded by the tobacco industry. One of the co-organizers was Dr Masden Pirie of the free market Adam Smith Institute, who also functioned as chairperson. According to the Guardian newspaper, Pirie said "We get on very well with these people." Some of the groups that operate under the aegis of the Institute of Ideas are: Families for Freedom, Freedom Law, the Association of British Drivers and Audacity.org, a body opposed to restraints on "devolopment". If you go to the audacity.org website, you will find them describing themselves in the following terms: "We are a research company of industry professionals determined to question assumptions and limitations in British construction, with the aim of advancing development practice to make our own lives easier." In other words, this is the kind of outfit that gets scrutinized by Mike Wallace on Sixty Minutes every so often after a building collapses from inferior materials or construction techniques. Is this who Marxists want to network with? What kind of Marxist would want to network with these people? Another friend of the Institute for Ideas is the Reason Foundation which has been promoting the corporate takeover of schools in the US. Both its founder and senior editor accepted invitations to talk at ex-LM events - and paid their own way to come. If you go to their website, you will find proposals on privatizing foster care agencies and airports, screeds against global warming and other goodies. Their leading writer, the syndicated columnist Sandra Postrel, is author of the libertarian book "The Enemies of Freedom" and frequently talks at the Hudson Institute. A group affiliated with Institute for Ideas has set up shop in Frankfurt, Germany and works with former cold warriors and provides "research" that attacks environmentalists and social democratic governments. In Italy the director of something called the Progress Consultancy, who was a writer for LM, writes articles stating how hard it is for business to operate in a risk-obsessed society. Ex-LM'ers continue to burrow away on Great Britain's Channel Four and BBC, most recently arguing on the latter's Counterblast program that organic foods were more dangerous than conventional foods. This idea was first raised by the Hudson institute which is funded by Monsanto, among others. Appearing alongside our friends from LM was leading pro-GM scientist Professor Anthony Trewavas of Edinburgh university, who has several articles on Monsanto's website and will be at one of the Institute for Idea's debates. Ex-LM has forged strong links with internet companies, including cSscape, a US
Re: [L-I] Congo
Richard Gott, per contra, is not only a real marxist and revolutionary, and a man who worked successfully for the KGB while employed as a journo at the Grauniad, he is also a man who put his life where his money is not once but at least twice. Of course, this validates nothing in his views about the Congo. Gott: Did he not just write on H.Chavez? Any reviews on the book? I've thought about getting a hold of it- I am intrigued to find out more about this new Bolivarist. As for Kabila, he was just another slave-selling SOB and we should not make a martyr out of his fat carcass. IMHO. We should learn, IMHO, not to worry about "martyr or villain" dynamics, but rather figure out if he indeed *was* whacked by people choked at him for not paying off western debts,... that seems like a good plan on my part. Kabila seems part of a new tradition of the lefts very own "3rd way", seperate from that of Blair, Schroeder, etc. That way being where the struggle is an attempt to come up with small incremental gains like Chavez' that are sufficient to actually improve less the lives of people, but the conditions for struggle. Again, IMHO, it seems that the ability for an African leader to squeeze in such little gains in sovereignty are not to be allowed. Africa is still being crushed on the bottom, and treated far harsher than all the others comibined. Macdonald Mark ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Map of IMF resistance (IMC)
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18561 --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Notes From the Hyena's Belly
New York Times 21 January 2001 Fear and Famine This first-person account of the horrors of Ethiopia interweaves politics, family history and traditional tales. By ROB NIXON Nega Mezlekia's powerful memoir stands as a reminder of how media images of Africa can never substitute for African stories. Television has habituated us to an Africa of impersonal disaster through helicopter shots that hover somewhere between overview and oversight. Such news flashes offer viewers in placid, wealthy lands the option of responding with pity or indifference. But, unlike Mezlekia, they cannot take us beneath the skin of experience. An Ethiopian who now lives in Canada, Mezlekia doesn't just show us the spectacle of famine: he reveals how it feels to shuffle across the desert in a column of 20,000 refugees while Somali militias are shelling you and your family. ''Notes From the Hyena's Belly'' recounts this ordeal in a manner that suggests both the challenge and the testimonial value of such a memoir: ''Apathy in the face of continual violence is something someone who has never lived through a war cannot understand. . . . When my family and I were seeking refuge, traveling slowly on the road to Harar, the heat of midafternoon was broken only by the treble whirr of falling bombs and the sight of the dead. People had long since ceased to huddle under their limbs at the sound. . . . Their frail limbs could not stop the bombs, their ears could not tell them where the bombs would fall. Death was random and continual, and people simply got on with what was left to them: the long wait in line for a bucket of water, the preparation of what food there was to be found.'' Mezlekia's memoir traces the years from his birth in 1958 through his flight in 1983 to the Netherlands and on to Canada. Most North American families would not experience in four generations the scale of disaster that befalls his Amhara family in two decades. But the story that emerges is more than a saga of compressed calamity, for Mezlekia is as alert to the way the fabulous seeps into the everyday as he is to his people's quotidian sufferings. From the early pages, a lively cast of characters tumbles forth, a cast worthy of Gabriel Garca Mrquez. We meet a local midwife who matter-of-factly helps an angel deliver its children ''with wings intact''; a nun fluent in ''the language of the unborn and the dreams of the dead''; and the terminally idle Ms. Yetaferu, whose inventive piety requires her to honor ''263 saints' days, 52 Sundays, 9 other Christian holidays, 13 Adbar days, 36 Wukabi days . . . and 12 days to worship her ancestors' spirits.'' We listen to Mezlekia's teacher as he conducts his lessons seated atop a giant tortoise shell, the stumps of his amputated legs hidden in a sack. And we're introduced to his headmaster, who seems a mere outgrowth of the ''persuader,'' the whip he has fashioned from a bull's penis. But no human inhabitant of the city of Jijiga, the author's childhood home, is as memorable as the hyena armies that descend nightly from the surrounding mountains: ''The streets of my childhood were deserted after 9 o'clock, with no street dog, beggar or lizard in sight. It looked as though the entire town was under siege. . . . The hyenas . . . would devour you, your shoes, bracelets, linen and anything else you had touched. Beggars knew this; they might go hungry, but they always had shelter.'' As Mezlekia's teacher observes, ''Homelessness is a vivid indication of a shortage of hyenas.'' Despite the hyena gangs, the persuader's lashings and sundry low-flying devils, Mezlekia's childhood comes to seem in retrospect a kind of paradise. Nothing could prepare either author or reader for the wreckage to come, as wave after wave of human marauders tears Ethiopian society apart. By skillfully interleaving personal history, politics and Amhara fables, Mezlekia has created a remarkable account of what it takes (luck, among other things) to survive the complete shattering of civil society. To protest the feudal cruelties of Ethiopia's land tenure system, Mezlekia himself becomes a teenage warrior. He joins a guerrilla army of dissident Somalis only to find his life at risk from his Amhara-hating comrades in arms. ''Notes From the Hyena's Belly'' may sound like a frontline missive from a remote society. However, the story that unfolds has a considerable amount to do with America. While Mezlekia shuns polemics, he shows how the Horn of Africa's appeal to cold war strategists exacerbated the region's serial calamities. In a cynical turn, the Soviets and Americans traded client states, so that in quick succession the United States was arming Ethiopia against a Somali dictator's scientific socialist fantasies, then reversing its support, embracing Somali tyranny against its now Soviet-backed Ethiopian equivalent. Between them, the superpowers helped sundry juntas, dictators and feudal tyrants transform the Horn's poorly armed
[L-I] Richard Gott, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela (was Congo)
Mac says: Gott: Did he not just write on H.Chavez? Any reviews on the book? I've thought about getting a hold of it- I am intrigued to find out more about this new Bolivarist. I haven't read _In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela_, so I'll welcome reviews of comments on it from L-I posters: Here's an article by Richard Gott on Chavez: * The Guardian (London) September 12, 2000 SECTION: Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 22 HEADLINE: Comment Analysis: This man means business: One person above all is responsible for the recent oil price hike - President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela BYLINE: Richard Gott The crisis over petrol prices in Britain and elsewhere is almost entirely due to the myopia of governments and markets over the past 18 months in failing to recognise the emergence of a new star in the global political firmament. The youthful Hugo Chavez, aged 46, elected president of Venezuela in December 1998, is the principal figure behind the price rise. Last year he singlehandedly revived the moribund organisation of petroleum exporting countries, Opec, by calling for and securing a cut in oil production, and this year he has singlemindedly persuaded its members to stand firm in defence of a reasonable price. He recently toured all the Opec countries and sought agreement on an optimum price of Dollars 25 a barrel. He will host a great jamboree of Opec presidents in Caracas at the end of the month, only the second such event ever held. This man means business. The west has had plenty of warning of what he has been up to, and where he is coming from, but blinded by the arrogance of globalisation it has taken no steps to prepare anyone for the dramatic developments of recent days. Although Opec has usually appeared to western eyes as an organisation dominated by Arabs, it was actually conceived and founded by Venezuela in the heyday of what used to be called the Third World. The countries of Opec, for Venezuelans, constitute a large extended family. In the 1990s, when Venezuela was ruled by unpopular governments that signed up to the dominant strand of neo-liberalism that spread like a plague across the whole of South America, Opec was abandoned and ignored. Venezuela was one of the great cheaters of the organisation, ignoring the quotas set, and bringing in foreign companies to help increase production through the development of new fields. When the world oil price dropped below Dollars 10 a barrel, the west fondly imagined that the exporting countries - many of them perceived as "rogue states", like Iran, Iraq and Libya - were permanently defeated and that this low price would be the established pattern of the future. Colonel Chavez - for he was originally a military officer - had other ideas. Petroleos de Venezuela, the state oil company nationalised in 1975, is the country's chief source of wealth. Chavez needed a steady and larger flow of income from the oil wells to finance his ambitious plans to transform the country and to satisfy his voters in the poorest section of society. He was well aware that his radical rhetoric, avowedly hostile to what he describes as "savage neo-liberalism" imposed on Latin America by the US, would do him no favours with nervous foreign investors. He decided to play the oil card. At an Opec meeting in March 1999, his oil minister, Ali Rodriguez Araque, was instructed to announce that Venezuela would in future respect the cutbacks in production already agreed, and would support a further cutback of 4%. It was "a change of 180 degrees" in the policy of previous governments, Chavez proudly announced. Ali Rodriguez is now Opec's president, and the oil price has risen from Dollars 10 to over Dollars 30 a barrel. Although the Latin American military are usually remembered for the rightwing dictators that they spawn, Chavez belongs to another tradition, that of radical junior officers, in touch with the raw conscripts from the peasantry, whose revolutionary politics are fuelled by anger at the degenerate state of the nation. Chavez is also an heir to a civilian tradition of rebellion in Latin America, that of the leftwing guerrillas of the 1960s inspired by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Some of his advisers were once associated with a Chinese-oriented split from the Venezuelan Communist Party who went on to make lasting contacts with radicals in the Arab world in the 1970s. Ali Rodriguez himself was a guerrilla in the 1960s, before becoming a labour lawyer and an oil expert for one of the smaller radical parties. One member of that generation, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, "Carlos the Jackal", famous among other things for an armed attack on Opec headquarters in Vienna in December 1975, now languishes in a French jail. Chavez is a good friend of Fidel Castro and a frequent visitor to Cuba, and his ambitions are as grandiose as those of the Cuban leader.
[L-I] Democratising Africa
Mine says: Still, a discussion on Congo is a slight improvement for liberterian charecters like J.H however double fucked up his politics is ... Here's another piece by James Heartfield on Africa: * The Week Ending 22 October 2000 Democratising Africa: 10 years on In October 1990 the expeditionary force of the Rwandan Patriotic Front into Rwanda was shattered by the superior forces of President Juvenal Habyarimana. The RPF's popular Commanding Officer Fred Rwigyema was killed early in the fighting, by a stray bullet, or executed by jealous rivals. RPF leader Paul Kagame cut short a visit to Fort Leavenworth in the USA to take command of the forces in the field. But in the next 10 years Kagame's RPF not only took power in Rwanda, but swept across central Africa, overthrowing the ancien regime in Congo. Just three years ago, Kagame was feted by the West as one of a new generation of African leaders including his old friend, Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni and the newly installed Congolese president Laurent Kabila. Just this year, though, the Kagame regime looked exhausted and threadbare, rent by defections, condemned by human rights activists and locked in a protracted war of succession in the Congo, fighting both Kabila and Museveni's forces. It is unlikely that the RPF and its allies would have enjoyed any success without the influence of the West. At the end of the Cold War, the United States and the former colonial powers of Europe all reworked their foreign policy with very specific consequences for a number of African regimes. As long as the Soviet Union was willing to provide assistance to radical nationalists, the West backed local strongmen, like Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko and Rwanda's Juvenal Habyarimana to stem the nationalist tide. As the challenge of radical nationalism ebbed, the West took the opportunity to destabilise its former allies in a policy euphemistically called 'democratisation'. In Uganda, the United States already had a useful ally in Yoweri Museveni, whose rebellion had overthrown the democratically elected independence leader Milton Obote. Museveni suspended party politics in Uganda, but he did know how to play up to the rhetoric of democratisation. A large part of Museveni's US-trained officer corps were exiles from Rwanda, part of the persecuted Tutsi minority. Rwigyema had been Commander-in-Chief of Museveni's army, Kagame head of military security. The RPF was effectively the high command of the Ugandan army. Meanwhile in Rwanda, the creaking dictatorship of Habyarimana was put under massive pressure by its European sponsor, France, to recognise opposition parties. At the time social progress in health and education was being reversed by a collapse in coffee prices, and the International Monetary Fund offered loans on conditions which included democratisation. But democratisation did not include elections, only 'opposition parties', that owed their influence to Western sponsorship. Further, Hayarimana's new cabinet was obliged to negotiate with the defeated RPF in Arusha, Tanzania, while it was still raiding across the border. The destabilisation of Rwanda was all the more pointed given the ethnic divisions between the different protagonists. Historically, Rwanda's Tutsi minority had provided the country's ruling elite (as it still did in neighbouring Burundi). But in 1959 the soon to be independent country launched a 'social revolution' in which the Tutsis were victimised for their excessive wealth and power. A deeply conservative, overwhelmingly catholic one-party state displaced popular resentment onto the former Tutsi elite, with successive persecutions. Now the exiled Tutsis were invading the country as leaders of the RPF, and the West was demanding that they be given a leading role in the cabinet. Habyarimana bought time by letting his imposed cabinet negotiate away his authority at Arusha, while galvanising opposition to the deal at home - which meant stirring up hostility to the Tutsi invaders on ethnic grounds. Despite the best efforts of the RPF to garner support from Hutus opposed to Habyarimana, they remained not only predominantly a Tutsi force, but predominantly an exile army as well. The RPF kept up the pressure, making ever more extravagant demands in Arusha - half of the army to be RPF, Kagame to hold the interior ministry with the president shorn of all powers. Outside the RPF broke the ceasefire in March 1991, February 1992 and August 1993 (Prunier 135, 174, 196). Tanzanian authorities recorded president Yoweri Museveni commanding the RPF soldiers 'Don't sign the peace agreement. I want you back [on the battlefield] immediately' (Tanzanian newspaper The Mirror, No 126, second issue, May 1994). The fateful step taken by the RPF was to seek to destabilise the back-sliding Habyarimana regime. In neighbouring Burundi, where the first ever Hutu president Melchior Ndadaye had just been elected, Tutsi officers allied to
Re: [L-I] Democratising Africa
Yoshie/Heartfield: In Uganda, the United States already had a useful ally in Yoweri Museveni, whose rebellion had overthrown the democratically elected independence leader Milton Obote. Democratically elected independence leader Milton Obote? What a joke. Heartfield's attack on Museveni because he has refused to schedule elections seems misdirected. I recommend that people serious about the problems of Africa take a look at Basil Davidson's "The Black Man's Burden", which explains exactly why there is more going on in Uganda than suspending elections. "Yet it was in this dire situation, however paradoxically, that some of the worst sufferers from misrule and militarized mayhem had begun to present evidence of social renewal. A regime of reconstruction in Uganda headed by Yoweri Museveni after years of strong-arm misery under Idi Amin or Milton Obote was a case in point, rare but by no means unique. This regime of Musevenis National Resistance Movement reached power late in the 1980s when the whole of Uganda was in the last extremes of disintegration, and the odds against its survival, let alone recovery, had to remain heavy. Yet its early years into the 1990s produced the makings of peace and reconciliation where no hope of either had existed before. Fear retreated. The possibility of civil government instead of executive abuse began to emerge. Genuine moves toward the democratization of executive power thrust up their challenge to despair. It was even as though Ugandas long years of clientelist tyranny had cleared the way for grass-roots political life to push a harvest of renewal up through soil that had seemed irretrievably ruined. "Resistance committees at village, parish and district level have been encouraged by the National Resistance Movement to elect local leaders," Victoria Brittain reported in 1987. These began to form themselves into nine-person local executives which "take care of community security and the distribution of basic commodities such as sugar, salt or soap, which had simply vanished with the collapse of [Ugandas] economic and social infrastructure." And as may really happen in times of renewal "at the base of society," all this began to create "new local initiatives, which range from brick-making, maize processing, brewing, to co-operative shops, football pitches and chess clubs for youths" who "used to roam about with the soldiers, fighting, thieving, raping, outside any family or village life." Yet all this was then found to be more than a flash in the pan of optimism. Three years later Britain would report that "the old strongmen" of Ugandas statist structures had been successfully "challenged by the resistance committees, many of them made up of peasants," to a point at which "local decision-making, including the settlement of land disputes, has given the committees control over the lives of their communities." If Yoshie wants to understand Africa, I'd advise her to read Basil Davidson--the author of 27 books on the continent and a radical--rather than James Heartfield, who writes nothing but puff pieces on LBO-Talk. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Learning (was Re: Congo)
I don't recommend the mode of argument -- if you can call it that -- that you are employing here. In many circles, purist leftists tried to discredit _everything_ that Michel Chossudovsky wrote because he cited a couple of right-wing sources in his articles, etc.; _all_ info provided by Jared Israel because of his willingness to share the podium with Justin Raimondo, etc.; etc. Your argument is similar to their tactics. Chussodovsky is a revolutionary. Furedi is a libertarian. That's what he told the Guardian newspaper. Look at Yoshie trying to dissolve the class line between us and a libertarian who sets up conferences with a shadowy 'intelligence-gathering' consulting company paying top dollar to set up a table in the lobby. Do you think the bourgeois press is lying when it states that all these people from Furedi's group are collaborating with ultrarightists? One should be willing to learn about Z from even those with whom one disagrees on A-Y; and learning about Z from someone doesn't imply the acceptance of his or her views on A-Y. It's as simple as that. Unfortunately, few Western leftists are capable of doing so. We have a long way to go before rebuilding the Left. Empty platitudes. Rebuilding the left? Everybody in Great Britain agrees that the LM cult is a renegade from Marxism. Even Phil Ferguson, their erstwhile supporter, says that they are no longer part of the left. Perhaps we have disagreements about what the "left" means, Yoshie. People who network with the Wise Use movement are not part of the left, Yoshie. The Committee in Defense of Private Property placed the Furedi-ite Channel 4 documentary attacking the Greens on their website, while their leader Ron Arnold wrote for LM magazine. This is the same Ron Arnold who worked for Reverend Moon. Is Ron Arnold part of the left? Exactly who on the left has associated themselves with this cult other than Doug Henwood? Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Re: Learning (was Re: Congo)
Exactly who on the left has associated themselves with this cult other than Doug Henwood? Louis Proyect Should we discredit Thomas Deichmann his article "The Picture that Fooled the World," for instance, because he published it in LM, though he also published it in _NATO in the Balkans_? Should we also dismiss everything that Jared Israel has said, because he cited the article in LM (e.g. http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~richardj/Docs/a_truly_heroic_resistance.htm), decried the miscarriage of justice in the libel suit against it (at http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/of.htm.), etc., even though he later criticized LM Deichmann's legal defense strategies (at http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/missing.htm)? Try to keep an open mind. There is no necessity to dismiss anything everything published by James Heartfield LM in order to remain critical of their views on feminism, the environment, etc. The same goes for any other author or publication. One culls useful info everywhere it appears, including works by bourgeois journalists, scientists, government employees, etc. Yoshie ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: Teaching: [L-I] Learning (was Re: Congo)
Try to grow upYoshie and stop teaching how to build the left to old timers like Lou. If your pretension is to recover the reputation of a right wing cult--LM-- and its long time defenders like J. H., I would just recommend you to improve on where you left on pen-l. Why to post J.H here, but not someone else more useful to the purpose of L-I? You know that it will receive nothing but endless controversies about a figure who is not even on the list. This being the case, Lou's criticism of H was right on target. Frankly, I don't know what your problem was with Lou's reply, but I found your "Learning" post opposition for the sake of opposing. If I were you, I would simply engage in what Lou was trying to say. in any case, I was just checking my e-mail although I am supposed to be technically away. co-moderator Mine Louis Proyect wrote: I don't recommend the mode of argument -- if you can call it that -- that you are employing here. In many circles, purist leftists tried to discredit _everything_ that Michel Chossudovsky wrote because he cited a couple of right-wing sources in his articles, etc.; _all_ info provided by Jared Israel because of his willingness to share the podium with Justin Raimondo, etc.; etc. Your argument is similar to their tactics. Chussodovsky is a revolutionary. Furedi is a libertarian. That's what he told the Guardian newspaper. Look at Yoshie trying to dissolve the class line between us and a libertarian who sets up conferences with a shadowy 'intelligence-gathering' consulting company paying top dollar to set up a table in the lobby. Do you think the bourgeois press is lying when it states that all these people from Furedi's group are collaborating with ultrarightists? One should be willing to learn about Z from even those with whom one disagrees on A-Y; and learning about Z from someone doesn't imply the acceptance of his or her views on A-Y. It's as simple as that. Unfortunately, few Western leftists are capable of doing so. We have a long way to go before rebuilding the Left. Empty platitudes. Rebuilding the left? Everybody in Great Britain agrees that the LM cult is a renegade from Marxism. Even Phil Ferguson, their erstwhile supporter, says that they are no longer part of the left. Perhaps we have disagreements about what the "left" means, Yoshie. People who network with the Wise Use movement are not part of the left, Yoshie. The Committee in Defense of Private Property placed the Furedi-ite Channel 4 documentary attacking the Greens on their website, while their leader Ron Arnold wrote for LM magazine. This is the same Ron Arnold who worked for Reverend Moon. Is Ron Arnold part of the left? Exactly who on the left has associated themselves with this cult other than Doug Henwood? Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international -- Mine Aysen Doyran Ph.D Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 Shop online without a credit card http://www.rocketcash.com RocketCash, a NetZero subsidiary ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Learning (was Re: Congo)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Lou writes: Well, I know that not everybody on L-I has a liking for Heartfield, and yours truly has personally clashed with him on first acquaintance. But this posting is at least as enlightening as Patrick's. Never runs smooth the path of true love, or something like that... Nstor Miguel Gorojovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] On the back of the November 2000 issue of the University of Kent Newsletter is a diary item by Frank Fredi--Heartfield's guru--about worries on the eve of his appearance on British radio. It reads in part: Yoshie said: I don't recommend the mode of argument -- if you can call it that -- What don't you recommend? Lou is presenting an historical information above with an argument. Relax and try to engage in it..His information is fully welcome. that you are employing here. In many circles, purist leftists tried to discredit _everything_ that Michel Chossudovsky wrote because he cited a couple of right-wing sources in his articles, etc.; _all_ info provided by Jared Israel because of his willingness to share the podium with Justin Raimondo, etc.; etc. Your argument is similar to their tactics. One should be willing to learn about Z from even those with whom one disagrees on A-Y; and learning about Z from someone doesn't imply the acceptance of his or her views on A-Y. It's as simple as that. Unfortunately, few Western leftists are capable of doing so. We have a long way to go before rebuilding the Left. Yoshie opposing for the sake of opposing, it seems... Mine ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international -- Mine Aysen Doyran Ph.D Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 Shop online without a credit card http://www.rocketcash.com RocketCash, a NetZero subsidiary ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Re: Learning (was Re: Congo)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Exactly who on the left has associated themselves with this cult other than Doug Henwood? Louis Proyect Should we discredit Thomas Deichmann his article "The Picture that Fooled the World," for instance, because he published it in LM, though he also published it in _NATO in the Balkans_? Should we also dismiss everything that Jared Israel has said, because he cited the article in LM (e.g. http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~richardj/Docs/a_truly_heroic_resistance.htm), There is a fine difference between "citing" and "defending". You are endlessly trying to save the reputation of LM, whereas others are not. co-moderator Mine decried the miscarriage of justice in the libel suit against it (at http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/of.htm.), etc., even though he later criticized LM Deichmann's legal defense strategies (at http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/missing.htm)? Try to keep an open mind. There is no necessity to dismiss anything everything published by James Heartfield LM in order to remain critical of their views on feminism, the environment, etc. The same goes for any other author or publication. One culls useful info everywhere it appears, including works by bourgeois journalists, scientists, government employees, etc. Yoshie ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international -- Mine Aysen Doyran Ph.D Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 Shop online without a credit card http://www.rocketcash.com RocketCash, a NetZero subsidiary ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Re: Democratising Africa
If Yoshie wants to understand Africa, I'd advise her to read Basil Davidson--the author of 27 books on the continent and a radical--rather than James Heartfield, who writes nothing but puff pieces on LBO-Talk. Louis Proyect _The Black Man's Burden_ was published in 1992. Has Basil Davidson written about the recent developments in Burundi, Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, etc.? I haven't read Davidson's article (in French) cited by Franois Ngolet below: Basil Davidson, "Kabila, une chance pour l'Afrique," _Jeune Afrique_ 14 Mai 1997 _L'Express_ 22 May 1997. It seems that Davidson had a rosier view of Kabila than Mark did. * Africa Today 47.1 (2000) 65-85 African and American Connivance in Congo-Zaire Franois Ngolet Abstract: Kabila's power takeover has been interpreted by political analysts as orchestrated by African countries fighting rebel groups using the Zairian territory as a basis for action. This regime change has also been presented as a victory of the United States over France for the control of the central African region. This article will demonstrate that this powershift was a combination of African countries, intervention on the ground and the action of the US diplomacy in the international scene. The African engagement is even stronger in the second Congolese civil war, but has not eliminated the US influence. This influence can still be felt behind the scenes through its strategic allies and has increased since the bombing of the two embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Introduction Kabila's arrival to power has been a source of intense intellectual speculation. Many analysts have interpreted this event as a demonstration of strength by African states in the post-Cold War period (Leymarie 1997). Indeed, a coalition of African countries in concert decided to topple one of the most corrupt and brutal dictatorships in central Africa. This new tendency of African leaders to resolve Africa's own problem has been widely celebrated by political analysts and is seen as the affirmation of a "new independence" by African nations (Askins and Collins 1997). Basil Davidson, one of the most acclaimed analysts of African affairs saw Kabila's power conquest as "a chance for Africa" (Davidson 1997). Davidson's argument is that Kabila represents a symbol of what Africa can do for itself, meaning its capacity to get its own house in order before facing challenges in the international scene. The former President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere came in support of this African thesis when he confessed to French journalists that from the beginning to the end, the transfer of power in Congo-Zaire has solely been an African matter, and in this process westerners have been completely powerless (Bassir 1997). This African thesis is sharply contradicted by other observers who see Kabila's take-over as a victory of the United States over France (Leymarie 1998b; Braeckman 1997a; Asteris 1998). For many analysts, the victory of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL) would not have been possible without overwhelming American support of the rebels. French diplomats frustrated by this American intrusion in the Congo openly accused the US of working to dismantle the French influence in central Africa in general (Leymarie 1998b). The contenders of this thesis argue that the US victory was made easier because of France's defense of the despised regime of Mobutu and its participation in slowing the democratization process (Leymarie 1996). This opinion is backed by American activists who have voiced their concern over seeing "neo-colonialism made in USA" taking place in the Congo. This neo-colonialism is seen as a culmination of a long stated ambition of American foreign policy, whose ultimate goal is to dismantle the monopoly of former colonial powers in Africa (IG 1997; Leymarie 1996; Leymarie 1992; Wauthier 1994). The objective of this article is to reconcile these two views by illustrating that Kabila's victory in 1997 was not solely an African enterprise nor only the result of an American-orchestrated policy, but a combination of both. The military presence on the ground of neighboring Congolese states and the efficiency of the American diplomacy on the international scene worked well together to topple 23 years of Mobutu regime. But even though African heads of state and the United States agreed on the objective, the two parties seemed to have been following different interests in the Congo. By fighting the Mobutu regime, Rwanda, Uganda, and Angola were simply attempting to stabilize their borders by denying opposition groups in these countries the use of the Congo to destabilize their respective regimes. On the other hand, the US supported the rebellion to extend its influence in central Africa, to exploit natural resources, filling the Congolese soil while containing Islamic fundamentalism in east Africa (Willame 1998). But this strengthening of both the African and
