Links of interest for the week ending in December 12, 2009. YouTube - Islamophobia and War on Afghanistan, Deepa Kumar Great talk by Professor Deepa Kumar on American Islamophobia, given at NYU this past week. Reset - Dialogues on Civilizations | Human Rights Helem (Lebanese LGBT organization) issues a critical response to Joseph Massad's recent interview, "The West and the Orientalism of sexuality." Egypt constructs huge Gaza wall - Middle East, World - The Independent "But Hassan Khreisheh, an independent nationalist in the West Bank who is deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, described the project as "a shame for the Egyptians". Outdoing the Kafkaesque: Egypt’s new US-designed underground Gaza wall (updated) « P U L S E More on the Egyptian apartheid wall. YouTube - Afghans' anger at Obama's Nobel peace prize win - 10 December 09 Afghans react to Obama receiving Nobel peace prize: "Death to Obama!" Anyone who still thinks the US is doing something positive for Afghanistan by occupying and bombing it needs to open their eyes. US and NATO troops out now! Al-Ahram Weekly | Region | Building on extremism The growth of Jewish fundamentalism is undoubtedly a factor in the rise of the Israeli Right*, but ideology cannot thrive without the material trends: subsidized settlements, military service as a lucrative career, etc. Al Jazeera English - Focus - Dubai: The political model "Dubai was supposed to be the antithesis of Palestine. It was designed to create a concrete Utopia that would encourage all young Arabs to forget about their political aspirations and dreams. " Egypt building iron wall on Gaza border to stop smuggling - Haaretz - Israel News The Egyptian regime's latest action in a long series of strangling the Gazans: building a wall. SuperArab (American): Heroism overlooked, Heinousness publicized | KABOBfest "If Arab and Muslim American organizations identified by Nawal of the likes of ADC and CAIR are quick to condemn, they should be quick to celebrate. This is why our communities are continually cornered into the defensive position, because no clearly articulated plan of critical civic engagement has been established in which we can create visibility for the acts like ones done by [Shady] Yassin." "To every Algerian and Egyptian journalist and politician who poured fuel on this fire - I have a little message for you. In my estimate, you are about the most trivial infantile scribes and political hatchet men that fate has inflicted on any people. By your words and your deeds, you have disgraced the memory of the million fallen Algerian freedom fighters and of the Egyptians who stood by them. You have put a stain on the history of your people that will never be erased. You have inflicted a plague of dwarfism on every Arab who ever lived. Answering Obama's Afghanistan deceptions | SocialistWorker.org "The White House speechwriters must have carpal tunnel by now from all their cutting and pasting of Bush's rhetoric into Obama's mouth. And that he didn't choke on these words tells you all you need to know about Obama." Echoes of Freedom: South Asian Pioneers in California, 1899-1965 Exhibit on early South Asian-American immigrants to the United States. Kamilya Jubran sings Oum Kalthoum « yaman salahi The talented Palestinian singer/songwriter Kamilya Jubran sings "Inta Omri." The Interview Ha’aretz Doesn’t Want You To See « P U L S E Interview with Ali Abunimah that Ha'aretz decided not to publish. Al Jazeera English - Focus - Europe's waning liberalism "Enlightened Switzerland has now become part of an 'Enlightened Liberal Europe' that is increasingly not all that liberal. The stunning Swiss vote - 57 per cent - approving a referendum to ban minarets, should not have been all that surprising, considering the growing power of Islamophobia." Touraj Daryaee: Auctioning Ancient Iranian Artifacts: Implications for US Cultural Policy "A bombing in Jerusalem. A troubled foreign country tried in absentia in U.S. courts. Priceless archeological artifacts threatened. It sounds like it could be the plot of Dan Brown's next novel, but this time the situation is a real one that could have tragic consequences for America's cultural policies and standing in the world community." Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Brown Sahibs " "Because it is bereft of ideas," Fanon writes, "because it lives unto itself and cuts itself off from the people, undermined by its hereditary incapacity to think in terms of all the problems of the nation as seen from point of view of the whole of that nation, the national middle class will have nothing better to do than to take on the role of manager for Western enterprise, and it will in practice set up its country as the brothel of Europe." Although Fanon was not writing about Pakistan, no truer words could have been written about the brown Sahibs who have managed US-Zionist interests in Pakistan."
"They talk of supporting the Palestinians while they co-operate with others in imposing the siege and preventing food and supplies from reaching Gaza," Mr Khreisheh said. "They are collaborating with the Americans.""
* This is not to say that Israeli politics were anything less than regressive prior to the elections. The article rightfully criticizes the joke known as the Israeli Left/peace-camp for their enthusiasm during the bombardment of Gaza last winter.
You have to wonder where all that 'Arab' passion was when thousands of innocent Palestinians were slaughtered by the Israeli war machine last year. Where was that anger when Iraq and Lebanon were invaded? Actually, you don't have to wonder. We Arabs - Egyptians, Algerians, the whole sorry lot - have become a callous people. I'd go so far as to say that we're collectively deranged. And to think we could have amounted to something - given the blessings of the fossil fuel beneath our sands."
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Sunday, December 13, 2009
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2 comments:
i liked Deepa Kumar's talk... very clear and solidly put together, and i thought she ended strong. for instance, the footnote that 30,000 troops are being sent to do more subjugate 100 militants is very telling. beyond the material goals of the occupation, i would only add that the massive troop surge is in response to the popular character of the resistance in Afghanistan. this is something that the Left has engaged with only sparingly although key insights have been offered.
i find it helpful to think about how and where certain information and narratives fit into the multiple layers of the movement.
some conversations can only be had between intellectuals, while others are tailored more for public consumption. in this spectrum, i thought her talk falls into the latter. from another angle, her talk is good for people on the periphery of the movement, or people not in the movement at all. she addressed a lot of what the Right says on a point by point basis and thoroughly debunks it.
i became a little uncomfortable, though, when she began to discuss what could be described as the relatively "progressive" merits of Muslim Empires in comparison to European imperialism.
in her broader narrative i see what she was trying to do -- shatter the myth that barbarism is inherently and solely a Muslim or Islamic phenomenon -- but how would an Amernian person respond to notions that the Ottoman Empire was a progressive force?
with these things in mind, it's worth thinking about what other adjunct narratives and poles need to be built within the anti-war movement. if Deepa is holding down the "popular conceptions" front as a sort of counterweight to white-supremacist notions popularized in the bourgeois press, what other poles need to be built at the center of the movement? what about brown folks?
i raise this because Nidal Hasan, and now those 5 young guys from Virginia represent what could be seen as a weakness in the spectrum of Muslim/Islamic/brown/South Asian/Arab/etc. political thought. what organizational alternatives being offered to these people instead of conservative Islamic movements in the case of the 5 guys form Virginia, or individual instances of lashing out in the case of Nidal Hasan.
in my head part of this narrative begins with studying out own movements and historical figures in part to learn from them and in part to vindicate them from white supremacist attacks. this is only one piece of the puzzle though.
i want to offer a corrective to my comment when i said, "some conversations can only be had between intellectuals,"
what i meant to say is that there are certain conversations that cannot be had by folks with only a cursory knowledge of the topic.
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