More on Hawking, Israel … and the truth about BDS
Matt Hill, writing at the New Statesman website, makes some very interesting comments on the Hawking “boycott” and the BDS movement in general. It’s well worth reading the entire article, but this section is especially telling:
The problem with the BDS campaign is that the message it sends Israel is anything but clear – and, as a result, it risks being counterproductive. In his letter to the conference’s organisers, Hawking wrote about his concerns about “prospects for a peace settlement”, saying that “the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster”. But Israel’s supporters claim that the BDS movement has little to do with the occupation, peace, and government policy, and is instead intended to bring into question the Jewish state’s right to exist.
It’s true that Israel’s supporters throw the word ‘delegitimisation‘ around to portray fair-minded criticism of Israel as invidious and sinister. But when it comes to BDS, the fact is that they have a point. The BDS movement doesn’t have a single leadership with stated goals, but most of the biggest groups within it make little secret of their preferred outcome to the conflict. Instead of a two-state solution, they support a single, Palestinian-majority state that would mean the end of Israel’s existence. Don’t take my word for it. Norman Finkelstein, the heroic pro-Palestinian author and activist, recently launched a blistering attack on the BDS movement, telling an interviewer: “[The Israelis] say ‘They’re not talking about rights. They want to destroy Israel.’ And in fact, I think they’re right. . . . There’s a large segment of the movement that wants to eliminate Israel.”
And just in case any readers haven’t yet seen the clip of Finkelstein (someone this blog would not describe as “heroic”) accusing the BDS movement of fundamental dishonesty about Israel, here it is:
Charles Ramsey: star, hero…or racial stereotype?
Aisha Harris, writing at Slate, is worried by the media coverage of Charles Ramsey:
“Charles Ramsey, the man who helped rescue three Cleveland women presumed dead after going missing a decade ago, has become an instant Internet meme. It’s hardly surprising—the interviews he gave yesterday provide plenty of fodder for a viral video, including memorable soundbites (“I was eatin’ my McDonald’s”) and lots of enthusiastic gestures. But as Miles Klee and Connor Simpson have noted, Ramsey’s heroism is quickly being overshadowed by the public’s desire to laugh at and autotune his story, and that’s a shame. Ramsey has become the latest in a fairly recent trend of “hilarious” black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a ‘colorful’ style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class…
“…It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform. Even before the genuinely heroic Ramsey came along, some viewers had expressed concern that the laughter directed at people like Sweet Brown plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the ‘ghetto, socially out of step with the rest of educated America. Black or white, seeing Clark and Dodson merely as funny instances of random poor people talking nonsense is disrespectful at best. And shushing away the question of race seems like wishful thinking.”
Perhaps surprisingly, Gary Younge at the Guardian takes the opposite view:
“Millions in America talk like him. But rarely do we hear them unless they are on Maury, Jerry Springer or America’s Most Wanted, the butt of some internet joke or testifying to a shooting in their neighbourhoods. Working-class African Americans are generally wheeled on as exemplars of collective dysfunction. So when Ramsey emerges as heroic, humane, empathetic, funny, compelling, generous and smart, there is a moment of cognitive dissonance on a grand scale. Here is a man with a criminal past and a crime-fighting present…
“…Unvarnished and un-selfconscious, charming and compelling, he reminds me of none so much as Muhammad Ali in his prime, who said: I am America. I am the part you won’t recognise. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky.
“I’m looking forward to getting used to Charles Ramsey.”
If you’re one of the few people who hasn’t yet seen the film of Mr Ramsey in full flow, you can judge for yourself:
P.S: now there’s a song as well.
Hawking boycotts Israel
Guest post by Pink Prosecco
Stephen Hawking, explaining his decision to boycott the Shimon Peres Presidential Conference in Israel, describes what he had planned to say:
“Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”
That is a strong statement, but it’s not an eccentric or hateful view – and you certainly don’t have to be an enemy of Israel to share it. Yet although I can understand why some (particularly Palestinians) have urged Hawking to boycott this event, I very much regret his final decision. There are many countries which would not have allowed him to strike his planned dissenting note – and where requests for solidarity from those considering themselves oppressed could not even have been articulated. Here is Omar Barghouti’s response:
But Palestinians welcomed Hawking’s decision. “Palestinians deeply appreciate Stephen Hawking’s support for an academic boycott of Israel,” said Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “We think this will rekindle the kind of interest among international academics in academic boycotts that was present in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.”
I believe Barghouti is still registered as a PhD student at Tel Aviv University. That doesn’t mean that he can’t speak out against the injustices of occupation, checkpoints, detention or any other topic, or indeed call for boycott. Clearly he can. And that fact in itself might make one wonder, not whether Israel should be protected from robust criticism over its policies, but whether it is really the one country in the world which deserves to be the focus of such a very concerted boycott campaign.
The politics of Hugo Chavez – in his own words
Chávez: death of a charismatic Bonaparte
Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, dies in Caracas
Death comes 21 months after it was revealed he had a tumour: he will be given a state funeral in the capital of Venezuela.
Guardian obit here.
“I said this before becoming president… Venezuela is a kind of a bomb. We are going to begin to deactivate the mechanism of that bomb. And today, it’s not that it is totally deactivated, but I am sure that it is much less likely that this bomb explode today” - Hugo Chávez to Venezuelan and US business representatives, 6 July 2005
Bonapartism in Venezuela
Adapted by Jim Denham from a 2005 article by Paul Hampton
How do Marxists analyse a regime like the one established by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, where capitalism is still the dominant mode of production but the old bourgeois parties no longer control the state?
Marxists believe that the essence of capitalist society is the extraction of surplus labour from the waged working class. The working class produces the wealth and the capitalists expropriate profit from workers, because these bosses own and control the means of production (the businesses, the factories and mines — the basic industry).
But this is not sufficient to explain the role of the state or the character of politics. At a fundamental level, the state is the executive committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie, as Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto.
But they also understood that under capitalism, politics and economics were not fused in the same way as in many pre-capitalist societies — such as feudalism. On the contrary, they argued that the state had a “semblance of independence” in relation to the contending classes it stood over. They came to the conclusion that it was not necessary for the bourgeoisie to govern politically in order to rule socially.
They also understood that in periods of crisis, where the class struggle had reached a stalemate — it was possible for a military regime — “the rule of the praetorians” — often led by a strongman, to rule in the long term interests of the capitalist system while remaining above some sections of capital and the labour movement.
The classic form of this kind of regime analysed by Marx and Engels was the rule of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte in France (1852-70). In February 1848 king Louis Philippe was disposed. In June 1848 the working class movement was viciously put down. But the bourgeois parties were unable to consolidate their rule. Louis Napoléon was elected president of the new republic in December 1848, but the constitution allowed the president only one term. After unsuccessfully attempting to change the law, Bonaparte staged a coup in December 1852.
He established a military regime that concentrated power in its own hands at the expense of parliament and intervened in finance and industry to hothouse capitalist development while repressing the workers’ movement. Bonaparte organised his own forces, “the Society of the 10 December”, and appealed directly to peasants and workers. In the Eighteenth Brumaire Louis Bonaparte (1852) Marx brilliantly outlined this form of rule.
For Marx and Engels Bonapartism was not simply a term of abuse or derision. It characterised the tendencies and direction of a peculiar regime and armed the working class with a clear, critical attitude towards it. Many radicals and socialists at the time, such as Proudhon wrote admiringly about Louis Napoléon, while the regime cultivated workers through construction projects and an imperial foreign policy. Marx and Engels remained unremittingly critical.
They also extended their analysis of Bonapartism to other societies – for example to Bismarck in Germany and to Simon Bolívar (see Solidarity 3/54, 24 June 2004: http://www.workersliberty.org/publications/solidarity/solidarity-354-24-june-2004 ).
During the 1930s the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky further developed this conception of Bonapartism, applying it to China, Germany and France. But Trotsky’s most significant extension of Bonapartism was to Mexico. His analysis is particularly pertinent to our understanding of Venezuela today.
Venezuela
Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 as the old mode of rule was in an advanced state of decomposition. After 1958 Venezuela had a stable, formally democratic state that was in fact a polyarchy of two parties, AD and COPEI. This regime — known as puntofijismo — was maintained by the huge rents derived from the country’s oil industry.
This system broke down after 1983 and the country went through two decades of economic contraction. The response of the two ruling parties was neoliberalism, which only made the situation worse. It also undermined the legitimacy of their mode of rule.
Chávez was elected because he pledged to end the old political system — through holding a constituent assembly and recasting the state. He summed up his role soon after coming to power: “Venezuela is a ticking time bomb and I’m here to defuse it.”
Chávez replaced the old regime with his own distinctive form of Bonapartist rule.
Essential to any Bonapartist regime is the role of the army. Chávez was a career soldier and this conditions his outlook and politics. This is not simply because he tried to seize power in 1992 through a military coup. It is widely recognised that Chávez militarised politics in Venezuela.
Chávezs made it clear in interviews with sympathetic journalists such as Marta Harnecker and the hero-worshipping Richard Gott that a reconstructed “civilian-military alliance” was the key to his politics. His organisation, the MBR-200, formed in the early 1980s, was made up largely of middle level officers, with others in a secondary role.
The armed forces have been central from the beginning of Chávez’s rule. In the Constituent Assembly in 1999, 26 out of 131 delegates were military officers, all from Chávez’s “Patriotic Pole” slate. There are a large number of military personnel in civilian positions. One estimate has 800 senior government jobs and nine state governors (out of 23) held by officers.
The new constitution substantially increased the role of the army in politics and society. It gives the army an increased role in maintaining “internal order” and demands it be “an active participant in national development”.
What this meant in practice was demonstrated by the various “Plans”. Plan Pais, inaugurated in February 1999, involved tens of thousands of military personnel from all four forces in tackling problems in education, health and infrastructure.
Similarly Plan Bolívar, a scheme launched in 2000, involved massive funds for public works channelled through the army to repair schools and hospitals, set up medical clinics, clean up projects and even low cost food distribution.
The National Plan for Citizen Security, instituted in May 1999, gave the National Guard — part of the armed forces — responsibility for crime — and effective control of the police.
Giving the military a public role did not end corruption. Millions of dollars were paid to non-existent companies and allegations of human rights abuses by the DISIP security service followed the floods in 1999. And although the army has not yet been used to suppress genuine workers’ struggles, it has played a repressive role against indigenous people and environmentalists fighting plans to construct power lines into Brazil.
The relationship between Chávez and the armed forces was also demonstrated by the coup in April 2002. Only two senior officers, and only 200 other officers out of 8,000 (plus some retired personnel) joined the attempt to overthrow him. And after the coup, Chávez was able to purge those elements hostile to his rule, by retiring generals and admirals.
Hypertrophic executive
The inflated status of the executive is also a sign of Chávez’s Bonapartism. As Venezuelan-based academic Steve Ellner put it, the new Constitution created a “powerful executive whose authority is unchecked by other state institutions”.
For example the Constitution extends the presidential term from five to six years and allows for immediate re-election, which was previously barred. The president appoints his own vice-president and has no prime minister. He has sole power over military promotions and a significant say in the appointment of judges. For example earlier this year Chávez appointed 12 extra Supreme Court judges, giving him a majority in the court.
Gregory Wilpert, editor of the Venezuelanalysis website and generally sympathetic to Chávez, acknowledges this facet of his regime. He wrote: “Another area of criticism of the 1999 constitution is that it has centralized presidential power even more than the already somewhat presidentialist constitution of 1961. The increased presidential powers include the ability to dissolve the National Assembly, following three votes of non-confidence by two thirds of the National Assembly, declare a state of emergency, freely name ministers and their area of responsibility, the extension of the president’s term from five to six years, and allowing for an immediate consecutive re-election.” (Venezuela’s New Constitution 2003)
After coming to power, Chavez pursued generally conservative economic policies, while increasing the role of the state in the economy.
The key to his rule was the re-establishment of control over the state-owned oil company PDVSA after the defeat of the December 2002-January 2003 lockout. PDVSA says it will make $70 billion this year [2005], providing $10 billion to the treasury – or over one-third (35%) of the federal budget. The role of the state in economic life has increased dramatically since Chávez came to power. Government spending has grown from 19% of GDP to 31% last year.
Chávez continued to honour contracts with US and other international oil companies. Venezuela is the United States’ leading foreign supplier of crude oil. According to Fortune magazine, in the first half of 2005, it supplied one-seventh of the US’s imported oil.
And Chávez continued to encourage foreign investment. He told Fortune that; “foreign corporations should rest assured and have faith in our laws and in our government. We’re doing very good business with them. Almost all the oil companies in the world are in Venezuela — Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Conoco-Phillips, Petrobras, Statoil, Shell.” (3 October 2005)
The windfall from higher oil prices gave Chávez the funds to spend the oil money on social programmes. These reforms have benefited some of the poorest sections of Venezuelan society – but also helped cement his rule in the manner of US Tammany Hall-style politics.
Relations with civil society
Chávez talked about the “sovereignty” of the people as the “protagonists” in his regime and about “participatory democracy”. His attack on the old system went as far as repudiating the old parties and other social organisations such as the CTV trade union federation that were integrated into the old regime.
The Chavistas claim a special relationship with social movements, and the constitution opens some opportunities for these movements and ad hoc organisations to participate in state structures.
Yet his own party, the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR) is hardly a model of democracy. Even MVR members have complained that sections of the old elite that have been elected on the MVR slate, and that the party has little internal democracy or internal life.
In 2001, Chávez proposed re-establishing the MBR-200 and revived the idea of Bolivarian circles, local cells first organised by the MBR-200 in 1994. These groups, with government backing and pledged to the constitution, grew rapidly at the time of the coups. They have become the backbone of his social welfare programmes, rather independent organisations with much distance from his regime.
Chávez supporters in the unions also pushed for a new union federation to replace the CTV. The formation of the UNT in 2003, after the CTV was discredited by its involvement in the coup attempts was certainly welcomed by the government. However the UNT is not simply an instrument of the regime — though it faces real pressures of co-option (see article in the next Solidarity).
In classic Bonapartist fashion, Chávez appealed over the heads of organisations, directly to the masses of people — using for example his weekly TV show, Alo Presidente. However he did not managed to fully institutionalise his relationship to civil society or to the mass of ordinary Venezuelans.
There are real dangers for the UNT and other social movements faced with the Bonapartist regime. The first danger is the readiness to resort to repression in the face of a progressive struggle. The other danger is co-option — incorporation into the structures of the regime, providing it with a radical veneer — but at the cost of destroying the potential of an independent movement.
For all the rhetoric against neoliberalism and about “twenty first century socialism”, Chávez established a Bonapartist form of rule and set about sinking roots in Venezuelan society. This process is unfinished — unlike similar Latin American populists Chávez did not have fully institutionalised party or structures such as dependent trade unions to prop up his role.
But he continued to rule in favour of capital — mainly Venezuelan national capital without being completely hostile to multinational capital. This must be the starting point for developing a working class assessment of this charismatic populist and the regime he established.
Duke Ellington in London, 1933
Tonight’s opening episode (9pm, BBC 2) of Stephen Poliakoff’s Dancing On The Edge promises to usher in a great series, with a cast including John Goodman, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jacqueline Bissett. Apparently, it’s about the tribulations of a black jazz band feted by the upper class in 1933 London and very loosely “inspired” by what happened to the Duke Ellington band when they visited Britain that year.
Here’s what the Duke himself (always rather impressed by royalty and the the British upper classes) wrote about that visit in his book Music is My Mistress (published in the UK in 1974):
We were absolutely amazed at how well informed people were in Britain about us and our records. They had magazines and reviews far ahead of what we had here and everywhere we went we were confronted with facts we had forgotten and questions we couldn’t always answer. Nevertheless, the esteem our music was held in was very gratifying. A broadcast we did for the BBC provoked a lot of comment, most of it favourable. Constant Lambert, the most distinguished British composer of that period, had written an appeciation of our early records years before.
Lord Beaverbrook, who owned one of the most important London newspapers, threw a big party to which the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Kent were invited. We were invited too and Jack Hylton’s Empress Club band played until we got through at the Palladium. It was all very colourful and splendid. Members of the nobility, Members of Parliament and delegates to the imperial conferences, all in informal dress, mingled happily. There was a generous buffet and the champagne flowed freely.
Prince George, the Duke of Kent, requested ‘Swampy River’, a piano solo I had a hard time remembering, but I was flattered, especially to have him leaning over the piano as I played it.
Later, the Prince of Wales had some kind words to say to us. When he suggested we had a drink together I was surprised to find he was drinking gin. I had always thought gin as rather a low kind of drink, but from that time on I decided it was rather grand. He liked to play drums, so he paid Sonny Greer a lot of attention, too. This is how Sonny remembers the evening:
‘As soon as we got the band set up, the Prince of Wales came over and sat down beside me Indian fashion. He said he knew how to play drums, so I said “Go ahead!” he played a simple Charleston beat, and he stayed right by me and the drums throughout most of the evening. People kept coming up and calling him “Your Highness” but he wouldn’t move. We both began to get high on whatever it was we were drinking. He was calling me “Sonny” and I was calling him “The Wale”.’
I think the Prince of Wales really did like us, because he came to hear us again at Liverpool, when he was up in that area for the races at Aintree. He was loved by the day people and the night people, rich and poor, the celebrities and the nonentities. He was truly the Billy Strayhorn of the Crown princes.
Here’s the band slightly earlier (1930, to be precise), playing ‘Old Man Blues’:
Incidentally, does anyone recognise the chord sequence?
Michael Winner: not such a bad guy
The Graun‘s obit, here.
Here he has a go at the arsehole/asshole Littlejohn and defends lesbians.
But I still think his films are shite…
The BBC at its worst…and best
Tonight at 10.35 something extraordinary will happen: a TV programme will call into question the competence and integrity of its own Chief Editor.
BBC Panorama will air the fact that BBC Newsnight journalists (notably reporter Liz MacKean and producer Meirion Jones) do not accept the explanation given by the Corporation’s top brass for having pulled Newsnight‘s Savile exposé in December of last year. The clear implication will be that pressure was brought to bear from the very top of the Corporation to pull the film.
Those who heard Newsnight editor Peter Rippon trying to explain away the decision, or who read his original blog account (now amended) of the reasoning behind the decision, already know that his ’explanation’ stinks. But for nearly three weeks the Beeb’s official line on the matter held firm in its denial and compacency – which makes Rippon’s ”decision” (allegedly forced on him by the new director general George Entwistle) to “stand aside” today and the admission that his account was “inaccurate or incomplete” all the more remarkable.
In tonight’s Panorama, Liz MacKean will state that she knew at the time the Newsnight report was nearing completion on 30th November of last year, that the previously supportive Rippon had changed his mind and would not be prepared to see the film aired. She does not, it seems, offer any explanation as to why Rippon backed down, and Panorama has no proof that any pressure was brought to bear on Rippon.
It’s hard to escape the obvious explanation: the BBC had a number of grovelling “tribute” shows scheduled to celebrate the national treasure, tireless charity worker and serial paedophile Savile over the Christmas period. The Newsnight exposé would have been, to say the least, a bit embarrassing.
But now comes the most interesting bit: what did the new BBC director general (at the time head of BBC TV) George Entwistle, know about the allegations against Savile and the Newsnight report in the period immediately before the film was pulled?
According to Panorama, Helen Boaden (head of BBC news), warned Entwistle in December that something was about to be broadcast on Newsnight, that might cause him to have to re-think his planned Savile tributes over Christmas. Entwistle acknowledges that this conversation happened, but insists that he didn’t ask Boaden for further details – something that I am not alone in finding difficult to believe.
What we know for sure is that shortly after that convesation, Rippon pulled the programme and later gave reasons for doing so that have now been withdrawn as untrue (sorry: “inaccurate or incomplete”).
Naturally, the Murdoch press, the Mail and the Tories are having a field-day at the Beeb’s expense over the Savile affair as a whole, the Newsnight business in particular, and the BBC’s monumental mishandling of the whole fiasco. And it has to be admitted that the Corporation’s compacency, dishonesty and ineptitude has played into the hands of its enemies. If today’s reports that BBC has been briefing against its own Newsnight journalists are true, then heads will have to roll, starting with Enwistle’s.
But it must be borne in mind that tonights’s Panorama will be something that no commercial broadcaster would ever allow: a devastating and potentially career-threatening attack upon its own senior management. It was encroaching commercialism (ie: the imperative to protect Savile’s reputation during and after his life) within the BBC that got it into this mess in the first place. It’s the public service ethos (to be demonstrated by Panorama tonight) that may yet save it.
Sir Jimmy Savile’s crime
Jimmy Savile was clearly a disgusting and degenerate excuse for a human being. Claims from the BBC (notably former DG Mark Thompson) to the effect that no-one there had the slightest idea about Savile’s child abuse, are, quite literally, incredible. Almost as unlikely are the denials from Thompson and Newsnight editor Peter Rippon, that last year’s Newsnight exposé of Saville was pulled because it would have made a sick joke of the three tribute programmes honouring Savile that the BBC had ready to air over Christmas.
Yes, you only had to look at the grotesque figure of Savile and listen to his droning, witless voice, to guess that he was a total creep and sleeze-ball. But Savile’s crimes (now surely proven beyond reasonable doubt or cries of “he’s not here to defend himself”) would appear to be just the tip of the iceberg. Every day seems to bring new revelations that make it clear that Savile’s paedophilia was just one manifestation (albeit an extreme one) of a culture of gross sexism and tolerance of sexual abuse that existed in the BBC Light Entertainment department from the late 1960′s (ie the creation on Radio 1) up until at least the mid-1990′s and the end of the ‘Smashie and Nicey‘ era. And there are those who are suggesting it may not have completely ended then, either.
Janet Street-Porter, for instance describes in today’s Mail (see previous link) how Jim Moir, Head of (BBC) Light Entertainment in the 1980′s once addressed a committee meeing at which Street-Porter was the only woman present, by announcing “Well chaps, I’m going to put my dick on the table.” It was, of course, merely a figure of speech. But a telling one. Other female broadcasters (notably Liz Kershaw and Sandi Toksvig) who were at the Corporation in the in the 1970′s and 80′s have now come forward with accounts of sexual harassment, while a Sunday Times reporter, Camilla Long, claims she was groped by Dave Lee (“Hairy Cornflake”) Travis after interviewing him in June of this year. The recurring theme of all these stories is that such behaviour was considered normal and acceptable and anyone who complained would be regarded as strange (or worse, a lesbian).
But, of course, there is a qualitative difference between the sexual harassment of adult women (reprehensible as that is) and the crime of paedophilia, isn’t there? Maybe so. Or maybe they’re just different points on a continuum. Either way, there is every reason to assume that paedophilia at the BBC and, indeed, throughout the world of pop music and light entertainment in the 1970′s and 80′s, went well beyond the loathsome working class oik Saville. After all, even that doyen of twee, middle-class naughty-but-nice smugness, John Peel, boasted in newspaper interviews and his Sounds magazine column, of his penchant for under-aged girls. I would submit that the picture below, in its way, is almost as disturbing as what we’re hearing about Savile.*
*Naturally, this has upset Peel’s adoring fans, who rally to his defence here.
NB: it is clearly the case that a lot of the current attacks on the BBC in the wake of the Savile revelations, are coming from sources like the Murdoch press (the Sunday Times, especially) and the Mail, that have their own commercial and ideological reasons for wanting to knock the Beeb. But that doesn’t mean that what they’ve published is untrue, or should be down-played. I’ve made extensive use of material from both these sources in what I’ve written above - JM
Samuel L. Jackson says “Wake The Fuck Up!”
I am still far from convinced that US socialists should vote for Obama, but I have to admit that the more we see and hear that ignorant, dangerous jerk Romney, the more difficult it becomes to resist the lure of lesser-evilism.
However, I offer the film below not to in order to endorse Obama, but because it’s such an extraordinary production. It certainly puts the typical Brit “party election broadcast” to shame. Enjoy…
And on the subject of Obama-cool, here are a few pseudo-Blue Note album covers that I just stumbled across:
H/t (album covers): Bruce R
