Tag: intellectuals

Cuba and the complex relationship between the individual and the collective

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30 July 2020 — MRonline

El Carro de la Revolución, by painter and engraver Alfredo Sosabravo, portrays the history of the Cuban people on the road to independence and sovereignty. Photo: Abel Rojas

Originally published: Granma English by Karima Oliva Bello (July 23, 2020)

Just recently, the 59th anniversary of Fidel’s quintessential words to Cuban intellectuals was commemorated. One passage in the speech is particularly noteworthy. Fidel said, and I quote:

The Revolution… must act in such a way that the entire gamut of artists and intellectuals who are not genuinely revolutionary, find that within the Revolution they have an arena in which to work and to create; and that their creative spirit, even if they are not revolutionary writers or artists, has the opportunity and freedom to be expressed. That is, within the Revolution.

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The Violent Silence of a New Beginning By Slavoj Žižek

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27 October 2011 — In These Times

The Occupy protests are important, but soon the difficult question must be answered: What social organization can replace capitalism?

We should avoid the temptation of the narcissism of the lost cause. What new positive order should replace the old one the day after, when the sublime enthusiasm of the uprising is over?

What to do after the Wall Street occupation, after the protests that started far away (Middle East, Greece, Spain, UK) reached the center, and now, reinforced, roll back around the world? One of the great dangers the protesters face is that they will fall in love with themselves, with the nice time they are having in the ‘occupied’ places. In a San Francisco echo of the Wall Street occupation on October 16, a guy invited the crowd to participate as if it was a hippy-style happening in the 1960s: ‘They are asking us what is our program. We have no program. We are here to have a good time.’

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Occupy The World! To the barricades comrades? By William Bowles

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19 October 2011 — Strategic Culture Foundation

Four years ago in a Ministry of Defence Review, the Whitehall Mandarins, more astutely than any so-called Lefty, determined the following:

“The Middle Class Proletariat — The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.” — ‘UK Ministry of Defence report, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036’ (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007

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Syria: What Is Going On in Hama? By Bassam al-Kadi

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2 August 2011 — MRZine

Hama has suffered for the (at least) past three weeks from lawlessness and nearly complete absence of the entire state and its organs, and from control by groups of armed teenagers and criminals who (left without any other choice, in the opinion of the US and French ambassadors) actually erected roadblocks and expropriated the city.  Each criminal among them became the king of his own dunghill, where he could stop anyone to ask to see their ID card, with all the volatile possibilities that such a behavior entails…

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Arab Awakening and Western Media: Time for a New Revolutionary Discourse Ramzy Baroud

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28 July 2011 — Dissident Voice

When President Ali Abdullah Saleh tried desperately to quell Yemen’s popular uprising, he appealed to tribalism, customs and traditions. All his efforts evidently failed, and the revolution continued unabated. When Saleh denounced women for joining men in demonstrations in Sana’a – playing on cultural sensitivities and a very selective interpretation of religion – the response was even more poignant. Thousands of women took to the streets, denouncing Saleh’s regime and calling for its ouster.

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Honest and Lucid Criticism for the Western Left By Pascual Serrano, translated by David Montoute

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5 November 2008 — Rebelión

In recent years, a part of the world’s progressive community has begun to equate humanitarian interventions with the internationalist solidarity that has traditionally characterized the Left. “Humanitarian Imperialism” By Jean Bricmont (Monthly Review Press, U.S. 2007) by Belgian author Jean Bricmont aims to dismantle this thinking, and does so with stunning lucidity.

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The Spectre of Barbarism and its Alternative Michael A. Lebowitz

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10 September, 2010 — The   B u l l e t Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 414

The following two documents are presentations made or prepared for different purposes in Venezuela. The first (‘The Spectre of Barbarism and its Alternative: Eight Theses’) was presented at a conference of Venezuelan intellectuals organized by Centro Internacional Miranda (CIM) in Caracas on ‘The New International Situation and Construction of Socialism in the 21st Century’ on 1 October 2009; this paper points to both the international struggle and (peripherally on this occasion) the internal struggle. The second intervention (‘The Responsibility of Revolutionary Intellectuals in Building Socialism’) was presented at a CIM conference, ‘Intellectuals, Democracy and Socialism,’ on 2 June 2009 – a conference in Caracas composed largely of leading Venezuelan intellectuals which generated much controversy because of public criticisms of ‘the process’ made there; despite my statement that this presentation was ‘general rather than specific to Venezuela,’ it nevertheless was declared to be as an attack on PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) by a Chavist faction linked to the oil ministry.

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Alice in Videoland By William Bowles

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15 May, 2010 — Strategic Culture Foundation

“The fantasy of the faraway place, the fantasy of the skin, the fantasy of being somebody else” — John Berger, ‘Ways of Seeing’

Sometimes, and not often enough, insights, understandings and new ideas just pop into your mind, unbidden. How? I have no idea but as the brain apparently operates somewhere on the quantum level, figuring out how it happens I suspect is and always will be impossible. And somehow, watching television interferes with this process, specifically the bit (or is it bits?) of the brain that can distinguish between fantasy and reality.

So anyway I’m watching TV, flicking through the channels and come across yet another ‘reality’ show (if ever there’s case for misleading labeling this is it). This time it’s yet another refreeze of the courageous ‘entrepreneur’ genre called ‘High Street Dreams’ (BBC1, 10 May, 2010). Two families fight it out to launch their ‘brand’ on the High Street, that is to say in two giant shopping centres. One family is trying to launch a prepackaged burger called I think Muddy Feet or maybe that was the ‘brand’. The other, the name escapes me, chili sauces. So much for the power of branding.

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MEDIA LENS ALERT: NEWS INTERNATIONAL THREATENS MEDIA LENS WITH LEGAL AND POLICE ACTION

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MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

July 10, 2008

On June 28 and July 3, Media Lens received repeated threats of both legal and police action from Alastair Brett, legal manager of News International’s Times Newspapers.

Noam Chomsky described the threat, pithily, as “pretty sick.” (Email, June 28, 2008) David Miller, professor of sociology at the University of Strathclyde and founder member of Spinwatch (www.spinwatch.org), commented:

“The response from the Times is an absolutely outrageous attempt to bully and censor you. It is not – unfortunately – surprising though, as the Murdoch empire is determined to attempt to snuff out those voices which try to bear witness to the truths of our age. Those that unmask naked power will be targeted by the Murdoch empire and its hench people. Maddox is the latest in a long line and is evidently a well networked member of the political elite – being a governor of the shadowy Ditchley Foundation. It is simply laughable that sending emails to complain about her distorted coverage constitutes harassment. Frankly, the drumbeat for war with Iran, to which she adds her voice, is much more like harassment, but of a whole nation. Its consequences are already more deadly serious for the people of Iran than any amount of emails from Medialens readers.” (Email, July 8, 2008)

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