STRANGE TIMES

“Negotiators have finalised a deal which will see the complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by 2011, ending an eight-year occupation, the top Iraqi heading the team said today.”  (from today’s “Age” newspaper)

This is a victory for the Iraqi people, the US, and for democratic forces throughout the Middle East.

The negotiations which led to this deal took some time and are yet another indication that Iraq is ruled by its own sovereign,  democratically elected government.  This is exactly what we wanted (and predicted). Now  we are seeing it.

I guess the full import will still take a while to sink in among those who opposed the war and predicted initially that its purpose was to install a US puppet government and then  sometime later, that Iraq had been tipped into an unwinnable civil war.   They were wrong on both counts.

Continue reading ‘More great news from Iraq!!’

Now that Iraq has not disintegrated into ‘endless civil war ‘, the anti-war camp should be feeling some confusion, at the very least. A year ago, the received view was that the situation in Iraq was hopeless. However the news coming out of Iraq over the past 6 months runs directly counter to this. It really is very clear now that the overthrow of Saddam will result in a democratic Iraq. And that’s something to celebrate! The first democracy in the Arab heartland! Wonderful for the Iraqis, and potentially something which can change the dynamic of the entire region. Hardly something to sniff at!

I’m wondering where the anti-war movement will go with this. Surely those who regard themselves as “on the left” will need to do some real thinking? It’s now undeniable that a fascist dictaorship has been overthrown and that its replacement has been an increasingly stable elected Iraqi government rather than an American puppet. Continue reading ‘A democratic Iraq! The anti-war camp really needs to do some thinking now…’

Pushpa Kamal Daha (better known as ‘Prachanda”, meaning “the fierce one”) has just become Nepal’s new Prime Minister. He received 464 out of 577 votes in Nepal’s Constituent Assembly.

In the recent elections, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) received more votes than any other party (although not an absolute majority). So they are “legally” in power. However this legal victory can be traced to the successful Maoist led people’s war in Nepal which forced the holding of elections as part of the peace process. As soon as real elections were on the agenda, the Maoists called off the war and oriented themselves toward winning via the ballot box.

The policy of the Nepalese Maoists is clear: what Nepal needs is capitalistic development and democracy! Continue reading ‘Prachanda is Nepal’s new PM!’

This guy has got Saudi women glued to their television screens. He’s the male star of a Turkish soap opera which has been dubbed into Arabic and is broadcast across the region by Dubai based MBC 4.

Our men are rugged and unyielding,” quipped a 26-year-old Saudi house-frau who preferred to remain unnamed. “I wake up and see a cold and detached man lying next to me, I look out the window and see dust. It is all so dull. On Noor, I see beautiful faces, the beautiful feelings they share and beautiful scenery.

Although the Middle East has satellite access to many foreign soap operas, this one has struck a very deep chord because the characters are Muslims.

Continue reading ‘Love from Turkey’

All sorts of good things have been happening in Iraq.

Just the other day, the Sunni bloc formally ended its twelve month boycott of the Maliki government and has been given 6 ministeries including the Deputy Prime Minister post. In other news, coalitions of tribes in both Anbar and Najaf have taken the decision to participate in the upcoming elections on platforms independent of the existing religious parties. These events are just two of many events indicating a realignment of forces which has been occurring over a much longer time period. Central to this has been the decision of the Sunni population to choose the rational option of working with (and seeking the protection of) the US. At the same time, the Maliki government has shown that it is prepared to stand up to the lawlessness of the Sadrist militias. Across the entire country, the Iraqi Security Forces are showing increasing capacity to maintain internal discipline, subordinate sectarian and personal interests, and operate as an arm of the State. Overall, sectarian violence has been reduced by about 80%.

So much for the idea that the situation in Iraq was one of hopeless civil war.

Confronted with the dramatic improvement in Iraq since the Surge began, Obama still maintains that he was correct to vote against it. He now says that the Surge was never necessary because the Iraqis were already on the way to reconciliation before it began! This contradicts the entire basis of his campaign against the war.

Everybody surely knows that Obama’s expressed reason for voting against the Surge was that he believed that the war was hopeless. He’s on the record all over the place as taking the position that Iraq had descended into a severe civil war and that the only chance of improving the situation was to put pressure on the Iraqis to “stand up”and “take responsibility” by withdrawing American support. According to Obama , the Surge was bound to worsen the situation. Continue reading ‘He’s not the messiah, just a very lucky boy’

I didn’t sign the Euston Manifesto mainly because it avoided any mention of capitalism’s inherent limitations. The Eustonite advocacy of the need for bourgeois  revolution was fine, as far as it went.  I agree that this is the most pressing task in the world today.   However,  for all its talk of extending human freedom, it failed to face the issue of wage slavery.  Once the bourgeois revolution has been completed this will be the main restriction on human freedom.  The Euston position remained wedded to the idea of social reform: kinder bosses,  rather than no bosses.   Were it not for this, I would probably have seen it as worth signing.

Nevertheless, I did still think it was positive that there was a group prepared to come out and say that:

[it] reject[s] fear of modernity, fear of freedom, irrationalism, the subordination of women, .. reaffirm[s] the ideas that inspired the great rallying calls of the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century: liberty, equality and solidarity; human rights; the pursuit of happiness … But we are not zealots. For we embrace also the values of free enquiry, open dialogue and creative doubt, of care in judgement and a sense of the intractabilities of the world. We stand against all claims to a total — unquestionable or unquestioning — truth.”

And then to go on to maintain that a new alignment of forces is necessary, possibly crossing traditional left-right lines, and defined by “unambiguous democratic commitment”:

“It is vitally important for the future of progressive politics that people of liberal, egalitarian and internationalist outlook should now speak clearly. We must define ourselves against those for whom the entire progressive-democratic agenda has been subordinated to a blanket and simplistic “anti-imperialism” and/or hostility to the current US administration. The values and goals which properly make up that agenda—the values of democracy, human rights, the continuing battle against unjustified privilege and power, solidarity with peoples fighting against tyranny and oppression—are what most enduringly define the shape of any Left worth belonging to.”

These things do need to be said. However I see the task of Strange Times as being to go further than just restating fundamental principles. In fact, the principles cited in the first quote above are not even especially controversial, very few people would oppose them. The problem is more complex than that. Continue reading ‘The Euston Manifesto and all that’

This weekend people may be interested in taking a look at the debate stimulated by Pat Buchanan’s new book: Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World .

In this book Buchanan, who is an arch paleoconservative and strongly opposed to the Iraq war , claims that  both world war2 and the holocaust can be blamed on Churchill. Hitler should have been left alone, Britain should have minded its own business. Lovely stuff!

Buchanan’s response to Hitchens’ attack on his book has been reprinted in full at anti-war.com .

“”Anti-war.com” does not see itself as in any sense a “left-wing” site – in fact, if you read its description of itself, you will see that it takes a firmly libertarian position. However it’s a species of libertarianism that is sharply at odds with the dynamist position taken by people such as Virginia Postrel. Buchanan and anti-war.com are examples of the classic “old fashioned” conservative right – terrified of modernity.

Anti-war.com calls for a united front of all “anti-imperialists” from “left” to right:

“This site is devoted to the cause of non-interventionism and is read by libertarians, pacifists, leftists, “greens”, and independents alike , as well as many on the Right who agree with our opposition to imperialism…… Today, we are seeking to challenge the traditional politics of “Left” and “Right……..Antiwar.com has become the Internet newspaper of record for a growing international movement, the central locus of opposition to a new imperialism that masks its ambitions in the rhetoric of “human rights,” “humanitarianism,” “freedom from terror,” and “global democracy.”

Strange times indeed.

Just for fun…..

This blog is called “Strange Times” for two reasons.

1. Politically the times are especially strange. The old ways of thinking have become formulaic and no longer help us make sense of world events. “Left” is now Right – how’s that for a start?

2. I think that “strangeness” is in some sense an intrinsic characteristic of life, the universe and everything. The times will always be strange. Let’s beware of the warm glow of “understanding”.

This is a group blog. Although we share a common stance, each blogger here writes for him/herself.

We are a bunch of people who all have communist backgrounds and are still committed to the overthrow of capitalism. We want the working people to take over, which means that the means of production will be socially owned and wage slavery (the final form of human slavery) will become a thing of the past. When this occurs it will be a truly revolutionary change, a leap into the future, qualitatively more dramatic and far-reaching than the democratic revolution which has been (slowly) transforming the way of life of people on this planet since the 17th century. Continue reading ‘Bonjour étrangers’