Jarabulus

Kurdish forces hope by the end of the year to take Jarabulus, cutting off ISIS’ only remaining border crossing with Turkey and uniting Rojava. They seem appropriately wary of the US government.

Quote of the day – being aware of the social position from which you speak

« Il est important d’être conscient-e-s du ‘point de vue situé’ c’est-à-dire avoir conscience d’où on parle. Je suis une femme blanche, française, sans problème de papiers, sociologue, de classe plutôt aisée donc. J’ai vécu au Mexique, au Salvador juste après la guerre, en Colombie, au Brésil, en République dominicaine. Les féministes lesbiennes noires, indiennes et les femmes ayant vécu des situations de guerre m’ont appris énormément de choses. ».

- Jules Falquet, speaking at the “Feminist Economic Alternatives to the Dominant System” workshop, September 13, 2015

If you read French, I urge you to read the whole report. Carla Sandoval’s discussion of anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-colonial feminism in Latin America is especially important.

Medicines and medical equipment needed in Rojava

This site has links to the Kurdish Red Crescent’s updated lists of medical supplies urgently needed in Rojava. (The site is in Spanish, but the linked documents are in English.)

They provide an address for those who can contribute in some way:

solidaritywithrojava[at]gmail[dot]com

“America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker”

Steven Brill’s exposé in serial form of Johnson & Johnson’s illegal marketing of Risperdal for vulnerable children and old people.

Sickening.

Inconsistent

“Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.”

They demanded juxtaposition

“Dinshaway Al-Razzaz"

“The Bangladesh Blogger Murders” on BBC

BBC Our World is showing a report on the murders of atheist and secularist bloggers in Bangladesh. It describes the strong Bangladeshi secular traditions the courageous bloggers and others are determined to preserve and defend.

Our World: The Bangladesh Blogger Murders will be broadcast this weekend on BBC World News, at 11.30, 16.30 & 22.30 GMT on Saturday, 26th September and at 17.30 GMT on Sunday, 27th September.

I’ll post the video if/when it becomes available.

“Imperfect Chronology” – modern and contemporary Arab art at the Whitechapel Gallery, London

Through early December, the gallery is hosting what looks like a fascinating show of pieces from the Barjeel Art Foundation collection, founded by Sultan Saood al-Qassemi.

Inji Efflatoun, “The Dinshaway Massacre,” c. 1950s

One of the artists featured is Syrian painter Marwan Kassab Bachi, who now lives and works in Germany. Here are a few of his earlier works:

“Munif Al-Razzaz,” 1965

“The Husband,” 1966

“Three Palestinian Boys (Fidayeen),” 1970

Quote of the day – from wise sage to caring ruler

“Repositioning American Ps[y]chiatric Association from wise sage to caring ruler, we changed everything from messaging to their logo to support the new brand persona.”

- Porter Novelli, “American Psychiatric Association: Rebranding to move the field forward.” (Yes, the period is in their title. I have no idea why. These are people who use phrases like “their own branding that did not ladder up to a central visual or verbal tone.”)



Philip Hickey has the story. (Reading his quote from Paul Summergrad’s address at the most recent APA meeting almost makes me feel sorry for them. They so desperately want to believe that discoveries validating their bogus diagnoses and magically justifying their decades of false claims and scientific fakery are right around the corner - “That we have not yet achieved interventions based on these insights or diagnostic tests is not because we will not achieve them, but because of the complexity of what we are studying.” Indeed, in his latest piece doubling down on the bizarre and patently untrue contention that psychiatry never propounded the chemical-imbalance idea, Ronald Pies actually drags out another of these perpetually “intriguing,” “promising” notions. After chemical imbalances, brain-circuit disturbances, stress hormones, telomeres,…we now have the “immune inflammatory metabolic model.” Whitaker and Cosgrove are right: their faith is too strong and too closely bound to their personal, professional, and material interests for challenges to take root within the field. Meanwhile, they cause a lot of harm.)

Quote of the day – the mediatization of the death of a child

“This drawing did not mock migrants but our liberal and hypocritical society… this rich, hyper-consumerist Europe that had to wait for the mediatisation of the death of a child to reflect on the fate of migrants.”

- Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Luz, who will leave the magazine next week, discussing the most recent issue

Palestinian Lives Matter

Tragically familiar:

“This video posted by the news agency PalMedia shows a young Palestinian woman left to bleed on a sidewalk in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron after she was shot by Israeli soldiers on Tuesday morning.

By evening, Palestinian media reported that the woman, 18-year-old Hadil Salah Hashlamoun, had died of her injuries.

Instead of being given immediate medical treatment, the video shows her being pulled roughly out of the frame of the camera, her scarf coming off as her head drags on the ground.

Israeli settlers and soldiers can be seen standing around, and in some cases smiling and laughing in the background.

Wattan TV reported that the young woman was left to bleed for more than 30 minutes.

…

The Israeli army claimed that she was shot after she tried to stab a soldier, the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reported. But photos and eyewitnesses contradict this account.”

Chomsky Q&A at the New School

The transcript is here. Some highlights:

…The major center of radical Islam, extremist radical Islam, is Saudi Arabia, unquestionably. They are the source of the Wahhabization of the region, which Patrick Cockburn points out is one of the major developments of the modern era. Who’s the main supporter of Saudi Arabia? You are. You know, that’s where your tax dollars go. It’s been for a long time. Right now tens of billions of dollars of arms being sent under Obama, but it goes way back.

…The most extreme and interesting example [of the US government supporting a secular state in the Middle East] is Saddam Hussein, who was greatly loved by the Reagan administration and by the Bush I administration. I could give you the details, but they were so supportive of Saddam Hussein that he was even given a gift that otherwise only Israel has been granted, no other country. He was permitted to attack a U.S. naval vessel, killing a couple of dozen American sailors, and to get away with it with just a tap on the wrist. Israel had done the same thing in 1967. Saddam Hussein did it in 1987. And the friendship for Saddam Hussein was so enormous that he was granted that right. And that was a secular state. In fact, George Bush number one even invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the United States for advanced training in nuclear weapons production. That’s a pretty supportive relationship. So there are cases where the United States has supported secular Islam, but typically it’s radical Islam that has been the beneficiary of U.S. support, like Britain before it.

…The only conceivable hope for some resolution of this horrendous crisis [in Syria], which is totally destroying the country, is the kind of negotiated settlement that was worked on by serious negotiators, like Lakhdar Brahimi, an international negotiator, very respectable, sensible. And the main idea, which—shared by any analyst with a grey cell functioning, is some kind of negotiated settlement which will involve the Assad government, like it or not, and involve the opposition elements, like it or not. There can’t be negotiations that don’t involve the parties that are fighting. That’s pretty obvious, just as South African negotiations had to involve the leadership of the apartheid state. There’s no other way. They can’t have other negotiations. It’s perfectly obvious that the Assad government is not going to enter into negotiations that are based on the condition that it commits suicide. If that’s the condition, they’re just going to keep destroying the country. That unfortunately is the—has been the U.S. position of the negotiations. U.S. and its allies have demanded that negotiations be based on the precondition that the Assad government will not survive. It’s a horrible government, and I’d like it not to survive, but that’s a prescription for destroying Syria, because it’s not going to enter into negotiations on those terms.

…I think what’s actually happened is that during the whole so-called neoliberal period, last generation, both political parties have drifted to the right. Today’s Democrats are what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republicans have just drifted off the spectrum. They’re so committed to extreme wealth and power that they cannot get votes, can’t get votes by presenting those positions. So what has happened is that they’ve mobilized sectors of the population that have been around for a long time. It is a pretty exceptional country in many ways. One is it’s extremely religious. It’s one of the most extreme fundamentalist countries in the world. And by now, I suspect the majority of the base of the Republican Party is evangelical Christians, extremists, not—they’re a mixture, but these are the extremist ones, nativists who are afraid that, you know, ‘they are taking our white Anglo-Saxon country away from us’, people who have to have guns when they go into Starbucks because, who knows, they might get killed by an Islamic terrorist and so on. I mean, all of that is part of the country, and it goes back to colonial days. There are real roots to it. But these have not been an organized political force in the past. They are now. That’s the base of the Republican Party. And you see it in the primaries. So, yeah, Trump is maybe comic relief, but it’s just a—it’s not that different from the mainstream, which I think is more important.

…The United States did not—it was a—it may have been—it was probably the richest country in the world back in the early 19th century, but not the most powerful country. Britain was the most powerful. France was a powerful country. And that changed over the years, especially with the First World War and finally with the Second World War. So, exceptionalism has greatly expanded as power expanded. And I say again that this exceptionalism was also true of other great powers during their day of imperial power and domination.

…Israel is now - does play a major role - small country, but good high-tech industry, and it plays a major role in repression and aggression. It’s developed - the Israeli arms fairs, where they sell their arms, they advertise, correctly, that they have developed advanced means of repression and control, and that the arms that they’re displaying are battlefield-tested, namely against the Palestinians. So they’ve refined the techniques of control. And they contribute to that all over the place—in Central America, even in the United States. They’re providing advice on how to bar Honduran immigrants, say, from coming to the United States. They help train police and so on, many examples.

…One of the major doctrines of international affairs, which doesn’t appear in the literature, is the Mafia doctrine. International affairs are run like the—very much like the Mafia. The godfather does not tolerate disobedience. It’s much too dangerous. So, if some small storekeeper somewhere, say, doesn’t pay protection money, the don doesn’t accept it. You send their goons to beat him to a pulp, even if you don’t need the money, because others might get the idea, then things might start to erode. That is a dominant principle of international affairs. In fact, that was the reason for the 1953 coup [in Iran, orchestrated by the CIA], when you look back. And it’s also the reason why—for U.S. hostility to Iran, which is extreme. I mentioned the support for Saddam Hussein. That was an attack on Iran, and a serious one. But they defied orders. They overthrew a U.S.-imposed tyrant. They thumbed their nose at the United States. And you don’t get away with that.

…Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy’s Latin American adviser, reported to him the report of his Latin American mission, said the problem is the Castro idea of taking matters into your own hands, which appeals to others in the hemisphere where people suffer similar repression, and you can’t let that idea spread.

His assertion that in Syria the US government “has taken a somewhat hands-off position, except that it’s supporting its allies” is an understatement. I hope to write more about this soon, but see, for example, this revealing document, here, and here.

Quotes of the day - women who lead the struggles

“In today’s Greece of human and social disasters, all those who rush to the defence of the torturers and their inhuman policies (media, political parties, the establishment, corrupt politicians, occult circles of power, employers’ unions and even Mafiosi) play the most diabolical sexist cards to the limit, as never before, to smash the action of women who lead the struggles against austerity policies and the debt system, who defend migrants, refugees, the environment and the many victims of the currently applied barbarous policies.”*

- Sonia Mitralias, “Sexism and Austerity in Greece: the Rampage Against Zoe Konstantopoulou”

“Il est très important de montrer ce qui s’est vraiment passé en Grèce et de révéler le vrai rôle qu’ont joué les banques, les politiques menées et les politiciens corrompus, les représentants des institutions, dans cette affaire de la dette grecque. C’est celle de la victimisation de toute une population, de la marginalisation de générations innocentes par ceux qui veulent toujours que leurs crimes soient payés par les peuples et les sociétés. …À mon avis, la Grèce devrait non seulement revendiquer l’abolition de la dette, mais aussi des réparations pour les dommages provoqués par cette politique criminelle contre la population.”

- Zoe Konstantopoulou

“The people will thwart the plans of those who want to push them into a corner and impose bailouts against their will. The new generations know who betrayed them and will take initiatives to restore democracy in our land.”

- Zoe Konstantopoulou

* I disagree with the use of the adjectives inhuman and barbarous.

Congratulations to Olivia Hallisey

The high school junior won the grand prize at this year’s Google Science Fair for her quick Ebola test. If only every student could have the resources available to kids in Greenwich, Connecticut…

(I also like this robot gardener.)

Interlude - Cassidy