Bouachrine wrote fierce editorials attacking the royal autocracy and what he calls Al Istibdad (despotism). In 2011, he was a leading partisan of the Arab Spring, during which he criticized Islamic leaders for their opposition to the protests. Pro-regime loyalists burned his newspaper in the streets and sought to fan the flames of division between Islamists and leftists. In 2017, Bouachrine was arrested a few months after he roundly criticized the king for having “ruled for eighteen bittersweet years” and being absent for much of his reign. After Bouachrine criticized and mocked Saudi crown prince Mohamed Bin Salman, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi warned him through WhatsApp that he had crossed a line and could be murdered. Instead Bouachrine was arrested on February 23, 2018 and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. Khashoggi was brutally killed in the Saudi Turkish consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.

Bouachrine is one of nearly a thousand Moroccan political prisoners facing Orwellian surveillance and repression. Female journalist Hajar Raissouni who also wrote for Akhbar Al Yaoum was recently sentenced to one year in prison for “having an illegal abortion and sexual relations outside marriage” despite the fact that she never had an abortion (with evidence backing her up).

Professor Maati Monjib, co-founder of the journalist rights NGO, Freedom Now, has endured more than a decade of political persecution. Political police agents continue to follow him and publish false private information that has made it increasingly difficult for him and his family to live in Morocco. His job at the university has also been threatened. In 2015, Monjib was one of seven people accused of helping create Storymaker, an app that gives citizen journalists the ability to publish content anonymously. Amnesty International reported that he is accused of threatening national security in an ongoing trial that has been postponed 17 times in four years. On September 16, 2015, authorities briefly held Monjib at the Casablanca airport, where he was informed of the travel ban against him. Two days before, he had been summoned by police because of his human rights activities. Monjib undertook a 24-day long hunger strike to protest illegal travel restrictions forbidding him to leave the country. Finally, on October 13, 2015 he was admitted to the hospital as a result of his fast. In October 2019, Monjib announced that one of the world’s premier cyber-mercenary firms, the Israeli NSO Group, had planted spyware on his phone. According to Amnesty International , Monjib and human rights attorney Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui were sent texts containing links to secretly install surveillance software able to monitor even encrypted Signal chats.

Lakome (For You) editor-in-chief Ali Aznouli was arrested on September 17, 2013 and falsely charged under the Anti-Terrorism Law, specifically for “providing support for carrying out a terrorist crime.” His arrest came after attacking what he called the king’s repeated, extended absences. In 2014, Aznouli explained that…“the arrest and charges are politically motivated, and have to do with Lakome’s independent editorial line and the series of articles and investigations that exposed the corruption within the Moroccan state and criticized the real ruling powers in the country and how they have handled major issues.” The police took advantage of Aznouli’s arrest to cut access to his newspaper’s web site, forcing him to develop a new, but similarly named site. Released on bail, Aznouli’s trial has been postponed repeatedly for five years continually putting him in a position where he feels jeopardized and insecure. Nonetheless, he continues to publish truthful exposes, such as, “Fifteen years of Mohammed VI’s rule has proven that the government has no political will to liberalize the public media and guarantee independent journalism, the economic basis of which has been eliminated. The government has yet to put in place a journalism code, to ensure access to information, and to protect the freedoms won so far in the field of journalism, expression, protest, and opinion. These freedoms have been won at a heavy cost, and to continue to benefit from them, one must be ready to pay it.”

These examples of prominent intellectuals kept in a constant state of insecurity are part of the reason why Freedom House rates Morocco poorly, and why Reporters Without Borders’ 2015 report ranked the country 130th in terms of press freedom, trailing countries like Afghanistan and South Sudan.

Most Moroccan political prisoners are from the Rif region, where nationalist ambitions were evident in the many Rif flags at a May 2019 protest in front of parliament. Mothers of prisoners traveled hundreds of miles and converged in the streets, many wearing all black from head to toe. Although the police presence appeared to be minimal, cameramen from all sides took images continually.

Beginning on October 28, 2016, the killing of a fish vendor by police was the spark that led to a wave of protests unmatched since the 2011 Arab Spring. In more than 40 cities, protesters called for an end to repression in solidarity with the oppressed. On June 11, 2017 a million people marched for “freedom, dignity and social justice” and solidarity with Rif prisoners, particularly movement leader Nasser Zefzafi. In many cities, demonstrators also waved the flags of the Amazigh, Morocco’s Berber community.

At the far reaches of both European and Arabic civilizations, Morocco is a unique combination of historical survivalisms. Combined with stunning natural beauty in mountains, beaches, and deserts that have become exotic tourist destinations, Morocco is the most stable country in North Africa and a close USA ally against Islamic radicalism. On the surface, new train stations and modern airports stand beside modern highways and high speed trains. Luxurious villas and tourist resorts with beautiful pools and golf courses witness steady streams of expensive cars. Dozens of palaces adorn the countryside, but at least 15% of the population live in abject poverty. About forty percent of Moroccans live on less than four dollars a day. As the king’s autocratic decisions have become increasingly repressive, the country’s future stability becomes increasingly questionable. The monarchy responded to the 2011 Arab Spring by making limited reforms, but the new waves of protest in 2016 and 2017 have been met with harsh measures. The regime continues to divide Islamic opposition from leftists, thereby isolating key figures who can then be targeted without unified opposition. Whether or not its divide and rule strategy will succeed depends on many factors, none no more important than the multifarious opposition’s capability to unite into a powerful movement.

_______________________

George Katsiaficas has been active in social movements since 1969 when he participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement. A target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program (Counterintelligence), he was honored to be classified “Priority 1 ADEX”.  For 11 years, he worked in Ocean Beach, California (as described at the end of Andre Gorz’s book Ecology as Politics) in a radical countercultural community that fought against war.  After living in Berlin for 1 1/2 years and learning first-hand about the autonomous movement there, he wrote about that movement (The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life). For years, he was active for the cause of Palestinian rights. A graduate of MIT and UCSD (where he studied with Herbert Marcuse), he wrote his dissertation about the global movement of 1968 (published as The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968). He has been teaching at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. In 2001, he did research at the May 18 Institute at Chonnam National University in Kwangju South Korea, especially focusing on the 1980 uprising. For 6 six years, he was editor of New Political Science and brought many unknown issues into public view, with special issues on the Sudan and one on the Black Panther Party (published as a book by Routledge–Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party–coedited with Kathleen Cleaver.) A peace advocate by nature, he is also unwilling to tolerate injustice and work incessantly for the realization of his ideals.

MORE INFO:

Moroccans protest prison sentences of anti-poverty activists

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The popular revolt in Algeria is nothing short of a forceful (re)statement of what it means to be human. An active alteration of a people’s state of being. Algerians who, for decades, were reduced to traumatized bystanders, have once again, shaken the dust off and grabbed the reins of history.  The people (in the singular) no longer acquiesce to being an object of history, but a conscious and active subject of its own destiny. A fresh cadence permeates this popular indignation, novel forms of solidarity and new selves are being fashioned.

Reminiscent of colonial and orientalist tropes, for so long and in a self-projecting manner, a morally bankrupt, intellectually colonized and technically incompetent “elite” has painted and indeed treated Algerians as rough, uncivil, violent and politically adolescent. That elite, having slurped every lesson from its colonial master, had internalized its colonial subjection to such an extent that it can only make sense of itself and its existence through the gaze of its former colonial master. An “elite” that suffers from such an acute sense of alienation is also only able to view its compatriots through the same colonial lenses. Al Hogra (contempt and disdain) with which this “elite” treats Algerians can only be understood once one realizes the positionality of the former. This contempt and disdain become intelligible the moment one sobers up to the fact that those who have ruled Algeria are only able to see Algerians from the standpoint of Paris, London, and Washington. This attitude also permeates sections of the Algerian “cultural” and “intellectual” elite who have played a key role in reproducing these colonial and orientalist tropes.

In other words, for decades Algeria’s national bourgeoisie has essentially performed the role of an offshore political class, that even though it may at times be physically present on Algerian soil, has maintained its (ill-gotten) property, investments, bank accounts, and spiritual homes elsewhere. It adopts the same extractivist attitude towards “the homeland” that the colonial administration had assumed. The morbid symptoms of this psychosis are automatically transferred to Algerian political life and are manifested in the manner in which “le pouvoir” (a term used by Algerians to denote the ruling elite in the country) has treated its citizens. It is precisely this condition that the popular revolt is intent on subjecting to a therapeutic and rehabilitating revolutionary course of action.

Schooled in the anti-colonial, third-worldist, pan-Arab, pan-Africanist, and liberatory ethos of their ancestors, Algerians are determined to overcome the cognitive dissonance produced by an official discourse of sovereignty and independence, on the one hand, and an actual continuation of colonial practices and conditions of subjugation on the other. In short, Algerians are revolting against the coloniality of their present.

History teaches us that popular struggles are waged not only on the streets and for the control of public space, important as these might be, but most crucially at the level of framing, narrative, interpretation and representation of these struggles and their goals. It is critical in these moments to grapple with important questions such as: who gets to interpret the demands and goals of a people in revolt? Who gets to name it? How is the popular struggle narrated? Within what and whose frame of reference?

In the racial capitalist world we inhabit, (neo)liberalism provides the moral justification of the status quo, the language with which one ought to talk about one’s reality, the categories used to make sense of their existence. (Neo)liberalism sets the parameters of what is imagined as desirable and achievable and, by extension, what is and is not thinkable. In other words, the hegemonic hold of liberalism as a discourse of power and the ideology of the status quo gives it the authority to delineate the boundaries of “the possible” in the 21st century. As a modern form of power, liberalism mystifies its nature and function and presents itself, not as an ideology that serves particular interests, but rather as common sense anchored in claims on what “human nature” consists of.

If there is only one lesson to learn from the recent experiences of Algeria’s neighbors, then it ought to be this: The global South’s adoption of and adherence to the precepts of liberalism—its conception of “History” and historical time and understanding of what constitutes “Progress” along with the inevitable teleologies such a notion engenders—is what underpins the coloniality of the Global South’s present and what ultimately enables, in the words of Malek Bennabi, their “colonizability,” i.e. the condition(s) that render their continued subjugation possible.

Within weeks, media coverage and scholarly depictions of the Dignity Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt as an “Arab Spring” placed them within “a discursive universe with a written past and a known future direction.” Putting aside the violence that such an act of naming entails by geographically limiting potential circuits of solidarity; for these supposedly “objective” observers, the phenomenon becomes legible only when located within a recognizable frame of reference. Whether the intended reference was the “Spring Time of Nations” in 1848, the Prague Spring of 1968, or Eastern Europe in 1989; the referential constellation remains European and liberal. The narrative subjects these revolutionary movements to historical inevitabilities. Instead of recognizing the singularity and potential novelty of these revolutionary movements—or locating them within specifically global South historical frames—the naming of the phenomenon as an “Arab Spring” shoehorns the phenomenon into an alienating spatio-temporality and assigns to it the role of object in a predetermined “March of History.”

Such analyses interpret these revolutionary movements not as moments of defiance and openings for novelty and possibility, but rather as an expression of a desire for conformity to and inclusion in “History.” These objectifying narratives are not only projected by Western analysts, but also internalized by some Algerians themselves. For instance, some Algerian liberals uncritically envisage the revolutionary movement in the country in terms of a desire to found a “Second Republic.” The implicit mental blueprint these actors have is a French Jacobin model, and their conception of a second republic draws on a frame of reference that is particular to France and its specific history, thus placing today’s Algeria temporally where France was in 1848. These conceptualizations are key in reproducing the orientalist discourses designating these countries as “backward” and thus in need of “catching up.”

Awareness of this is not meant to express a xenophobic allergy to inspiration from “foreign” experiences, but rather a critical attitude towards the models being floated and their benefits and limitations. The alienation produced by placing the colonized in a civilizational temporality that is not their own and in which they do not recognize themselves is a key target of these revolutions’ rehabilitating impulses as will be elucidated below.

The manner in which media outlets and scholarly interventions, especially in the global North, have covered the popular movement in Algeria, and the unfortunate replication of such analyses locally, indicates that history is set to repeat itself. Consciously or otherwise, the movement is interpreted through a (neo)liberal prism and narrated within (neo)liberal categories and frames of reference. It is presented as a struggle to abolish authoritarianism and corruption and calling for democracy (reductively understood as a bundle of civil and political rights, coupled with periodic elections) and a “market economy.” The Orientalism underwriting these analyses is evident in the telos they assign to the popular struggle. The unspoken assumption or rather question undergirding these perspectives is as follows: what could these people possibly want other than what the West is believed to already possess? From this perspective, the “advanced” West is the only telos for the “backward” non-West. In the words of French philosopher, Alain Badou, commenting on the so called “Arab Spring”: “Our rulers and our dominant media have suggested a simple interpretation of the riots in the Arab world: what is expressed in them is what might be called a desire for the West.”

The images chosen to highlight the peacefulness, orderliness and civility of the movement disproportionately present the young, fashionable and French-speaking protesters; read: western-oriented, secular, liberal, urban and middle class; while systematically rendering invisible those protesting in rural and working-class communities, as well as protesters with beards and headscarves. This selection bias, not to say conscious mis-representations, tacitly and subconsciously links all that is peaceful, orderly and civic with the French language, secularism, liberalism and wealth. Beards, headscarves and the Arabic language are associated in dominant representations with dust, blood, tears, anger and burning flags.

The liberal narrative also shapes the ways in which the popular demands are interpreted and represented. Take for example one of the most widespread slogans chanted by the protesters over the last eight weeks “klitou lebled ya seraqqin” (You have devoured the country, oh you thieves!). In the mainstream global mediascape, this slogan is almost uniformly interpreted as an indignation against corrupt officials and their practices. It is almost impossible to come across an interpretation that translates this slogan as an indignation against the unjust and inequitable distribution of wealth in the country. This is because doing so would render structural change and redistribution the only logical course of action to remedy this imbalance. Focusing on corruption, however, elides structural questions and developmental models that inherently produce socio-economic unevenness and engender corrupt practices, and instead focus on individuals (the bad apples, so to speak) and their punishment. In short, the liberal framing transforms a political issue into a legal one and reduces a systemic problem into an individual issue, as Corinna Mullin, Nada Trigui and Azedeh Shahshahani argue in a forthcoming article in Monthly Review (“Decolonizing Justice in Tunisia: From Transitional Justice to a People’s Tribunal”).

Furthermore, the “thieves” referred to in the slogan are uniformly understood in domestic terms, leaving out any possibility for the complicity of global actors. While the plunder of the country’s recourses has certainly been carried out through this comprador elite, and to a certain extent to its benefit, the biggest beneficiaries have been large multinational corporations and foreign governments in exchange for providing international support for this unrepresentative ruling class.

Rather than imposing ready-made analytical frames and political/civilizational temporalities on the movement; scholars, journalists, experts and opinion makers ought to listen attentively and heed the messaging of the movement through an analysis of the slogans, chants, signs, songs, and art installations featured over the past two months to form a correct understanding of the movement.

Although we cannot possibly treat every single slogan, let us look at some of the most prominent themes:

Social justice and the equitable distribution of wealth.

In addition to the slogan treated above, numerous other slogans, signs and placards were raised that contest the current uneven distribution of wealth. The “winou haqqi fel petrole?” (where is my share in the oil?) slogan evoked often over the past several decades was humorously updated to “winou haqqi fel cocaine?” (Where is my share in the cocaine?) in reference to the scandal that broke in the summer of 2018 involving 700kg of cocaine and a network of government and security officials, which led to the down fall of General Hamel (head of the police) among others. Once again, such slogans are interpreted as a rejection of ruling elite corruption, a negative posture, rather than as a call for the equitable distribution of wealth and a desire for social justice, a positive claim.

Radical democracy, dignity, popular sovereignty.

Some of the most widespread slogans deal with the theme of the people as the sole source of all power and legitimacy. In addition to the well-known “Asha’b Yurid…” (The people want…), which was raised in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and most recently Sudan; “Lebled bledna w’ ‘endirou Rayna” (this is our country, and our will shall reign supreme) has been more specific to the movement in Algeria. This slogan was raised after tens of millions took to the streets beginning in mid-March to call for suspending the current constitution, which is seen as an illegitimate document drafted and adopted with no popular involvement, by the very people the movement seeks to dislodge and underpinning the institutional arrangements it seeks to alter. Even when the military leadership opted for a “constitutional solution,” the movement insisted on the primacy of Articles 7 and 8, which stipulate that the people are the source of all authority and to them belongs all constituent power. Another variation of the slogan was lebled bledna w’ el Gaz Dyelna (the country is ours and so is its gas [natural resources]). This version makes direct reference to the need for popular sovereignty over the country’s natural resources, which are seen to have been used by the ruling elite to buy external legitimacy. The attempts to denationalize the hydrocarbons sector (nationalized in 1971) in the early 2000s and the major concessions given to large oil multinationals over the last twenty odd years have been the subject of continuous public criticism and are seen as an affront to the country’s sovereignty.

Egalitarian republicanism and decolonization.

One of the most prominent slogans chanted up until Bouteflika’s removal was: Jumhuriyya machi memlaka (this is a republic, not a kingdom). Not only is this a rejection of Bouteflika’s patrimonialization of power, but also of a general trend of the imperialist powers to favor monarchies as a system of power more amendable to realizing their interests in the region (e.g. Gulf countries, Morocco and Jordan). In the post-colonial republics, there have been an effort to repress the republican spirit and instead promote monarchical tendencies. The movement sees itself as fulfilling the dreams of their ancestors who liberated the land from direct colonial domination to establish an egalitarian society that ensures the enjoyment of one’s humanity in the fullest. The republic envisioned in the founding document of the Algerian revolution against colonial rule, Declaration of the 1st of November 1954, was conceived as a stepping stone to wider regional integration. The nation-state was conceived not as an end in itself, but rather as a means to human emancipation.

Principled politics, not a politics of interests.

In general, political satire has been a “weapon of the weak” in many revolutionary mobilizations around the world, but has a long tradition in Algeria in particular. Mockery and ridicule of the powers that be has the potential to puncture the mythology that tends to accompany power and render visible its occult workings. The omnipresence of “cachir” (Algerian Baloni/salami) in the protests over the last two months in Algeria is a case in point. The political significance of cachir goes back to the 2014 presidential campaign, in which parties of the ruling coalition offered a cachir sandwich and a small sum of money to people who would join their political rallies and fill the rooms to give the false impression of the popularity of the parties in question. The use of cachir in the current revolutionary mobilization expresses three political messages. First, it is a condemnation of the political parties engaged in what Algerians call “boulitique” as opposed to “politique,” a term coined by the Algerian philosopher Malek Bennabi to denote a political elite’s state of confusion, lack of vision and a concern for individual as opposed to collective interests. The second message is aimed at that part of the Algerian population as a condemnation for selling their souls to these parties and turning a blind eye to the country’s plunder for such a low price as a cachir sandwich. Third, and most importantly, the art installations involving cachir express a desire for a principled politics based on political vision and conviction, a concern for the collective good rather than narrow self-interest, and a struggle to emancipate and fully restore the humanity of Algerians as a complementary stage of their liberation in 1962.

Anti-imperialism and internationalism.

The prevalence of posters rejecting foreign intervention and linking the current mobilization to the anti-colonial struggle of the 20th century provide observers with a valuable insight of the political temporality inhabited by the Algerian revolutionary movement.

Unlike the alienating framings discussed above, which try to shoehorn the current moment in a European temporality that is associated with yesterday’s colonial oppressors, protesters in Algeria understand their struggle as a continuation of the anti-colonial struggle. Rather than seeing this mobilization as yet another link in the chain extending from 1848 to 1968 to 1989 to the present; Algerians place their struggle firmly in a subaltern temporality that extends from the early days of resistance to French colonial encroachment to the anti-colonial epic of 1954-62.  The raising of slogans calling for the establishment of “Jumhuriyya Novambariyya” (A November-ist Republic), in reference to the declaration of November 1st, 1954, is just one example among many.

The constant appearance of the Palestinian flag alongside the Algerian one in the current revolutionary mobilization is another example. Not only does it express solidarity with the Palestinians in their struggle for liberation from settler colonialism, but it is also a restatement and a refashioning of Algerian subjectivity in terms of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, pan-Arabism, Muslim internationalism, Afro-Asianism and Third-Worldism making these an “applied sociology” rather than mere “mythologies” and empty slogans. It is a recalibration of (neo)colonial spatiality adopted by the Algerian political elite and imposed on the Algerian people in the context of decolonization, to a subaltern spatiality, placing Algerian subjectivity on the Lima-Tangiers-Jakarta rather than the Washington-London-Paris axis.

The Algerian revolt is thus engaged in the reworking of the temporal and spatial order that underpins the coloniality of its present and sustains the conditions of its colonizability. It is a struggle against the hegemonic liberal subjectivity promoted by the status quo, which reduces one’s humanity to citizenship within an externally shaped and driven nation-state and the ability to consume goods on the world market. It is a struggle for an alternative subjectivity that shatters the artificial colonial scars (often referred to as borders), both physical and mental, which have fettered humanity for so long, and the construction of the conditions for genuine human emancipation. Algerians, to paraphrase Fanon, have (re)discovered their mission and have chosen not to betray it but rather to fulfill it.

Brahim Roubah

source: Africa is a Country

The post Reclaiming the narrative of the Algerian revolt- by Brahim Roubah appeared first on Void Network.

photos from Afghanistan in 70s, before CIA promoting Islam fundamentalists

A hundred years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have a pair of Muslim men enter a cafe or a public transportation vehicle, and then blow themselves up, killing dozens. Or to massacre the staff of a satirical magazine in Paris! Things like that were simply not done.

When you read the memoirs of Edward Said, or talk to old men and women in East Jerusalem, it becomes clear that the great part of Palestinian society used to be absolutely secular and moderate. It cared about life, culture, and even fashion, more than about religious dogmas.

The same could be said about many other Muslim societies, including those of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Indonesia. Old photos speak for themselves. That is why it is so important to study old images again and again, carefully.

Islam is not only a religion; it is also an enormous culture, one of the greatest on Earth, which has enriched our humanity with some of the paramount scientific and architectural achievements, and with countless discoveries in the field of medicine. Muslims have written stunning poetry, and composed beautiful music. But above all, they developed some of the earliest social structures in the world, including enormous public hospitals and the first universities on earth, like The University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco.

The idea of ‘social’ was natural to many Muslim politicians, and had the West not brutally interfered, by overthrowing left-wing governments and putting on the throne fascist allies of London, Washington and Paris; almost all Muslim countries, including Iran, Egypt and Indonesia, would now most likely be socialist, under a group of very moderate and mostly secular leaders.

***

In the past, countless Muslim leaders stood up against the Western control of the world, and enormous figures like the Indonesian President, Ahmet Sukarno, were close to Communist Parties and ideologies. Sukarno even forged a global anti-imperialist movement, the Non-Allied movement, which was clearly defined during the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, in 1955.

That was in striking contrast to the conservative, elites-oriented Christianity, which mostly felt at home with the fascist rulers and colonialists, with the kings, traders and big business oligarchs.

For the Empire, the existence and popularity of progressive, Marxist, Muslim rulers governing the Middle East or resource-rich Indonesia, was something clearly unacceptable. If they were to use the natural wealth to improve the lives of their people, what was to be left for the Empire and its corporations? It had to be stopped by all means. Islam had to be divided, and infiltrated with radicals and anti-Communist cadres, and by those who couldn’t care less about the welfare of their people.

***

Almost all radical movements in today’s Islam, anywhere in the world, are tied to Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative, reactionary sect of Islam, which is in control of the political life of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other staunch allies of the West in the Gulf.

To quote Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi:

“It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam. Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultra-conservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant…”

The West gave full support to the Wahhabis in the 1980s. They were employed, financed and armed, after the Soviet Union was dragged into Afghanistan and into a bitter war that lasted from 1979 to 1989. As a result of this war, the Soviet Union collapsed, exhausted both economically and psychologically.

The Mujahedeen, who were fighting the Soviets as well as the left-leaning government in Kabul, were encouraged and financed by the West and its allies. They came from all corners of the Muslim world, to fight a ‘Holy War’ against Communist infidels.

According to the US Department of State archives:

“Contingents of so-called Afghan Arabs and foreign fighters who wished to wage jihad against the atheist communists. Notable among them was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, whose Arab group eventually evolved into al-Qaeda.”

Muslim radical groups created and injected into various Muslim countries by the West included al-Qaeda, but also, more recently, ISIS (also known as ISIL). ISIS is an extremist army that was born in the ‘refugee camps’ on the Syrian/Turkish and Syrian/Jordanian borders, and which was financed by NATO and the West to fight the Syrian (secular) government of Bashar al-Assad.

Such radical implants have been serving several purposes. The West uses them as proxies in the wars it is fighting against its enemies – the countries that are still standing in the way to the Empire’s complete domination of the world. Then, somewhere down the road, after these extremist armies ‘get totally out of control’ (and they always will), they could serve as scarecrows and as justification for the ‘The War On Terror’, or, like after ISIS took Mosul, as an excuse for the re-engagement of Western troops in Iraq.

Stories about the radical Muslim groups have constantly been paraded on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, or shown on television monitors, reminding readers ‘how dangerous the world really is’, ‘how important Western engagement in it is’, and consequently, how important surveillance is, how indispensable security measures are, as well as tremendous ‘defense’ budgets and wars against countless rogue states.

***

From a peaceful and creative civilization, that used to lean towards socialism, the Muslim nations and Islam itself, found itself to be suddenly derailed, tricked, outmaneuvered, infiltrated by foreign religious and ideological implants, and transformed by the Western ideologues and propagandists into one ‘tremendous threat’; into the pinnacle and symbol of terrorism and intolerance.

The situation has been thoroughly grotesque, but nobody is really laughing – too many people have died as a result; too much has been destroyed!

Indonesia is one of the most striking historical examples of how such mechanisms of the destruction of progressive Muslim values, really functions:

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the US, Australia and the West in general, were increasingly ‘concerned’ about the progressive anti-imperialist and internationalist stand of President Sukarno, and about the increasing popularity of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). But they were even more anxious about the enlightened, socialist and moderate Indonesian brand of Islam, which was clearly allying itself with Communist ideals.

Christian anti-Communist ideologues and ‘planners’, including the notorious Jesuit Joop Beek, infiltrated Indonesia. They set up clandestine organizations there, from ideological to paramilitary ones, helping the West to plan the coup that in and after 1965 took between 1 and 3 million human lives.

Shaped in the West, the extremely effective anti-Communist and anti-intellectual propaganda spread by Joop Beek and his cohorts also helped to brainwash many members of large Muslim organizations, propelling them into joining the killing of Leftists, immediately after the coup. Little did they know that Islam, not only Communism, was chosen as the main target of the pro-Western, Christian ‘fifth column’ inside Indonesia, or more precisely, the target was the left-leaning, liberal Islam.

After the 1965 coup, the Western-sponsored fascist dictator, General Suharto, used Joop Beek as his main advisor. He also relied on Beek’s ‘students’, ideologically. Economically, the regime related itself with mainly Christian business tycoons, including Liem Bian Kie.

In the most populous Muslim nation on earth, Indonesia, Muslims were sidelined, their ‘unreliable’ political parties banned during the dictatorship, and both the politics (covertly) and economy (overtly) fell under the strict control of Christian, pro-Western minority. To this day, this minority has its complex and venomous net of anti-Communist warriors, closely-knit business cartels and mafias, media and ‘educational outlets’ including private religious schools, as well as corrupt religious preachers (many played a role in the 1965 massacres), and other collaborators with both the local and global regime.

Indonesian Islam has been reduced to a silent majority, mostly poor and without any significant influence. It only makes international headlines when its frustrated white-robed militants go trashing bars, or when its extremists, many related to the Mujahedeen and the Soviet-Afghan War, go blowing up nightclubs, hotels or restaurants in Bali and Jakarta.

Or do they even do that, really?

Former President of Indonesia and progressive Muslim cleric, Abdurrahman Wahid (forced out of office by the elites), once told me: “I know who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. It was not an attack by the Islamists; it was done by the Indonesian secret services, in order to justify their existence and budget, and to please the West.”

***

“I would argue that western imperialism has not so much forged an alliance with radical factions, as created them”, I was told, in London, by my friend, and leading progressive Muslim intellectual, Ziauddin Sardar.

And Mr. Sardar continued:

“We need to realize that colonialism did much more than simply damage Muslim nations and cultures. It played a major part in the suppression and eventual disappearance of knowledge and learning, thought and creativity, from Muslim cultures. Colonial encounter began by appropriating the knowledge and learning of Islam, which became the basis of the ‘European Renaissance’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ and ended by eradicating this knowledge and learning from both Muslim societies and from history itself. It did that both by physical elimination – destroying and closing down institutions of learning, banning certain types of indigenous knowledge, killing off local thinkers and scholars – and by rewriting History as the history of western civilization into which all minor histories of other civilization are subsumed.”

From the hopes of those post-WWII years, to the total gloom of the present days – what a long and terrible journey it has been!

The Muslim world is now injured, humiliated and confused, almost always on the defensive.

It is misunderstood by the outsiders, and often even by its own people who are frequently forced to rely on Western and Christian views of the world.

What used to make the culture of Islam so attractive – tolerance, learning, concern for the wellbeing of the people – has been amputated from the Muslim realm, destroyed from abroad. What was left was only religion.

Now most of the Muslim countries are ruled by despots, by the military or corrupt cliques. All of them closely linked with the West and its global regime and interests.

As they did in several great nations and Empires of South and Central America, as well as Africa, Western invaders and colonizers managed to totally annihilate great Muslim cultures.

What forcefully replaced them were greed, corruption and brutality.

It appears that everything that is based on different, non-Christian foundations is being reduced to dust by the Empire. Only the biggest and toughest cultures are still surviving.

Anytime a Muslim country tries to go back to its essence, to march its own, socialist or socially-oriented way – be it Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, or much more recently Iraq, Libya or Syria – it gets savagely tortured and destroyed.

The will of its people is unceremoniously broken, and democratically expressed choices overthrown.

For decades, Palestine has been denied freedom, as well as its basic human rights. Both Israel and the Empire spit at its right to self-determination. Palestinian people are locked in a ghetto, humiliated, and murdered. Religion is all that some of them have left.

The ‘Arab Spring’ was derailed and terminated almost everywhere, from Egypt to Bahrain, and the old regimes and military are back in power.

Like African people, Muslims are paying terrible price for being born in countries rich in natural resources. But they are also brutalized for having, together with China, the greatest civilization in history, one that outshone all the cultures of the West.

***

Christianity looted and brutalized the world. Islam, with its great Sultans such as Saladin, stood against invaders, defending the great cities of Aleppo and Damascus, Cairo and Jerusalem. But overall, it was more interested in building a great civilization, than in pillaging and wars.

Now hardly anyone in the West knows about Saladin or about the great scientific, artistic or social achievements of the Muslim world. But everybody is ‘well informed’ about ISIS. Of course they know ISIS only as an ‘Islamic extremist group’, not as one of the main Western tools used to destabilize the Middle East.

As ‘France is mourning’ the deaths of the journalists at the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo (undeniably a terrible crime!), all over Europe it is again Islam which is being depicted as brutal and militant, not the West with its post-Crusade, Christian fundamentalist doctrines that keeps overthrowing and slaughtering all moderate, secular and progressive governments and systems in the Muslim world, leaving Muslim people at the mercy of deranged fanatics.

***

In the last five decades, around 10 million Muslims have been murdered because their countries did not serve the Empire, or did not serve it full-heartedly, or just were in the way. The victims were Indonesians, Iraqis, Algerians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iranians, Yemenis, Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, and the citizens of Mali, Somalia, Bahrain and many other countries.

The West identified the most horrible monsters, threw billions of dollars at them, armed them, gave them advanced military training, and then let them loose.

The countries that are breeding terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are some of the closest allies of the West, and have never been punished for exporting horror all over the Muslim world.

Great social Muslim movements like Hezbollah, which is presently engaged in mortal combat against the ISIS, but which also used to galvanize Lebanon during its fight against the Israeli invasion, are on the “terrorist lists” compiled by the West. It explains a lot, if anybody is willing to pay attention.

Seen from the Middle East, it appears that the West, just as during the crusades, is aiming at the absolute destruction of Muslim countries and the Muslim culture.

As for the Muslim religion, the Empire only accepts the sheepish brands – those that accept extreme capitalism and the dominant global position of the West. The only other tolerable type of Islam is that which is manufactured by the West itself, and by its allies in the Gulf – designated to fight against progress and social justice; the one that is devouring its own people.

 
*Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. The result is his latest book: “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. ‘Pluto’ published his discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. His critically acclaimed political novel Point of No Return is re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. His feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” is about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

source: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/who-should-be-blamed-for-muslim-terrorism/

The post The West is Manufacturing Muslim Monsters. Who Should be Blamed for Muslim Terrorism? by ANDRE VLTCHEK appeared first on Void Network.

Dear comrade, for sure there are a lot of projects In this article that Void Network  disagree with them or we could critisize them as naive, non antagonistic, alternative or passive. But we have to agree that there is a lot of inspiration, a lot of creative effort, a lot of fantasy and many many good intentions in all these projects that this article includes. It is the work of all of us to bring these projects further and further
to understand their limitations and use them as better as possible  as 21st century beneficial tools for radical social transformation
VOID NETWORK

Translated by Stacco Troncoso, edited by Jane Loes Lipton – Guerrilla Translation!
Originally published in two parts at 20minutos.es. Part 1. Part 2

“The old protests, so dull and single-minded, have passed into obsolescence, and given rise to infinite possibility. We’ve rethought the concepts of action, protest, relationship, the public, the common…”

In the collective text,  This is Not a Demostration, we find a hidden corner of thoughtfulness completely ignored by mass media. This is Not a Demonstration isn’t an exercise in nostalgia. There’s no sense of longing for that Vibrant Mass that Occupied the Squares which formed that unpredictable collective body, the tangle of relationships some call “The 15-M Movement”.

This is Not a Demonstration has taken all-inclusive stock of actions, processes and projects which simply can’t be done justice by the old lexicon of protest. This is not a demonstration, we said: “And our imagination has totally overflowed the space of what’s possible, even as we build new worlds upon the carcass of the old”. This is not a demonstration. This is not a sum total. This is more than a rattling-off of victories. This is more than an echo of  “we’re going slow, because we’re going far”.

Some of the media is too quick to bury “what’s left of 15M”. After the second anniversary protest of May 12th, which took place all across Spain, some will rush to hammer the final nail in 15M’s coffin. After the headcount, they’ll pick the photo with the sparsest crowd. They’ll even go so far as to manipulate some images, like any dictatorship would.

Alone in their cave, they’ll toast the funeral, reflected in the tarnished mirror of old-world media. They won’t see the details, the process, the steady drip. They will not take note. They will not listen. They will not read this text.

Surely, 15M is too complicated to be easily categorized, explained, translated. Besides, the eye sees what it’s used to seeing, as Amador Fernández-Savater reminds us in his highly recommended Seeing the Invisible: on Unicorns and the 15-M Movement. But it might just be possible to catch a glimpse of its transformative power by describing the little things, the modest dreams, the collective projects, invisible to many. There´s no need for that utopia of May 68, that ridiculous “Beneath the paving stones, the beach” which never materialised. There´s no need for it because 15M has already built its own: dozens, hundreds, thousands of networked micro-utopias. 15M has no use for a utopian model because it already has one, hundreds, thousands, of working prototypes. Micro-utopian prototypes, connected amongst themselves and (almost) in real time.

Keyword: Prototype.  “An early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from”. Digital culture, copyleft processes and the hacker ethic, so pervasive in the leadup to 15M, all imbued their spirit in this new revolution of the connected crowd. The working prototype, within this new, open, process-based world, replaces any fixed model. And 15M is still churning out prototypes. It has built them collectively, as a network and in an open way.

The initial Acampada Sol (encampment at Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square) wasn’t made up of groups protesting the collapse of the system. Within the encampments were prototypes for the new world. And the devil was in the details: its day-care centers, its open libraries, its food gardens, its video streaming, its analogue and digital mechanisms for proposing change. 15M –  whether seen as a signal, a movement, a state of being or a set of human interactions – has built its prototypes, and they’re many: judicial, urban, cultural, economical, technological, communicative, political, affective.

The true power of 15M doesn’t lie in its (necessarily) reactionary collective defense of the welfare state. Its real, and massive, hidden strength is in its creative, innovative, proposal-oriented nature. Given our willfully blind politicians and media, increasing the visibility of these real, shareable, living prototypes is crucial, now more than ever. But it’s not a list we need, it´s more like an act of poetic justice. A subjective inventory, giving shape to something so big we don’t yet have a name for it.

As we’ve been saying for some time,  being happy is our best revenge.

PROTOTYPE 1:
THE METHOD MICRO-UTOPIA

 Image: Ondas de Ruído. Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0 

 The encampments of 2011, specifically their restoration of community assemblies, took the political old guard by surprise. Here were non-hierarchical, open assemblies that anyone could take part in. For the first time in decades, we saw political assemblies held in public spaces. Assemblies that turned into method, human hardware for uniting urban citizens.  The need for consensus arose from a spirit of dialogue and coexistence, born in reaction to the visceral antagonism of the old political class:  we won’t go until we reach an agreement. Following the erosion of the mechanisms of consensus during the encampments, the strategy of geographical and thematic diaspora came into being. #TomaLosBarrios (#TakeTheHoods). #TomaLaPlaya (#TakeTheBeach). #TomaLoqueQuieras (#TakeWhateverYouWant. Join with others. Open it up. And, from the hardships of coexistence, the slow nature of consensus, from decentralization, the workings of autonomy emerged..

In free software jargon, “fork” describes a peaceful deviation within a common project. The term was quickly adopted in 15M citizen politics. The newly formed Comité Disperso (Scatttered Committee) sums up 15M’s fresh ways of dealing with an assortment of processes. “You can be there without always being there.  You can be, without being the same. You can participate without needing to tie yourself to anything or giving up your autonomy. Acting from mutual respect, scattered organization allows varying degrees of collaboration amongst people and collectives, according to their own wishes, goals and abilities at any given moment”. It isn’t surprising then that Partido X, Partido del Futuro, which forked out from 15M, defines itself as “a method”.




PROTOTYPE 2: 
THE URBAN MICRO-UTOPIA

Image: Campo de Cebada. Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0


The encampments led to a double mutation of urban space. First: the shift from public space into common space. Public squares, beset by excessive prohibitions and the privatization of their usage, were reborn as the urban commons. A leaderless, non-hierarchical citizen network organized this urban space “peer-to-peer”, consisting of interconnected public squares.

Second mutation: hybrid space. These weren’t squares made of paving stones. These squares were of bits and atoms. Analogue and digital life were intimately intertwined, inseparable. During the encampment at Sol, theTwittómetro connected networks and public squares, virtual and physical spaces. The #AbreTuWIFI, (#OpenYourWifi) campaign, which encourages people to open their home WI-FI access during protests to allow easy communication, nurtured this new hybrid urban space. Another good example is the #Voces25S map, created to protect mass groups from police violence. You only had to tweet from your GPS-activated mobile phone to lay out the “digital rug” over the physical city-space.

The first of the two mutations described above is building a network of former public spaces, now transformed into self-organising, self-governed places bristling with activity, like Madrid’s Campo de Cebada, recent winner of Ars Electronica’s prestigious Golden Nica Award in the Digital Communities category. These spaces are often supported in part by stale, dried up public institutions desperate for new ideas. The second mutation is branching out through Convoca!, a mobile app that allows you to check in at gatherings, protests, events or encampments. Both mutations coalesce in a melting pot of networked spaces, connecting peers locally and globally, beyond institutions or boundaries, on the fringes of commercial logic.

READ MORE NEW PROTOTYPES OF STRUGGLE HERE:

PROTOTYPE 3:
THE COMMUNICATION 
MICRO-UTOPIA

photo: http://fotomovimiento.org/

Very few countries have put into practice sociologist Manuel Castells’ concept of “mass self-communication” at the same level as Spain. Under the nose of a mass media trapped in its clichés and corporate compromises, 15M created an historically unparalleled system of mass communication. It introduced transparency as a method: video streaming of assemblies, open minutes and documents for every meeting, a transparency at once action and communication. From the get-go, 15M produced better live-streamed media of protests than anyone else. TV grew increasingly irrelevant when compared to on-the-ground video streaming as exemplified by People Witness or Toma La Tele. The revolution had finally been televised, contrary to Gil Scott Heron’s prediction (The Revolution will not be televised).   What’s more, some written media, after seeing the global impact of SolTV and citizen-streaming, felt the need to catch up by aping the method and providing live video too.

A good number of photopress agencies lost some lustre to the explosive, poetic material showcased by FotoMovimiento. Meanwhile Audiovisol, Agora SolRadio or the printed-paper Periódico 15M have set the new standard in intelligent mass self-communication.

Some new media such as ElDiario.es, La Marea, Reset Project, Revista Números Rojos or Café amb Llet were born steeped in the micro-utopic communicative spirit of 15M. And if that wasn’t enough, let’s not forget 15M’s role as a global Twitter-trending-topic machine, planned on collective pads such as this one, and which are already being studied in the communication programs of universities worldwide.
 

PROTOTYPE 4:
MICRO-UTOPIA IN FEMININE

Vídeo: presenting the Zorras Mutantes 
(Mutant “Ho”s) in Sol General Assembly, 3rd of May 2012.

Spanish, being a gender-based language, was hacked to be gender-flexible (from nosotros to nosotras) early on in the encampments. We started seeing men speaking very naturally in feminine/gender inclusive forms of speech, a hugely significant detail. It’s a symbolic mutation, a step onwards from competition to collaboration. This is the tip of the iceberg of a new worldwide paradigm. I’m not referring to it as a Feminine Micro-utopia, because this shift runs much deeper than that. At the very least, we’re witnessing a remix of classical feminism, which, at times, has constructed the same kinds of antagonistic and categorical walls as “machismo”. 15M is creating a grounded, intuitive outgrowth of Donna Haraway’s utopian cyberfeminism.

The existence of assemblies such TransMaricaBollo (composed of LGBT collectives in Madrid) is another example of the micro-utopian aggregate,  inclusive and genre-transcendent, that 15M as a movement is striving for. While not being central to the movement,  the Zorras Mutantes assembly, which plays with the queer movement, polyamory and the jargon of “cyborg-feminism”, is another spark within this #PostFeminist, #PostPatriarcal micro-utopia. Here’s an extract from their manifesto: “We’re animal-human-machine-software hacking the limits of established norms (…) We’re on strike, striking against species and gender: we renounce our binary gender and human categorizations, arbitrary classifications of an imperialist tradition (…) We abhor subject-object dualism, possessive individualism and the right to own property, and we declare ourselves as metabodies.”.

PROTOTYPE 5:
THE COLLECTIVE CULTURE 
MICRO-UTOPIA 

Copyleft culture – conceived as a reaction to copyright – directlly influenced 15M. Copyleft idealism and its legitimization of copying and recycling content was at an all-time high in the months leading up to 15M, due to the threat of the antipiracy Sinde Law. These intuitive, collective and unplanned tenets formed the backbone of the #GlobalRevolution. Public squares acquired copyleft traits, becoming ctrl+v spaces constantly mirrored in their digital doppelgangers through texts on how to camp, how to videotape in a constant and unprecedented barrage of infectious creativity.

Born in the wake of 15M’s explosive appearance, Fundación Robo (or, “Steal this Foundation”), diluted the concept of individual authorship, churning out songs authored by the collective identity of Robo (Steal). Freely downloadable songs, under open licenses. Meanwhile, Asalto (Assault), Robo’s literary counterpart,  was born soon afterwards, with its collective literature and poetic snippets remixed into intense “Collective Assaults”. And Plazas Invisibles (Invisible Squares), as written by Italo Calvino with the 99%. And VocesConFutura, visual shout-outs by inspired graphic creators camped within 15M pixellated environs. And Bookcamping.cc created to answer the innocent question, “what book would you take to the square?” With its book-filled shelves, its playlist of titles, its guided visits, Bookcamping.cc stands as a prime example of the new web-created and commons-oriented culture. But, it’s possible that 15M.cc, – a transmedia project composed of a book, a documentary and the 15Mpedia – may well be the best across-the-board representation of the collective, open and collaborative spirit of 15M’s cultural micro-utopia.

Remixing – A copies B, B recreates A’s original work – turns flaws into virtues. Remixing becomes an homage, a co-creation – and, why not, a battle cry. What could be better than #cutandpaste a fragment from “Asalto nº 4, Lorca remix” in support of Marea Verde and its defense of public education. “Green that I love you Green. Green wind. Green branches. Education needs your hand, to help avenge it, to expel those seeking the failure of the masses”.

PROTOTYPE 6:
PARTICIPATORY 
MICRO-UTOPIA 

The assemblies, celebrated in public squares, marked a previously unheard of politicization of public space. Even taking into account that their consensus building mechanism didn’t end up directly influencing the democratic process, the creation of new spaces for political dialogue soon made the old institutions look dated. The project/process Parlamento a la Calle (Take Parliament to the Streets) for example, is a true master stroke against a static democracy that only allows for dialogue within the chambers of parliament. Besides, public-square assembly did manage to consolidate certain specific mechanisms.

This yearning for participation is the essence of Propongo (I Propose), a tool and platform for the collection and implementation of political ideas by a collective voting system. Propongo inspired the Rio Grande do Sul’s (Brazi) Digital Cabinet. Meanwhile, Asamblea Virtual (Virtual Assembly), a participatory online system where proposals are drawn, debated and voted on, has become an invaluable laboratory for techno-political participatory systems. Similar initiatives, such as Ahora tu decides (Now You Decide), a platform for non-state-mediated digital referendum, the urnas indignadas, physical voting booths placed on the street last November to vote on the proposal against foreclosures, or ballot information tables set up by public health defenders, Marea Blanca, make an important symbolic statement capable of forcing change in the system’s participatory mechanisms. Finally, Graba tu pleno (Record your Plenary Session) which encourages transparency by inciting citizens to video every single convention of assemblies, could also be considered another 15M prototype.

Demo4Punto0 (Democracy 4.0) is perhaps the most innovative initiative of them all. A hybrid participatory strategy and mechanism, it would allow any citizen to digitally vote on any parliamentary proposal or law. Based on each political party’s ratio of seats in Parliament, the mechanism proportionally discounts a seat for every 150.000 that participate in a vote. These citizen votes represent a proportional part of a congressman’s constituency. It’s no coincidence that the regional government of Andalucia (in the south of Spain), has commissioned the groundbreaking Andalusian Digital Democracy Report from the founders of Demo4Punto0.

PROTOTYPE  7:
FUN-TIVISM 
MICRO-UTOPIA  

Non-violence has always been an inspiration to 15M. The Movement resurrected peaceful resistance and adapted it to the Internet age. Repudiating weapons and classic urban guerrilla tactics, 15M made protest creative, constructive and, unmistakably, fun. Networked emotions and viral actions that amplified and altered their own effects. Culture Jamming, the remixing of logos and  commercial symbols as exemplified by Adbusters, morphed into something else in Spain. 15M’s culture jammers became virtual DJs, spinning memes and emotions. We saw how Flo6x8, a flash mob collective, was able to flamenco their way into a bank. We saw a crowd throwing a party in a Bankia branch, to promote its #CierraBankia (#ShutDownBankia) campaign. Bankia was Spain´s own big-bank-bailout debacle, going from public bank to private entity, subsequently bankrupting itself and then controversially being rescued with public funds, concurrent with the imposition of austerity measures. We were delighted by the parodical Ballot Box ATM: if it´s the banks that really govern us after all, why not just vote directly while at the bank?

Political Jiu-jitsu, or defeating an enemy by turning its strength against itself, is the tactic used by the Metro de Lujo (Subway DeLuxe) campaign. Elegantly attired individuals protested the Madrid subway’s inscrutable price hikes by dressing up and toasting champagne to welcome the new “aristocratic” pricing. Or, how about the ultimate fetid vengeance, exemplified by the #TubasuraalBanco (#TakeYourGarbageToTheBank) campaign – which, ultimately, made it as far as Portugal (#OLixoAosBancos). Another hilarious example is the #ManiFicció/#ManiFantasma (#FicticiousProtest/#GhostProtest), a fake protest announced as a total urban guerrilla outing,  which managed to ridicule and embarrass Catalonia’s riot police (Mossos D’Esquadra), when they arrived to meet the dangerous enemy to find… no one!

15M has creatively and humorously reinterpreted the tenets of Saul Alinsky classic “Rules for Radicals”, or The Guerrilla Communications Handbook. amongst other direct action classics. Additionally, it has birthed a particularly active army of Twitter troll activists. Profiles such as @barbijaputa or the @ikastrolla collective are prime examples.

PROTOTYPE 8:
RESILIENCE 
MICRO-UTOPIA

Faced with the unjustified rising cost of public transport, classic resistance-based activism would respond with barricades, protests and setting things on fire. On the other hand, resilience-based activism uses adaptation, micro-attacks, and hacking, expressed through cracks and loopholes in the legal system. “Translegal”, rather than illegal. IGetOn YouGetMeoOn… non-payment tactics for public transport. If you get fined, there’s a co-op that will handle the cost of the fine.  It works out cheaper to make a monthly contribution to the MeMetro (IGetOn) co-op than paying the regular monthly pass. Adapted from an identical initiative in Greece, the YoNoPago movement fights against the rising cost of highway tolls and public transport, another sign of resilience. When the VAT was raised 21% for Spanish freelancers, a new “bacterial” web-based network called #HuelgaAutónomos (Freelance Strike) sprung up to deal with the problem by paying individual taxes collectively, or by refusing to declare income on certain months (Freelancers in Spain are required to pay a disproportionately high fixed monthly fee to able to work legally).

PROTOTYPE 9:
THE NETWORKED 
POST-SYNDICATE 
MICRO-UTOPÍA

Imagen: Marea Verde, by Andrés Arriaga. 
Licensed under: Creative Commons.

The Citizen Tide phenomenon, especially in Madrid, has not been thoroughly studied by social anthropologists, but it should be. As far as mass media is concerned, apparently it isn’t even worth analysing.  The Marea Blanca (defending Public Health), Marea Verde (Public Education),  Marea Azul (against the privatization of water) and the Marea Violeta (feminism), are permutations on the traditional protests and marches declared by unions or political parties. 15M turned everything upside down. It modified the source code of protest and spread the virus to the rest of society. That’s the reason the Mareas work within horizontal, non-hierarchical networks. These mobilizations create new sets of visual associations (green equals “education”), and no one displays any union or political party paraphernalia during marches, whether they’re members or not. Their texts and objectives are written collaboratively and with absolute transparency. The Citizen Tides are a new form of social mobilization. Could we be witnessing the birth a radically different form of syndicalism? As for me, I haven’t the slightest doubt that the Tides represent a form of networked post-syndicalism that marks the beginning of a new era.
#TomaLaHuelga, a summons by 15M to attend the protests organised by the official government sponsored – and highly inefficient and corrupt – unions, as a differentiated “critical march”, is another clear-cut case of post-syndicalism.

PROTOTYPE 10:
THE COLLECTIVE 
INTELLIGENCE MICRO-UTOPIA

Stop Desahucios (Stop Foreclosures) map, built on Ushahidi. A SMS alert shows foreclosed individuals and families the location of empty bank-owned apartments in their area.

The popular, and subtly reactionary, eighties Spanish children’s TV program “La Bola de Cristal” (The Crystal Ball) introduced the phrase “sólo no puedes, con amigos sí” (you can’t do it alone, but you can do it with friends”) into the burgeoning Spanish collective unconscious. Those youths, now grown, repurposed the phrase from the start of the movement. Maybe that’s why we’ve seen such a natural shift from DIY (Do it Yourself) to DIWO (Do it With Others). Here’s an interesting distinction: 15M has consecrated the value of “multitude” over “masses”. In contrast to the “mass-man”, as portrayed by Ortega Gasset, we see the emergence of the “multitude man”. as exemplified in the Smart Mobs of Toni Negri and Howard Rheingold. The Smart Mob forms an autonomous whole, bigger than the sum of its parts. 15M’s Smart Mobs brought to life the concepts of “swarm” (Kevin Kelly / Steve Johnson) and “collective intelligence” (James Surowiecki, Pierre Levy) like never before.  Initiatives such as Stop Desahucios (mass gatherings to physically prevent foreclosure eviction proceedings), actions like the “Eschaches” (public humiliation and condemnation of corrupt politicians and bankers) and campaigns such as Toque a Bankia are palpable demonstrations of swarm and collective intelligence initiatives in full gear.

Collective intelligence also powered the 15Mpedia or the Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas (Open Hatchery for Citizen Initiatives) Glossary, and played an essential part in the formation of WhatsApp IM groups used in protests to assure the protester’s bodily safety. These are telling examples of the kind of collective intelligence that feeds the parallel, alternative and sustainable world mapped on projects such as MeCambio.Net, a listing of companies and services founded on ethical and sustainable values.

PROTOTYPE 11:
THE MICRO-UTOPIA 
OF THE COMMONS

“Out of chaos, we’ve seen actions, constructions and turnarounds arise with clear, integral, non-corporate intentions, all marked by a tendency to organise into community”. These words, recently expressed by hacker Marga Padilla, give credence to the theory that 15M has acted as a springboard for communities. A steady stream of communities where neighbours share their wifi thanks to Wifis.org, use community currencies (like Seville’s PUMA, and many others), analogue/digital barter systems such as Nockin or cooperative practices like the No.Ma.Des Project (a wordplay on nomadism and and “No More Unemployment) which seeks to find meaningful, constructive activity for the hordes of Spanish unemployed.

References to “the Commons” were omnipresent in all the initial debates of the 15M movement. The construction of interrelated communities stems from a marked desire to improve on the wealth of the commons. The Carta de los Comunes (A Letter for the Commons), a text signed the Madrilonia.org collective and edited by copyleft publisher Traficantes de Sueños, is an excellent example of the concrete – if, at times, cleverly subtle  – prototypes reflecting the commons via their intellectual content.

PROTOTYPE 12:
THE LEGAL MICRO-UTOPIA

But the most spectacular and ambitious example of this legal micro-utopia is, undoubtedly, the 15Mparato campaign. Launched through crowdfunding platform Goteo.org, the campaign gathered more than the necessary 16.000€ in less than 24 hours, collapsing Goteo’s servers in the process. These funds are being used to finance a lawsuit against Rodrigo Rato, former IMF Managing Director, head of Bankia and nominated by Bloomberg as one of the worst CEOs in the world (2012), for his mismanagement and accounting irregularities at the time of Bankia’s merger. We are talking about a mass lawsuit designed and funded online, that quickly gained the support of 50 shareholders who stepped forward as plaintiffs, as well as a host of internal witnesses. Spain’s networked citizenship shifted from defending itself to taking on the enemy. This, the first crowdfunded mass lawsuit, showed that the economic political elite isn’t as cozily secure as it thought. Or, as we can read in 15Mparato’s site: “Fear has switched sides in the struggle between those who are the bottom and those who are at the top”.

PROTOTYPE 13:
THE FREE KNOWLEDGE 
MICRO-UTOPIA

Free Knowledge, Free Licenses, Free Access. 15M squarely positioned itself against copyright from the very beginning. Many individuals and collectives within 15M have played an important role in lobbying for a more thorough transparency law. These groups have also been instrumental in the fight against restrictive proposals like the SOPA-like Lasalle Law. 15Mpedia reflects a healthy amount of free-culture and free-access related initiatives, like this list of online libraries which offer free downloads.

15M and the Marea Verde are defending universal access to public education by incorporating some important new details. The “Ciudad del Aprendizaje” (City of Learning) – education partaken on the streets, without walls and free from traditional hierarchy – is already up and running. On March 9, Spanish universities took to the streets as part of the #UniEnLaCalle (#CollegeInTheStreets) campaign, with 575 public squares and urban meeting points serving as the backdrop for innumerable master 
classes.

PROTOTYPE 14:
THE SENIOR CITIZEN’S 
REVOLUTION MICRO-UTOPIA

Iaioflautas The Rebel Grandparents from Magma Multimedia Productions on Vimeo.

PROTOTYPE 15:
THE NEO-INTERNATIONALIST
MICRO-UTOPIA

 15M has dissolved international borders. It has woven transnational communities together and eased the exaggerated nationalism that the system likes to promote during crisis. First, 15M expanded its network around the world, ignoring nation-states. The proclamation, “We aren’t commodities in the hands of politicians and bankers” was immediately understood across all nations and languages, enabling networks and breaking down borders. At the heart of this global network, the Spanish node that is 15M has always embraced diversity. It’s protected its immigrants from police abuse, it’s campaigned against Alien Detention Centers, it’s founded Neighbour Brigades for the Observation of Human RIghts. There are even doctors who’ve declared themselves as conscientious objectors due to the recent cut in immigrant public health rights, and have vowed to treat illegal immigrants, in spite of new laws prohibiting this. 15M is forging a new Internationalist movement, as far-reaching as the workers movement of the late 19th century, but endowed with an historically unmatched set of tools and connectivity. The video embedded above, showing German citizens in solidarity with Spain, was filmed as a direct response to one of 15M’s videotaped assemblies, and is visible proof of the new international micro-utopia we are forging together.

>>>>>

• The Economics and the Commons Conference’s site (Published in two parts: part 1, part 2)
• TAHRIR International Collective Network’s website  (Published in two parts: part 1, part 2)
• The P2P Foundation blog (Published in two parts: part 1, part 2)
• TakeTheSquare.net (Published in two parts: part 1, part 2)
• Occupy.com (Published in three parts: part 1, part 2, part 3)

source: 
http://guerrillatranslation.com/2013/05/16/spains-micro-utopias-the-15m-movement-and-its-prototypes/

The post Spain’s Micro-Utopias: The 15M Movement and its Prototypes appeared first on Void Network.

The events of the past couple of days are the latest step in a sequence of events by which the military can consolidate its hold on power, aim towards the death of the revolution and a return to a military/police state.

The authoritarian regime of the Muslim Brotherhood had to go. But what has replaced it is the true face of the military in Egypt – no less authoritarian, no less fascist and for sure more difficult to depose.

The massacre carried out by the army against pro-Morsi supporters in Nadha Square and Raba’a has left around 500 killed and up to 3000 injured (Ministry of Health figures- the reality is likely much higher). It was a pre-orchestrated act of state terrorism. It’s aim is to divide the people and push the Muslim Brotherhood to create more militia’s to revenge and protect themselves. This in turn will enable the army to label all Islamists as terrorists and produce an “internal enemy” in the country which will allow the army to keep the military regime in an ongoing state of emergency.

They go after the Muslim Brotherhood today, but they will come after anyone who dares to criticize them tomorrow. Already the army has declared a state of emergency for one month, giving the police and military exceptional powers, and a curfew has been declared in many provinces for the same amount of time from 7pm to 6am. This gives the army a free hand to crack down on dissent. It is a return to the days before the revolution, where emergency law had been in place since 1967 and it provided the framework for wide-spread repression and denial of freedoms.


The character of the new regime is clear. Just a few days ago 18 new governors were appointed, the majority of which hail from the ranks of the army/police or even remnants of the Mubarak regime. There has also been an ongoing attack on workers who continue to strike for their rights (such as the recent army attack and arrest of steel workers on strike in Suez). The military regime is also hunting for revolutionary activists, journalists have been beaten and arrested, foreigners have been threatened against being witness to events. Both local and global media has told half truths and built narratives supportive of a political agenda. The counter-revolution is in full flow and it knows how to break the unity of the people in its effort to divide and conquer.

In the past two days there has been a rise in sectarian reprisals, with up to 50 churches and christian institutions attacked. The army and police were not seen protecting these buildings of the Christian community. It is in the interest of both army and the Muslim Brotherhood to stoke tensions and create fear and hatred in the people. They will fight for their control of the State as people’s blood fills the streets.

We condemn the massacres at Raba’a and Nadha Square, the attacks on workers, activists and journalists, the manipulation of the people by those who vie to power, and sectarian attacks. For the revolution to continue the people must remain united in their opposition to the abuses and tyranny of power, against whoever it is directed.

Down with the military and Al-Sissi!
Down with the remnants of the Mubarak regime and business elite!
Down with the State and all power to autonomous communities!
Long live the Egyptian revolution!

The post Tahrir-ICN anarchist group statement on events in Egypt / August 2013 appeared first on Void Network.