Here are some of the articles and discussions about Obama that have appeared on Kasama.
Obama: Oil, Afghanistan and the American Way by Mike Ely
In Berlin on July 24, Barack Obama made a clear and unmistakable statement on his view of the world. There is much to say about its details, but the most central and specific feature of it was his demand that the U.S. (and the German government) escalate their military invasion of Afghanistan.
It would be wrong to suppose that Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World (Chicago, Insight Press, 2008 ) is just a book. It’s in fact a campaign by some highly motivated people to promote atheism, and a certain critique of religion (including “Christian Fascism”) in American life. Authored by the chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, it has been advertised for months with great fanfare. The party, in a call to “Help Make this Book a Major Social Question,” has declared:
“There are many people who need this book, and many sectors of society which it must penetrate. In the communities of the oppressed and in the truly hellish prisons, where people are force-fed religion…in the high schools and universities, where atheist and agnostic clubs are beginning to emerge…among the educated and progressive, and among those hungering for enlightenment…this book must reach. April should be a time when this book emerges onto the scene with great impact.”
Even the most significant and original contributions to religious studies are seldom publicized with this sort of (dare I say religious ?) excitement. Party expectations are obviously high.
The targeted audience is vast, although the book blurbs including praise from at least four professors in different fields suggest the RCP wants the book to reach intellectuals in particular. It is not, however, a scholarly work. It offers no insights into the history of the Abrahamic religions, and indeed makes mistakes and errors of omission in its discussion of them. It isn’t likely to be reviewed in academic journals like the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Philosophical Review, or Rethinking Marxism. The organization is choppy; Avakian skips from topic to topic, sometimes asking questions he answers perfunctorily or partially, only to return to later. This is not designed to be a scholarly discussion on the level, say, of Engels’ “On the Early History of Christianity” published in 1895. It’s apparently supposed to be a popular, lively, in-your-face exercise in agitation. Committed to atheism and historical materialism, I myself am in principle totally sympathetic to the project. If I thought it was done well and effectively I would applaud it.
Like much of Avakian’s material (or what the RCP reverently terms his “body of work”), it reads as a series of homilies; indeed, it is a re-editing of two talks given in 2004 and 2006. (It is also often self-referential, with long passages from a 1999 book Preaching from a Pulpit of Bones and other Avakian publications.) The “significant amount of editing” the author performed (p. ix) deliberately includes bracketed indications of audience response to the talks. Some readers might find it off-putting when a passage that strikes them as less than amusing is followed by “[Laughter]”—but this informs us of what the author himself thinks is funny or ridiculous about religion, just in case there’s any lack of clarity. But having noted that it’s not an academic book, let’s examine it seriously, following its somewhat chaotic order, with the sort of rigor that might occur in a journal review.
This is the second part of Pavel’s review of Bob Avakian’s Away With All Gods.
In Part Two of “Away With All Gods” Avakian attempts an historical overview of the emergence of Christianity and Islam and asks why fundamentalism is growing in the contemporary world. His discussion of the first relies heavily on works by two scholars of early Christianity, Bart D. Ehrman and James D. Tabor. Ehrman’s fine book Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2005) explains how the Bible contains interpolated material and passages inserted by scribes; Avakian uses it to drive home the point that the Bible is a set of human documents. Tabor’s book The Jesus Dynasty: the Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (2006) is as Avakian observes more controversial. (Indeed, the whole career of Tabor, who has vouched for the authenticity of a version of the Ten Commandments carved in Hebrew letters on a boulder found in New Mexico, supposedly dating back over 500 years but thought by most archeologists to be fake, is controversial.)
Tabor argues that Jesus’ half-brother (?) James, rather than Peter, succeeded him as head of his movement but that Peter was later recognized as leader while Paul promoted a new version of Christianity among the Gentiles. Had James’ “line” won out, Christianity would have developed as a Jewish sect rather than the world religion it became (pp. 75, 80). Avakian uses this work to argue that the emergence of Christianity in the latter form was not inevitable but a matter of contingency; had Paul died earlier than he did, things might have turned out differently (p. 79).
Avakian’s main points are uncontroversial and widely accepted in secular and liberal religious scholarship on Christian history. But he gets some of the details wrong. He suggests that “the early Christians were having a lot of difficulty getting people to join their movement” because of Jewish dietary restrictions and the practice of circumcision. This assumes that “the early Christians” were seeking non-Jewish members in what was still a Jewish sect, and frustrated at their low recruitment efforts. In fact it was Paul who brought the movement to Gentiles, rejecting the requirements of circumcision and adherence to Mosaic Law for them—not because he had had “a lot of difficulty” imposing such requirements but because his “new covenant theology” obviated the old law. As the Epistle to the Galatians (chapters 1-2) makes clear, he faced significant opposition from James, Peter and John.
scott h. sent Kasama the following article, adding, “It shows just how out of touch national politicians really are from the life of the people: John McCain doesn’t even KNOW how many houses he and his wife own!”
McCain not sure how many houses he and wife own
Associated Press 08.21.08, 10:38 AM ET
WASHINGTON – Days after he cracked that being rich in the U.S. meant earning at least $5 million a year, Republican presidential candidate John McCain acknowledged that he wasn’t sure how many houses he and his wealthy wife actually own.
“I think – I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain responded to a question posed by Politico, according to a story Thursday on the publication’s Web site. “It’s condominiums where – I’ll have them get to you.”
Later, the McCain campaign told Politico that McCain and his wife, Cindy, have at least four in three states, Arizona, California and Virginia. Newsweek recently estimated the two owned at least seven properties.
I was working in Keystone, a large heavily-Black mine at the southernmost edge of West Virginia, near where it butts into Virginia and Kentucky.
As the wildcat strikes heated up and spread, as our communist organization started to play a more and more active role in them, and as we started carrying out open communist work, the management of my mine quickly identified me as a radical, and soon realized that they would have a hard time driving me out of the mine. They wanted to set me up for firing.
And so one of their moves was to have me work (on a big double-headed Fletcher roof-bolting machine) with Don, who was a preacher of the Jimmy Swaggart variety. Don, a Korean war vet, and his twin brother Ron alternated preaching at a church over in Virginia, in a very conservative area famous for its “sunset customs” (where Black people risked death if they stayed in the county past night fall). Don’s religiosity was extreme and sincere. His whole waking life was a constant dialog with a part of his brain which (he believed) provided gifts from his God. So he would walk over to a broken machine, praying to himself “Dear God, give me the power to fix this,” and he would walk away from the fixed machine praying “Thank you, God, for giving me the insight to fix this.”
His own remarkable mechanical skills (and everything else in the universe) were, to Don, a gift from God that could be suspended at any moment.
villagers manning an anti-displacement blockade, Jagatsinghpur District, Orissa
The following article appeared in the Statesman, August 17, 2008. for ongoing coverage of these matters, see our Kasama’s internationalist info project Revolution in South Asia.
‘Suspected Maoists’ arrest sparks debate
JAGATSINGHPUR, Aug 17- The recent arrests of ‘suspected Maoists,’ particularly Pratima Das and Debendra Dash who were moving in broad daylight drawing attention of one and all by accompanying a foreign national David Pugh, has inevitably triggered a debate on whether anti-displacement activists were being dubbed and booked as ‘suspected Maoists’.
A section of human rights and social activists, poets and journalists raised questions on the recent police action here today. While a local Oriya daily newspaper had a front page editorial captioned ‘I am a Maoist,’ another magazine editor held a meeting at Bhubaneswar to decry state repression. The Oriya daily newspaper which carried a front page editorial claimed that Debendra Dash was a reporter working for the paper in Jagatsinghpur district.
Many are drawing analogies between the U.S.-led attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 and the Russian attack on Georgia earlier this month. Most, including Russian officials, do so to highlight the hypocrisy of Washington’s criticism of Russia’s action. Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, went so far as to state last week, “If we had the territorial integrity of Serbia in the case of Kosovo, then we would have the territorial integrity of Georgia . . . with regard to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.” He added that NATO’s war in 1999 “takes away the right to criticise Russia for any present or future action.”
Surely one can ask: What right has the U.S., which led the assault on Yugoslavia ostensibly to protect the beleaguered Albanians of Kosovo, to condemn the Russians for advancing into Georgia to protect the South Ossetians who’d just been subjected (as AP acknowledges) to “a massive assault”? What right does the U.S., which led the bombardment of Belgrade, have to criticize Russia’s bombardment of Gori (sparing the Georgian capital of Tbilisi)? What right does the U.S., which this year recognized Kosovo as an independent country, have to challenge the Russian foreign minister’s pronouncement that Tbilisi can “forget about” retaining South Ossetia and Abkhazia whose citizens plainly want out of the Georgian state?
D’accord, je l’admets, je ne suis pas le reporter typique. Quand j’ai appris que Budweiser avait été racheté par les euro-capitalistes InBev, ça ne m’a fait ni chaud ni froid.
Je me fiche de qui possède les usines aux Etats-Unis. Je n’en ai rien à faire que le coeur des Etats-Unis soit infiltré par les investisseurs étrangers. Budweiser n’est certainement pas pour moi une fierté nationale. A la vérité, je trouve que cette bière est pratiquement imbuvable.
Mais j’ai dressé l’oreille quand j’ai appris que les ancêtres de la famille d’Anheuser-Bush , le fabriquant de la Budweiser, étaient arrivés à St-Louis (Missouri) avant la Guerre de Sécession.
Ah, mes amis, je tenais là une histoire qui valait la peine d’être racontée. Et je vais m’installer confortablement dans la chaleur moite de cette soirée de Chicago, tout en sirotant une ou deux bières belges Fat Tire et je m’en vais vous raconter cette histoire, simplement parce ce que je déteste les conneries patriotiques et parce que j’adore la révolution.
DENVER – Activist groups say the converted warehouse poses a threat to civil liberties. The city maintains the facility is needed in case of mass arrests during the Democratic National Convention.
The makeshift holding center, dubbed “Gitmo on the Platte” by activists, is located on city-owned property near Steele Street and 38th Avenue. Newly-installed security cameras guard the exterior, chain-link fences and barbed wire form cells inside.
“We feel the city should be ashamed of this secret prison they’ve set up,” said Re-create ’68 organizer Glenn Spagnuolo.
Spagnuolo and other activists gathered outside the formerly-secret facility on Friday to protest the city’s plan to use it as a processing center for all those arrested outside the DNC.
“The public was never going to view this place, it was just found out,” Spagnuolo said. “They got caught with this place. They told our lawyers in negotiations that this place didn’t even exist.”
The following appeared as a comment in the thread containing much of our debate over Georgia. because it gives a good starting point, we have posted it here as its own thread.
by Nando
The impression was given above that we have only two choices in this georgian conflict — either sympathize with the U.S. Georgian side, or with the Russian side.
And then, to divine where to stand, there is a tendency to focus discussion on who struck first, and whose motives are most despicable.
I think that we need to see this as a proxy war, as an interimperialist conflict… and help explain it to the people in that light.
To put that in a more polemical way: Some people (rather mechanically) act as if there is only one issue in the world — the resistance of smaller third world countries to larger powers. If you push every world event into that framework, then Georgia (the smaller country here, long dominated by Russia) gets assigned the role of victim and virtuous combatant. But this rigid framework (“cutting the toes to fit the shoes”) overlooks the role of the U.S. here, which for fifteen years now has moved bases, trainers, Nato treaties, bribes, pipelines, and more into the southern tier of countries once part of the old Soviet Union. In other words, there are TWO big powers contending here — sharply, including militarily — and Georgia’s reactionary government is acting as the provocative agent of one of them (the U.S.) The fact that Georgia’s government miscalculated, and their incursion provoked a long prepared Soviet invasion hardly makes Georgia’s government into fighters for national liberation!
We have to go beyond the immediate details of the OUTBREAK of war, and analyze its roots — in order to lay bare the interests for which the two (capitalist) sides are fighting.
Caspian Sea Oil
At the heart of this conflict is the struggle over Caspian Sea oil. And at the heart of that struggle, is the whole geostrategic fight over who controls the vast parts of the world that need such oil to run their economies.
Shine the Path uncovered this 1973 essay by the revolutionary French philosopher Sartre.
STP is circulating it saying: “I still don’t see why radical left-wing people in NYC think that there is any reason to work for the Obama campaign. So I am posting up a little piece of excellent flame-bait.” The original title of the piece is “Élections, piège à cons” — using a term quite a bit more biting than “fools.”
Elections: A Trap for Fools
by Jean-Paul Sartre
In 1789 the vote was given to landowners. What this meant was that the vote had been given not to men but to their real estate, to bourgeois property, which could only vote for itself. Although the system was profoundly unfair, since it excluded the greater part of the French population, it was not absurd. The voters, of course, voted individually and in secret. This was in order to separate them from one another and allow only incidental connections between their votes. But all the voters were property owners and thus already isolated by their land, which closed around them and with its physical impenetrability kept out everything, including people. The ballots were discrete quantities that reflected only the separation of the voters. It was hoped that when the votes ere counted, they would reveal the common interest of the greatest number, that is, their class interest.
At about the same time, the Constituent Assembly adopted the Le Chapelier law, whose ostensible purpose was to put an end to the guilds but which was also meant to prohibit any association of workers against their employers. Thus passive citizens without property, who bad no access to indirect democracy (in other words, to the vote which the rich were using to elect their government), were also denied permission to form groups and exercise popular or direct democracy. This would have been the only form of democracy appropriate to them, since they could not be separated from one another by their property.
Kasama has received the following from Dave Pugh. Please circulate this actively and widely.
Urgent Action Needed to Save Amin Maharana’s Life and to Free Anti-Displacement Activists in Orissa, India.
On August 15, Dave Pugh returned to the U.S. after spending three and a half weeks gathering information about the anti-displacement movement in India. Pugh is a member of the Initiative Committee of the International Campaign Against Forced Displacement that was launched on June 19, 2008 at the Third International Assembly of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle held in Hong Kong, and traveled to India on a fact finding mission for the international campaign.
As a guest of Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan (VVJVA–People’s Movement against Displacement and for Development), Pugh traveled across five states in central and eastern India visiting the sites of proposed industrial and mining projects, Special Economic Zones and real estate developments. He spoke with hundreds of villagers who are threatened with displacement and with many dedicated activists who are helping to organize the people’s resistance.
On the night of August 12, the car he was traveling in was pulled over by local police for a traffic-related reason. Nevertheless, Pugh, his translator Protima Das, his guide Pradeep and their driver were taken to a police station for questioning. For the next eight hours, all of them were interrogated, first by the local police superintendent, and then by the chief police official of the state of Orissa in eastern India. The latter was particularly hostile, accusing Pugh of being an “anti-government agitator” and Protima and Pradeep of being part of the Maoist underground in Orissa without any evidence. Pugh was released to his hotel at 4 am. As a result of phone calls and emails sent by civil libertarians and VVJVA supporters and foreign friends, Pugh was able to leave Orissa without further harassment.
1. Pennsylvania: Union Protests Arrests
2. March Protests Postville Raid
3. Farmworkers Arrested in Hawaii
4. Ohio Restaurants Raided
5. Raid at Arkansas Boat Manufacturer
Immigration News Briefs is a weekly supplement to Weekly News Update on the Americas, published by Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012; tel 212-674-9499; weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. INB is also distributed free via email; contact immigrationnewsbriefs@gmail.com to subscribe or unsubscribe. You may reprint or distribute items from INB, but please credit us and tell people how to subscribe. Immigration News Briefs is posted at http://immigrationnewsbriefs.blogspot.com.
*1. PENNSYLVANIA: UNION PROTESTS ARRESTS
On July 31, ABM Janitorial Services Inc. lured 42 of its employees to its office in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, in the suburbs just northwest of Philadelphia, where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were waiting to arrest them for immigration violations. The company had sent the workers a memo telling them to attend a 4:30pm meeting at the offices for training and discussion on new policy procedure, according to Kate Ferranti, a spokesperson for Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represented most of the workers. The employees that attended the meeting were promised one hour of overtime, and were told that they could pick up their weekly paychecks at the beginning of the training; they were warned that if they did not attend, their paychecks would be withheld and they could face disciplinary actions, including termination.
Kasama is working on having teams at both Denver and Minneapolis… to participate, to report, to conduct interviews, to make contacts, and to learn. If you are interested in hooking up, email Kasama.
The Come Up to Denver Campaign started in March 2008, when Graham Nash gave permission to Colorado activists to re-record his song “Chicago” for the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In 2008, the DNC will be in Denver. That version, “Come Up to Denver” is now a rallying cry for anti-war activists from around the country to converge on Denver for 2008 DNC to protest the war.
With the Olympics has come plenty of criticism of China from the “west” over the Chinese government’s crackdown on protest. Parks far from the Olympics are designated for protest, which are rare, and protesters have been dragged off towers while displaying protest banners, and swiftly deported.
Time magazine reported that “George W. Bush, on his way to watch the Games as a self-professed sports fan, got into the act by expressing ‘deep concern’ about China’s human-rights record. ‘America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents and human-rights advocates and religious activists,’ Bush said in a speech in Bangkok a day before leaving for China. ‘We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labor rights not to antagonize China’s leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential.’”
But anyone who studies American history knows that freedom of assembly is always conditional on who is assembling, and why. Forty years ago, when students and youth poured into Chicago aiming to stop Democratic Party support for the Vietnam war , as the Mayor of Chicago sent the police into the streets to gas and beat the protesters bloody. Bedlam broke out inside the convention over the war in southeast Asia, and the war outside on the streets, as the youth chanted “The whole world is watching!”
It is with obvious relief that we can report that Dave Pugh has been released by the authorities in India and safely returned to his home. And it is with great concern and anger, that we have to report that his companions still face charges and great danger. We want to extend thanks to the many supporters and friends of Kasama who have responded to the call to help free these three. We look forward to posting Dave’s report from India and news of the situation of Pratima and Pradeep.
Statement by Dave Pugh on his Detention during his Fact-Finding Trip to India
by Dave Pugh August 16, 2008
Yesterday I returned to the U.S. after spending three and a half weeks gathering information about the anti-displacement movement in India. I traveled across five states in central and eastern India to the sites of projected industrial and mining projects and real estate developments. I spoke with hundreds of villagers who are threatened with displacement and with many dedicated activists who are helping to organize the people’s resistance.
On the evening of August 12, I was returning to the state capital of Orissa, Bhubaneswar, after spending a day in the area of Kalinganagar. This was the site of a massacre of 15 tribal farmers in January 2006 by Orissa police who were protecting the construction site of a large steel plant owned by the Tatas, one of the biggest industrial houses in India. Since then the farmers and their allies have stopped construction in its tracks, much to the consternation of Tata Steel and the Orissa government.
At approximately 8 pm, the car transporting us was pulled over by local police for a traffic-related reason. My translator Pratima Das, my guide Pradeep, our driver and I were taken to a police station for questioning. For the next eight hours, all of us were interrogated, first by the local police, and then by the chief police official of the state of Orissa. The latter was particularly hostile, accusing me of being an “anti-government agitator.” When I insisted that I was a teacher researching the issue of forced displacement in India, he insisted that only “communists” would be interested in speaking with villagers.
Crosby, Stills and Nash brought the audience to their feet when they performed “Denver” at their concert on June 26 at the Wells Fargo Theatre in Denver. “Denver” is a remade version of the Come Up to Denver Campaign’s remade version of Graham Nash’s original song “Chicago” .
Graham Nash dedicated their performance of the song on Thursday to Coloroado Governor Bill Ritter, who was in the audience. No word on what the governor thought of CSN rallying activists to converge on the capitol of his state for the 2008 DNC.
We are so honored that CSN played this song at their concert in Denver. We hope that everyone who hears it will be inspired to help spread the word.
The revolutionary Maoist leader Prachanda has now become the Prime Minister of Nepal — by isolating the National Congress and its intrigues. And the same time, in this complex situation, Nepal still has two armies facing each other, and a great (potentially hostile) power, India, across a long and indefensible border.
In honor of Prachanda’s selection as Prime Minister, his close party collaborator, Baburam Bhattarai, said: “Today is a day of pride and it will be written with golden letters in the history of the nation.” Bhattarai predicted that Prachanda would be a leader “for a new era”, comparable to Lenin or Napoleon.
by Anand Gurung for Nepal News
A glimpse at Prachanda’s childhood years and then as a devoted teacher during his younger more salad days before he turned into active politics might help in knowing the person behind the name Prachanda who is better known to the rest of the world as a leader of a violent Maoist insurgency in the strategically important place between India and China — one who was the most elusive underground leader in the world till two years back with many in Kathmandu doubting if he even exists because, according to an editor of a leading English weekly, “so little was known about him during the first five years of the war” and who, rather uncomfortably, sits over/on top of so many transformations the nation has changed in the matter of two years. Read the rest of this entry »
Here are some of the articles and discussions about Obama that have appeared on Kasama.
