"marxism" via Jack in Google Reader

The moral weight of Christine Lagarde and the IMF.

2012-05-31T02:30:00Z

The moral weight of Christine Lagarde's matronising of the Greeks to pay their taxes is not strengthened by the fact that, as director of the IMF, she is in receipt of a tax-free annual salary of $468,000 (£298,000, plus perks).

John Weeks

Another massive oil spill

2012-05-31T02:15:52Z

Why we can't trust capitalism with the fate of the earth ... 22,000 barrels spilled into sensitive muskeg, and the pipeline company didn't notice!

We cannot trust these companies with the fate of the planet

2012-05-31T01:31:32Z

22,000 barrels of oil and water spilled into muskeg in the far northwest of Alberta ... and the pipeline owner didn't notice

Ongoing political marginalization of Egypt's labor movement

2012-05-31T01:31:00Z

Egypt Independent
Political estrangement, legal challenges hamper labor movement

May 1, 2012

Jano Charbel

With the ongoing marginalization of Egypt’s working classes, the revolutionary demands of “bread, freedom, and social justice” remain distant goals. On this second Labor Day since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, numerous labor grievances remain unaddressed, and workers are just as politically sidelined as they were prior to the revolution, observers say.

The Mubarak regime had been blamed for oppressing and exploiting workers, along with the rest of the nation, for 30 years. With its ouster, questions loom around who is behind the political marginalization of the working classes. Is it the old laws, the new lawmakers, the ruling military junta, powerful businessmen, or politicians and their parties? Is it the fault of the trade unions and workers who are unable to claim their rightful place in the Egyptian political sphere?

One factor instrumental in curtailing the politicization of the labor movement has been legal challenges. Since the 25 January revolution began, the state has introduced the unprecedented Law 34/2011, which criminalizes labor strikes and protests and assigns penalties of hefty fines and/or imprisonment.

On the other hand, the eagerly anticipated Trade Union Liberties Law has been shelved for nearly a year since it was drafted and submitted to authorities. In the meantime, the restrictive Trade Union Law 35/1976 remains in effect, as the recently elected Parliament has been busy drafting a more obstructive version of the proposed Trade Union Liberties Law.

Although the state has maintained the 50 percent quota for workers and farmers’ representation in Parliament — in effect since Gamal Abdel Nasser was president — the military junta’s Constitutional Declaration and its amended Political Parties Law continue to prohibit workers from the establishment of labor or class-based parties.

“The establishment of religion-based parties has been authorized while the military junta continues to outlaw the establishment of worker-based parties,” said labor lawyer Rahma Refaat. Most of the parties representing religious groups have registered under neutral, non-religious sounding names. Notably, the Freedom and Justice Party, born of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Nour Party, born of the Salafi Dawah, are in the parliamentary majority.

Other Islamist parties have also been formed. For the time being, a layer of organization has partially filled the political gap for the labor movement. “The emergence of an independently organized trade union movement” is one major milestone, according to Refaat, who is also the project director of the independent Center for Trade Union and Worker Services.

The lawyer explained that, through their struggles for independent trade unionism, “Workers are gaining first hand political experience.”

Challenging the state’s monopoly on trade unionism since 1957, the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) was established just five days into the 18-day uprising against Mubarak’s rule, on 30 January. Since then workers have established hundreds of unions, away from the confines of the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF).

Labor activist Nagy Rashad from the South Cairo and Giza Flour Mills and Bakeries Company was appointed by the manpower and immigration minister last year as a member of the ETUF’s caretaker board. Rashad argued that this state-controlled union “certainly doesn’t represent Egypt’s workers.”
The activist explained that the ETUF has a membership of around 4 million, while the EFITU’s membership has rapidly grown to around 2 million.

“There are some 26 million [laborers] nationwide, while only 6 million of these are unionized workers,” said Rashad. “Therefore, unions represent only a minority of the Egyptian workforce.” Ali Fattouh, a bus driver and independent union organizer with the Public Transport Authority, has a different opinion.

According to Fattouh, “If a law is finally issued to protect trade union liberties, then independent and democratically elected unions will be sufficient to protect workers’ rights.” But independent unionism aside, there is a need for the labor movement to improve lobbying for labor rights with political parties.

Engaging with the existing parties has been a challenge for the movement, while forming its own parties remains impossible for legal reasons and lack of resources. “Labor unions focus on workplace-based issues, but not purely political issues,” said Refaat. According to the lawyer, it is for this reason that thousands of workers are demanding the establishment of their own political parties.

“Furthermore, workers do not feel that they are being represented through the 50 percent quota, nor through the parties in Parliament. “The Muslim Brotherhood and the other Islamists are both economically and politically conservative, and they’ve never really supported labor strikes,” said Refaat. “The Brotherhood hopes to realize social justice through charity works. They support union democracy, but not union plurality.”

“All legally recognized and existing parties seek only their personal gains or the interests of their parties,” Fattouh said. “They don’t care in the least about workers’ rights or gains. These parties and MPs provide us with no assistance or support during our struggles. Other than lip service, they offer us nothing.

“If we have representative and accountable unions to serve us, then we will have no need for political parties,” the disgruntled unionist concluded. However, Fattouh acknowledged the efforts of small proto-parties such as the Egyptian Democratic Labor Congress and the Workers Democratic Party toward politically empowering workers.

Yet he also pointed out that these are newborn entities that do not hold the legal status of political parties. For Rashad, “What we need to defend the rights of Egyptian workers are more independent unions and federations, along with genuine parliamentary representation.”

Rashad added: “If we are legally authorized to establish parties, like the religious parties were allowed to do, then we will be able to mobilize workers nationwide. If this were the case then we wouldn’t need the 50 percent quota in Parliament. We would have large parties able to represent and protect workers’ rights.”

Notwithstanding these legal challenges, the labor movement continues to be an important and persistent part of contentious politics, even following the 25 January uprising. “The revolution has not yet effected enough change in terms of social, economic or political progress,” Refaat said.

According to her, “Workers’ living conditions remain the same, as do their demands since the ongoing strike wave which began in December 2006.” The lawyer pointed out that strikes are taking place, on nearly a daily basis, for very similar demands — which have been unmet since then.

These demands include a minimum monthly wage of LE1,200 (around US$200) along with a fixed maximum wage, the right to establish independent unions, full-time contracts for full-time work, safer working conditions and the payment of overdue bonuses.

Refaat added: “Although the law criminalizing strikes is in effect, it has been ignored by hundreds of thousands of workers protesting for their rights. This willingness to stand up against such an unjust law is — in and of itself — an overtly political act.”

All this has amounted to “a growing political consciousness among Egypt’s working classes,” according to Refaat. Meanwhile for Rashad, the legalization of workers’ parties won’t happen anytime soon. “The ruling regimes in Egypt have always feared the power of organized labor,” he said.

*Photo by Mohamed al-Garnousy

Egypt: On Labor Day - activists, workers, presidential hopefuls take to Tahrir Square on Labor Day

2012-05-31T01:09:00Z

Egypt Independent

Activists, presidential hopefuls take to Tahrir Square on Labor Day

May 1, 2012

Jano Charbel

In Cairo's Tahrir Square, around 1,000 labor activists, workers and unionists celebrated Egypt's second Labor Day since the abdication of Hosni Mubarak. Turnout was low in comparison to last year's celebrations, which had included several thousand participants.

Labor Day events were also organized in Alexandria and a number of Nile Delta cities.

A number of workers’ marches made their way to Parliament, where they put forth their unmet demands — including a new minimum and maximum wage, the issuing of a long anticipated law for trade union liberties, improved pension plans, full-time contracts for full-time work, and the overturning of the law criminalizing strikes.

Carrying banners, flags and placards, workers chanted, "Bread, freedom and social justice," "The (right to) strike is legitimate, when faced with poverty and hunger," and "Life is bitter, we demand independent unions," along with a host of chants against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

Tens of protesters marched from the headquarters of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) and the Egyptian Democratic Labor Congress (EDLC) to the People's Assembly where they demanded a minimum monthly wage of LE1,200 (around US$200) and a maximum wage of not more than 15 times the minimum wage.

Last month, the Islamist-dominated Parliament agreed, in principle, to a maximum wage of 35 times the minimum. However, labor activists argue that the proposed maximum monthly wage of LE50,000 (around US$8,000) is too high, especially in light of the current average wages for workers.

Among the political movements involved in today's protests and celebrations were Nasserist parties, the Nasserist-oriented Karama Party, the Communist Party, the Revolutionary Socialists, the Workers and Farmers Party, the Socialist Renewal Current and the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, along with independent and unaffiliated activists.

The Muslim Brotherhood, and its political arm the Freedom and Justice Party, were not to be seen in Tahrir. While tens of Salafis were in the square, they were not there for Labor Day but rather as part of an ongoing sit-in against the disqualification of presidential hopeful Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultra-conservative Islamist preacher.

Two presidential candidates were also present and delivered speeches in solidarity with Egypt's working classes. Addressing a small crowd near the square, presidential hopeful Hamdeen Sabbahi of the Karama Party said, "We demand an adequate minimum and maximum wage, which are tied to increasing living expenses."

Sabbahi praised the uphill struggles of Egypt's working classes during 30 oppressive years under the Mubarak regime. Sabbahi also praised the left-leaning presidential candidates Hesham al-Bastawisi, Abul Ezz al-Hariry and Khaled Ali. The Karama Party leader concluded, "May God bless the simple folks, the piecemeal workers, and the country as a whole."

Independent presidential hopeful Khaled Ali then addressed the crowd, shouting, "Happy Labor Day to all of Egypt's workers, farmers, fishermen and pensioners." Ali claimed that "without a doubt, we will establish a new minimum wage and maximum wage." The 40-year-old labor lawyer emphasized that his primary concern is "the re-nationalization of privatized companies."

Ali also called for a more industrialized Egypt. "Our economy is based around tourism, while we only produce ceramics and potato chips. We need a strong industrial basis for our national economy," he said. Ali went on to criticize the state's "reconciliation agreements with Mubarak's corrupt businessmen."

Furthermore, Ali spoke in solidarity with Ahmed al-Gizawy — an Egyptian lawyer imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for allegedly criticizing the country's monarchy. The presidential hopeful denounced the kafeel (sponsorship) system which leaves migrant workers at the mercy of their sponsor. Tens of workers chanted, "Down with the Saudi ruling family," and "Down with the sponsorship system" in response.

Ali concluded by demanding the recall of the Egyptian ambassador to Saudi Arabia until Gizawy is released and all charges against him are dropped. "Long live Egypt, and its workers — free and independent," he proclaimed.

Commenting on the failure of ruling authorities to issue a new trade union liberties law to replace Trade Union Law 35/1976, Kamal Abu Eita, president of the EFITU, said, "Independent unions are legitimate in light of the International Labor Organizations conventions (particularly Conventions 87 and 98) which Egypt ratified [in the 1950s].” Abu Eita added that independent trade unionism was also authorized by the former manpower minister, Ahmed al-Borai.

Borai said that "independent trade unions are a reality on the ground, regardless of the non-issuing of the Trade Union Liberties Law." Last year Borai had authorized the establishment of unions outside the confines of the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which had monopolized the country's union movement since 1957.

The ETUF had been at the center of all Labor Day celebrations since the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser. For the past two Labor Days, however, the state-controlled federation has been sidelined.

Borai concluded, "Next year we will celebrate the EFITU's growth, which will be the largest union — not only in Egypt, but in the entire Middle East."

The EFITU, which was established on 30 January 2011, currently has an estimated membership of two million workers. However, despite the fact that tens of thousands of workers have been quitting the ETUF since 2007, this state-controlled federation still claims a membership of four million.

*Photograph by Virginie Nguyen

COCAL Updates

2012-05-30T23:12:38Z

Updates in brief and links

1. Would we be better off with no labor law that the one we have? [Is there a more to this story for the organizing of the over 80% of con- tingent faculty in the US currently with no union representation?]
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13181/american_workers_shackled_to_labor_law

2. NLRB invites briefs on reexamination of Yeshiva case in current case of Park Point College and the faculty attempt there of organize with CWA
http://www.nlrb.gov/news/board-invites-briefs-question-faculty-member-status
and for background on that case http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/02/union

and for more analytical background http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/beyond-yeshiva-nlrb-tackles-both-church-and-state/31246

and from IHE http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/24/nlrb-action-suggests-possibility-reopening-yeshiva-case-faculty-unions

3. A provocative analysis of a famous social science experiment wirh great relevance to us by our WA colleague, Jack Longmate (see below)

4. The “New Economy Movement” by Gar Alperovitz, with some relevance to us
http://www.alternet.org/economy/155452/the_rise_of_the_new_economy_movement/?page=entire

5. Very good report on the Amazon shareholder meeting in Seattle and the protests and shareholder resolutions there, by Paul Haeder, “adjunct wage slave” activist at Amazon has twice fired whole groups of people for trying to unionize in the past. Use Powells (of Portland, OR) for your book purchases, through the union there, at http://www.ilwulocal5.com/support and the union gets a % of each sale.

6. Raritan Valley CC (NJ) adjunct union to protest at trustees meeting lack of progress in negotiations for contract.
http://www.nj.com/hunterdon-county-democrat/index.ssf/2012/05/adjunct_instructors_at_raritan.html

7. Duquesne adjunct union (USW) to have NLRB representational election in June-July, by mail.

http://triblive.com/news/1857832-74/duquesne-university-bargaining-election-usw-adjuncts-board-mail-unit-adjunct

8. TN to allow any professor, contingent or regular, to have automatic credential to teach in high schools
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/may/24/measure-allows-professors-to-teach-at-high/

9. Greek brain drain as all university adjuncts are laid off and progressive [read realistic] graduate econ program is cancelled.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-24/greeces-brain-drain-has-begun

10. A blog by former adjunct on public higher ed in The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-good-news-and-the-bad-news-about-public-colleges/257615/

11. Repressive “Truncheon law” against Quebec student strikers causes backlash as both strike and popular support spread
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/24/quebec-truncheon-law-rebounds-student-strike

and a video, courtesy of Maria Peluso, pres. of the PT union a Concordia U in Montreal, of the now-daily demonstrations of what has become a social strike, not just limited to the privatization of higher education
http://indypendent.org/2012/05/23/red-square-revolt-quebec-students-strike
and this from Marie Blais of the largest contingent faculty union in Quebec
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/25/maple_spring_nearly_1_000_arrested

12. Some useful info on preparing student for the real world of work (like how to form a union and otherwise protect yourself on the job) see below

13. Kalamazoo CC (MI) adjuncts vote overwhelmingly for union rep by AFT local
http://tinyurl.com/d5x5jnl

14. Adjunct fired at Texas A&M (a public university) for objecting to cross displayed on top of university building
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150442/University-professor-complained-crosses-campus-fired.html
and http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/29/adjunct-loses-courses-after-going-public-about-threats-she-received#.T8Tan5PAxzk.email

15. Interview with Guy Standing, author of The Precariat http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3426520.htm

16. “Revenge of the Underpaid Professors” on taking for profit companies into course selling
http://chronicle.com/article/Revenge-of-the-Underpaid/131919/

and some interesting comments and replies http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/suicide-squad-attack/

17. More protests in Quebec and Chile and I hear rumors of Mexico too?? [is neoliberalism, as least in education, being put on the ropes? http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/chilean-winter-maple-spring/10945

18. Quebec students were ordered to give the cops their planned march route and this is what they sent.
https://twitter.com/PWeiskel08/status/205679006195007489 (wait for the map to load)

19. Republican NLRB member resigns over leak to person connected to Romney
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303807404577430771449920122.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

20. Latest blog from the homeless adjunct (film roadtrip) http://junctrebellion.wordpress.com/tag/adjunct/

21. Higher ed professors and students in Brazil strike and ask for support
http://portal.andes.org.br/imprensa/noticias/imp-ult-783225410.pdf

5 Broken Cameras; UN Me

2012-05-30T22:47:41Z

If I had to pick the essential documentary about the Palestinian struggle among the six very strong ones I’ve seen, the honors would go to “5 Broken Cameras” that opens today at the Film Forum in New York. It is exactly the sort of message that is helping to change peoples’ minds about the Middle East and deserves the widest audience.

The film derives its title from the 5 video cameras that co-director Emad Burnat has used over the years to document the struggle of his fellow villagers in Bil’in, one of the most combative in the West Bank, against Zionist settlers. Tear gas pellets or bullets that Israeli soldiers fired indiscriminately into crowds of protestors damaged most of the cameras. None of this, nor frequent house arrest, has dissuaded Burnat from soldiering on.

Burnat has an instinctive feel for cinematic transcendence, something that life under occupation rather than film school workshops can only make possible. His first camcorder was a simple affair of the kind that you take on a vacation and that he purchased to photograph his four children who are major subjects in the film, along with his wife Soraya. Under normal conditions, that is what a camcorder is used for, after all. But when ultra-orthodox Jewish settlers arrived at a state-sponsored high-rise in Bil’in, his fellow villagers relied on his film documentation of the abuses associated with occupation.

The abuses are enough to get anybody to consider the rightness of the BDS cause. The Hasidim’s brutality and arrogance will remind you of nothing else but newsreels of the Gestapo pushing around Jews in the 1930. When you see an “observant” Jew punching a nonviolent Palestinian protestor in the face, you wish for a latter-day Jeremiah to tell them “how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine.”

The Israeli soldiers are just as bad. They stand impassively on the road protecting the settlers, heavily armed and utterly lacking in humanity. Some of the more poignant scenes in “5 Broken Cameras” involve the Palestinian protestors getting in the soldiers’ faces and demanding that they act like human beings.

Bil’in is a small farming village whose main crop is the olive tree. One of the most horrifying scenes in the documentary shows the charred olive trees that were left by a settler arson attack in the middle of the night. As a powerful contrast, you see Burnat’s youngest son presenting an Israeli soldier with an olive branch. He takes it without any apparent recognition of his own violation of what the branch symbolizes through his daily actions.

Not every Israeli is a thug. We meet a good number who have come to Bil’in in solidarity, including one older man who bestows a fairly professional looking camera on Burnat. At one point, the Israeli is shot in the face by a tear gas pellet just barely missing an eye. We also see many internationalists who have rallied around the cause of Palestine just as an earlier generation rallied around the Spanish Republic.

One of the more noteworthy Israelis standing on the side of humanity is Burnat’s co-director Guy Davidi, who was an activist with Indymedia. His first documentary was “Interrupted Streams” that dealt with the Zionist theft of Palestinian water just as the latest deals with land theft.

Throughout the film, you hear Emad Burnat’s voice as he speaks eloquently about his tribulations and his hopes. Like other Palestinians, there is a note of weariness and fatalism as they see the Zionist juggernaut in action but notwithstanding that they always find a way to demonstrate their opposition to it. Perhaps no other people on earth symbolize Gramsci’s “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will” more graphically than the villagers of Bil’in.

In the press kit from Kino Lorber, there’s a section that deals with the 5 cameras of the title. Here’s the story on the third, something that should give you a feel for the intense nature of this year’s most compelling documentary by far:

Gibreel is now three years old, and Emad takes his kid to see the demonstrations by himself – with a third camera on his shoulders. On that day, Gibreel saw his neighbors being arrested, including one of Emad’s brothers – as the soldiers were entering more and more into the village and began taking people from their houses.

After that, soldiers entered into the village and arrested children from their homes – for throwing rocks in the demonstrations. In the morning, the kids went to demonstrate together. They cried: “We want to sleep”. But the violence continues and an Israeli activist was hurt by a bullet in the head. In his house, the kids speak about brochures the army distributed to warn people not to go and demonstrate. Soraya then had to explain to them that they had to continue resisting. And the soldiers continued to look for children to arrest.

One night, they came into Emad’s house while he was filming. Emad was taken to the police, and then, kept in jail and house arrest. In a house far from Bil’in, Emad was locked alone, accused of throwing rocks but actually punished for filming. At the end, the army dropped all charges, as they claimed lack of evidence. When he is out, Emad went directly to filming, and his third camera was again, shot at and hit. The bullet, still inside the camera, is a proof to life’s fragility.

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I suppose I should say a few words about the truly rancid “U.N. ME”, a title that is supposed to sound like “You and Me”, a sample of director Ami Horowitz’s lame sense of humor.

I had a feeling that this would be a rightwing screed but watched it out of curiosity. I had never seen a conservative documentary before and wondered if it would be half as amusing as a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh or the like. I don’t mind rightwing crapola in small doses, just as a way of reminding me how far off a revolution in the USA is.

Horowitz used to be an investment banker—no surprise there. The film is a diatribe against the U.N. utilizing all the expected talking points about how it is a “den of iniquity”, to use Lenin’s description of the League of Nations, but its iniquity is based on a mixture of self-seeking corruption of the kind that only a professional diplomat is capable of and coddling of terrorists and Islamic governments, Iran’s especially.

Horowitz, a truly off-putting character, has appropriated Michael Moore’s shtick wandering around the U.N. or the offices of various diplomats looking for a chance to make them look foolish. Instead, it is he who looks stupid.

While I have little use for the government of Sudan, there is one scene that encapsulates the dimwittedness of the director. He asks a government spokesman why there was so much killing in the south. When the man starts off by putting it into context by referring to global warming, the jackass director tries to make a joke about the whole thing, asking whether peace in Darfur will come if we all start driving Priuses.

One can’t imagine Ami Horowitz ever reading anything but the NY Post, but if he took the trouble, he could have learned that the Sudanese official was not far off from the truth:

The fighting in Darfur is usually described as racially motivated, pitting mounted Arabs against black rebels and civilians. But the fault lines have their origins in another distinction, between settled farmers and nomadic herders fighting over failing lands. The aggression of the warlord Musa Hilal can be traced to the fears of his father, and to how climate change shattered a way of life.

Until the rains began to fail, the sheikh’s people lived amicably with the settled farmers. The nomads were welcome passers-through, grazing their camels on the rocky hillsides that separated the fertile plots. The farmers would share their wells, and the herders would feed their stock on the leavings from the harvest. But with the drought, the farmers began to fence off their land—even fallow land—for fear it would be ruined by passing herds. A few tribes drifted elsewhere or took up farming, but the Arab herders stuck to their fraying livelihoods—nomadic herding was central to their cultural identity. (The distinction between “Arab” and “African” in Darfur is defined more by lifestyle than any physical difference: Arabs are generally herders, Africans typically farmers. The two groups are not racially distinct.)

Now, that would be a good topic for a documentary, how the violence in Darfur really got started. For that you need a brain, like the directors of “5 Broken Cameras” have, as opposed to the cabbage between Ami Horowitz’s ears.

Conference: Doing and Undoing Academic Labour

2012-05-30T20:21:39Z

‘Doing and Undoing Academic Labour’

7 June 2012, 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

University of Lincoln (UK)

In recent decades, a wealth of information has been produced about academic labour: the financialisation of knowledge, diminution of professional autonomy and collegiality through managerialism and audit cultures; the subsumption of higher education into circulations of capital, proletarianisation of intellectual work, shift from dreams of enlightenment and emancipation to imperatives of ‘employability’, and experiences of alienation and anger amongst educators across the world.

This has also been a period of intensifying awareness about the significance of these processes, not only for teachers and students in universities, but for all labour and intellectual, social and political life as well. And now we watch the growth of a transnational movement that is inventing new ways of knowing and producing knowledge, new forms of education, and new possibilities for pedagogy to play a progressive role in struggles for alterantives within the academy and beyond.

Yet within the academy, the proliferation of critical work on these issues is not always accompanied by qualitative changes in everyday practice. The conditions of academic labour for many in the UK are indeed becoming more precarious and repressive – and in unequal measure across institutions and disciplines, and in patterns that retrench existing inequalities of gender, physical ability, class, race and sexuality. The critical analysis of academic labour promises much, but often remains disconnected from the ways we work in practice with others.

This conference brings together scholars and activists from a range of disciplines to discuss these problems, and to consider how critical knowledge about new forms of academic labour can be linked to struggles to humanise labour and knowledge production within and beyond the university.

Contributors

Mette Louise Berg – ‘Situated reflections: on gender and becoming an academic’
Anna Curcio – ‘Race and Gender in the Edu-Factory’
Richard Hall – ‘Educational technology and the war on public education’
Maria Do Mar Pereira – ‘(Im)Possible Labour? Critical Education in “Performative” Universities’
Dean Lockwood, Rob Coley and Adam O’Meara – ‘What a relief to have nothing to say…Academic labour and language in the rhizome’
Andrew McGettigan – ‘Value for money: degree awarding powers, standards and academic labour’
Justine Mercer and Howard Stevenson – ‘The frontier of control revisited: managerial authority and academic labour revisited’
Sara Motta – ‘The messiness of motherhood in the neoliberal university’
Gigi Roggero – ‘Occupy Knowledge’

Public / Free / Open
This conference is public, free and open to everyone; we warmly invite you to attend. Please register via the website so we know how many people will be attending. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Dr. Sarah Amsler at samsler@lincoln.ac.uk.

Getting here
Doing and Undoing Academic Labour will be held in Learning Landscapes, MB1019, the University of Lincoln. Click here for a map of the campus.

We hope to see you here!

Best wishes,

Dr. Sarah Amsler
Sr. Lecturer in Education
Centre for Educational Research and Development
University of Lincoln
Lincoln LN6 7TS

Islamophobie ordinaire à Tourcoing

2012-05-30T18:29:00Z

http://www.uam93.com/news/voile-temoignage-de-tourcoing.html

Forget Bob Dylan, remember Bob Dylan

2012-05-30T17:19:25Z

“Dylan raked those Masters of War, and then gets honored by them?

“It is possible for people to ‘see’ and even lead in one context, and be utterly lost in another. It isn’t just that they change, and it certainly isn’t that they are always assholes.

“Often the confusion precedes the sellout — which means that it is not simply corruption.

“And isn’t the Obama moment just such a cause for confusion?”

by Mike Ely

You see a picture like that, and it is hard to find words.

Tellnolies of course did:

“”I guess I am gonna work on Maggie’s Farm some more.”

Adam Richmond wrote to me:

“What a fucking sellout. He got the same medal as war monger Albright from a man who is planning drone kills.”

Honored by the Masters of War who lie and deceive?

We could spit on the ground and end the discussion there, if we chose.

But then Aine Fox asked:

“Question: is was he really ever a revolutionary? I just am unsure if his motivation was to make money or whether he at one point believed what he said. I don’t personally think he was anything of relevance but i didn’t grow up in this country so maybe that is also why i have no time for someone who releases their music through Starbucks…..”

And that kinda forces me to step back. It is sad that so many have trouble seeing who Dylan was because of who he is. I have trouble seeing who he now is because of who he was.

Dylan was a god to us

As for how relevant he was… it is hard to exaggerate. I often say “To us he was a god.” And I believe it. And it is a testimony to the power of poetry even in a time of birthing ideology.

Most revolutionaries I knew took Dylan’s songs as the musical scores of their lives and politics. There was a heated rupture moment in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) where virtually every position paper started with a quote from Dylan (and only occasionally Mao). The Weatherman organization (for example) take their name from a Dylan lyric:

There is a remarkable passage in Bobby Seale’s book on the Black Panther Party (Seize the Time) where he describes Huey Newton “breaking down” the Dylan song “Ballad of a Thin Man” to explain to a roomful of Panther cadre how to understand the radicalization and antiracism of young white revolutionaries.

Again, it is hard to exaggerate Dylan’s impact at a certain point (late sixties) among revolutionaries. He wasn’t alone, but he was certainly outstanding.

Motives

Aine even speculates that Dylan may have been just about money — since his songs made him rich.

Again the present obscures the past — and sometimes the outcome seems (falsely) embedded from the start.

Dylan was a folk singer emerging from a time when there was very little money to be made as a folk singer. I think he was clearly sincere in his views and in his apocalypic sentiments.

The folk circles were (obviously) almost universally left — antiracist, antiwar, pro-people, anti-corporate, pro-thinking — with a lot of influence by the Communist Party and the religious left. And Dylan was (at least at one time) considerably to the left of those Old Left politics (and openly connected to the early primitive revolutionary left for a moment or two).

His song “The hour when the ship comes in” speaks to that.

Beyond that, Bob Dylan has always been a convoluted person, and went through a convoluted political evolution.

When he adopted an electric guitar (at the 1965 Newport folk festival) the attack on him from the “official left” (a very conservative Old Left) was vicious to a degree that must be hard to imagine now. He also felt that (to a degree that was painfully impossible) many people expected him to be a “political leader” — when he was an intensely private poet and an eclectic thinker.

Afterwards, he went through a number of changes (even Zionist, fundamentalist Christian, and gawd only knows what else). But even as he was leaving us, Dylan left us a parting gift in 1971:

How do we look at those who bend, or break, or cash in?

I believe people often make their contribution and then move on. I don’t like it, but I’ve seen it a lot.

People do what they understand, and often they run into the limits of their understanding.I don’t think it is just that “people are weak” — but that people often see, and feel, and understand things in the storms of one specific context (and one Badiouian “truth process”), and their fidelity to that fidelity can’t carry them on forever.

We should struggle with each other. We should seek to carry each other over the gaps of understanding. We should critcize those who step back. We should not forgive the real traitors, snitches, betrayers — who traffic on their past deeds to crush our current ones.

Bill Martin does Dylan — with the band Porphyry, May 25, 2012, Chicago

But otherwise, personally, I’m in favor of being generous with people. I think a kind of generosity with people flows from our understanding of complexity, particularity and the difficulty of what we are attempting. I think we should honor what people do and did, and not make the verdict on their lives be simply the last or the worst things they’ve done.

Dylan’s songs still live. They are cherished.

I just went to a concert of Bill Martin’s trio that did a whole evening of Dylan covers. And the songs are quite beautiful (and I don’t just mean the “political” or prophetic ones).

Also: It was hard for many people to deal with the defeat of a revolutionary upsurge. People aren’t just jailed or killed in that process. Some just become shadows of themselves (or pimps on their own past selves). Just think of David Hilliard, or Huey, or even Bobby Seale, or Eldridge Cleaver, or Arafat (fercrissakes).

But in such cases, the “end of the story” doesn’t define or negate the whole of the story. IMHO.

Dylan may be pathetic in his old age (as Aine says: “Pumped out of starbucks to make a few bucks.”) And it is especially pathetic given what he represented (a legacy he has been cashing in on).

But it doesn’t change what he was, or what he did, or what it meant to millions of people. (Even if that is understandably hard for someone young to perceive, or FEEL, looking back.)

The aging of insights, the need for renewal

Maoists in China described a process where former comrades announced “This is my stop, this is where I get off.”

Dylan raked those Masters of War, and then gets honored by them?

It is possible for people to “see” and even lead in one context, and be utterly lost in another. It isn’t just that they change, and it certainly isn’t that they are always assholes. Often the confusion precedes the sellout — which means that it is not simply corruption. And isn’t the Obama moment just such a cause for confusion?

Flowers fall off, do what one may.

We struggle with each other (hard!) against that. And we sometimes win people over — win them back. But we can’t win them all. And you can’t force someone to see a truth, or stay on a bleeding edge.

The Maoists in China also used to say “Flowers fall off, do what one may.” Meaning there are objective forces and arcs at play in life. Thing rise and then age. We can influence objective processes, we can recognize them, we can prepare to deal with them, but we can’t simply negate them.

Human beings are complex, squiggly creatures. The courage and creativity people wield are often closely linked to specific moments and insights — and in other contexts those insights can prove exhausted. That courage and creativity can dry up. And people sometimes find themselves beached on shores where they can’t orient themselves. I’m not excusing it. I’m not saying we can’t all fight our way through to new insight. I’m just describing a process, and expressing an orientation towards it.

Dylan’s own words are an indictment of him now. Yes he turned his back on his own best self — and worse, on the people.

Personally, I’m just glad we had him, and still have those songs. The creature he now is just doesn’t make much impact on me. He is pathetic — and inhabits a shadow world of the depleted and corrupted. And even then: I don’t rule out that people can’t come back, or reawaken, or at least lend their weight in a good way at some point. People are complex.

Personally, I accept that people make their contribution, and then sometimes just can’t anymore. And I’m obviously not just talking about Dylan, but many dear former comrades and friends who once led and then (in other contexts) got sadly lost. They aren’t defined by their end state — though that end state may make onlookers angry, or frustrated or (worse) demoralized. And i think, now, this has something to do with the conjunctural nature of change and insight — and how radically the landscape shifts, and how much youth and flexibility it demands of us. Some think our work is uncovering eternal truths, I suspect the hard part is capturing and then recapturing a sense of wide-eyed freshness with which to identify newly posed and potent truths.

As for those we leave behind: Their best work and best days are not negated by how far they may then fall.

Works of art, or theory or history don’t disappear because their authors later bowed or crumbled. We can learn from the dead, even if their zombie selves still lumber among us.

Filed under: art, Bob Dylan, Mike Ely, music

Faculty Unions Mobilize to Regain Lost Ground in Elections

2012-05-30T17:16:06Z

The Chronicle: Faculty Unions Mobilize to Regain Lost Ground in Elections

Labor unions that represent college instructors are gearing up for several major battles at the polls in the coming months, out of a conviction that they must flex more muscle politically if they are to prevent further assaults on their members’ pocketbooks and bargaining power.

Although labor-related issues have long been key points of contention in state and national elections, labor activists in academe are especially geared up for the current election cycle in response to the attacks that fiscally conservative Republican lawmakers mounted against them after the elections of 2010.

Syriza’s program

2012-05-30T15:32:37Z

http://www.greanvillepost.com/2012/05/27/the-european-situation-syrizas-program/

Indigenous Nationhood: Federal Budget 2012 – The Battle Lines Have Been Drawn

2012-05-30T15:19:04Z

From the Canadian Native blog Indigenous Nationhood. The Conservative budget was released today with most mainstream political commentators wiping their brows, saying “Phewf, we thought it would be much worse!” People like Kevin O’Leary were asking why the Conservative government didn’t go further to open up Canada for international investment. Others were relieved that only [...]

President Strangelove

2012-05-30T14:20:52Z

Awit ng Kadamay – Song of the Filipino Urban Poor

2012-05-30T12:29:37Z

Last summer 3 correspondents from BASICS News in Canada went to the Philippines to report on the social conditions and the people who are organizing to change their society in the interest of the oppressed. This is a short documentary of the situation of the urban poor in the Philippines as told through a song written [...]

This week's thoughts for the brain...

2012-05-30T10:15:00Z

Those of you who hang around the same parts of the internet as I do will know there is a debate going on. The Greek and French election indicate a potential sea change in European politics. To use the precise meaning: austerity rolls, but anti-austerity politics have found their voice. There are now rallying points, in Greece it's Syriza, in France the Left Front. These are not Bolshevik organisations. The question then is what does the left of the left, including revolutionaries, do?

Let me make one thing clear, however. The people in places like Britain arguing with headbanging sincerity about the need for entryism are total phonies.

But if these results are indicative, it means rough equivalents of these organisations will appear everywhere. The British political system is the most resistant to political breakthroughs (regional assemblies and local mayors not withstanding). Fans of doorknocking, sorry, getting down to some serious work in local communities, might not see too many tangible results so soon. One thing I think we can definitely say is there is not simply a vaccum on the left, at least not one we can fill ourselves.

It's worth going over what it took last time to give the left unity and purpose. At the height of the anti-war movement, in the weeks before the attack on Iraq, I attended organising meetings (not rallies, organising meetings) where 100 people occupied one room and 100 more taking up an overflow room, with runners heading between them and the local news crew confused as to who they were supposed to film... and yet things worked perfectly, with no foul-ups, no duplication and no sectarianism.

The point is, partly, that the organisation which received most of the anti-war movement was set up in anticipation, as opposed to the left unity project, which was a reaction to events. Perhaps when Respect was formed the moment was already passed. Certainly between the first unity rally in October 2003 and the foundation in January 2004 Bob Crow, George Monbiot, the Green Party, the Socialist Party and the CPB all backed off.

For better or worse, we were in a position where we had to substitute for a united left in the anticipation of future success or effectively cancel the project. Let's never get into that pickle again. No substitution or liquidation; perhaps easier typed than done.

Labour’s National Policy Forum: the continuing case for its abolition

2012-05-30T07:41:51Z

Labour NEC candidate Pete Willsman has some proposals for internal party reform. These include changes to the National Policy Forum (NPF) to give members greater information on what’s being developed e.g. by shadow cabinet working groups, and power to the NPF to decide what goes to conference for approval.

Pete’s a good guy, properly devoted to democratising the party, but he’s in cloud cuckoo land here.

The NPF does not need amending. It needs abolishing.

It was one of those initiatives that may have seemed like a good idea at the time but it is clear enough now that it and its (willing and often competent members) are more likely to used as a mechanism to fob the membership off with some notion of ‘being in office’ than to provide input into actual Labour party policy.

The stark reality is that the Parliamentary Labour Party and its advisers set policy, often in reaction to political opportunity, sometimes at short notice, always behind closed doors. Anyone notice the idea of an EU referendum discussed by the NPF (not that I’m against it)?

Members and CLPs will be better off without the NPF deflecting their energies, and better served engaging with their MP/PPC to demand the policies they want, and holding the same properly to account if they don’t get them.

Of course, I’m no help to the abolitionist cause. I sought nomination to the NPF ballot paper on just this agenda, but my own CLP declined to nominate me (although others did), instead preferring someone perhaps less likely to rock the boat.

But I’ll be back.

Why Greece will do just about anything to stay in the Euro (part 2)

2012-05-29T22:06:25Z

Two weeks ago I was told I was a) economically illiterate; b) talking defeatist ‘cobblers’ for arguing, against the leftie consensus, that the Left should get right behind SYRZIA and other anti-austerity parties as they do what they must do to stay in the euro.

I argued that the pain would be just too much to bear, and that far from being a decisive act for socialism, leaving the euro could simply tear the country apart, with untold consequences.

Now the National Bank of Greece has set out in numbers what will happen to ordinary Greeks if Greece is forced out:

Per-capita income would drop by at least 55 percent in euro terms as a new currency would depreciate by about 65 percent, according to the report, emailed from the bank today. The recession would deepen by about 22 percent at stable prices, adding to the 14 percent recorded in the 2009 to 2011 period, National said, while unemployment would jump to 34 percent and inflation rise to above 30 percent, pushed up by the higher cost of imported goods.

Greeks know this. This is why SYRZIA may not win the elections, despite being front runners. People may feel it’s simply too dangerous.

I repeat.

Better for SYRZIA to talk up the ‘nuclear option, in the knowledge that Merkel and co will most likely blink first, but to have some form of compromise lined up if need be.

Greece will and must do what it can stay in the euro, though capital flight and bank withdrawals might just mean it’s already too late.

And we should support them in that.

After the BBC has been slammed for using a photo taken in Iraq in 2003 to illustrate the Syria massacre, whose interest does broadcasting unverified materiel serve?

2012-05-30T03:00:00Z

Whilst I recognise something terrible is happening in Syria and have always detested the Assad regimes, whether it be the father's or his son's. Beyond innocent civilians having their lives stolen I have found it difficult to get a handle on what is exactly going on within that country. After the NATO intervention in Libya, which I opposed, and the wars on the Iraqi and Afghan people, I have little confidence in much of the material published by the mainstream media about this part of the world, the more so when it carries a health warning such as not verified.

Nightly the BBC and other news outlets broadcast video allegedly taken within Syria with a disclaimer saying it could not be independently verified. What good is that? When many of these videos have unverified clips of distressed and dead people, its tends to make me doubly cautious. It does not automatically make them false, or such killings by the regime are not taking place, I am sure they are, but one would have to be reckless to accept them as fact, without some kind of verification as they seem to me to be designed to provoke western military intervention. At the very least the name of the source the news outlet received the clips from should be made public. (Just to be clear I'm not suggesting the individual who shot the video should be named.)

I suppose the most blatant example of false propaganda in a war situation happened in the run up to Operation Desert Storm. When a young articulate Kuwaiti woman who said she was a nurse, stated before an 'unofficial' Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, that during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators on a hospital ward, steal the incubators, and leave the babies to die on the floor. This story was carried as fact by the BBC, CNN, and many other media outlets.

It later turned out the young women was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Furthermore she had been in the USA throughout the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, and her testimony was organized as part of the 'Citizens for a Free Kuwait' public relations campaign which was run by PR outfit Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government.

I cannot help thinking a full scale invasion of Syria by NATO, or the arming of the various insurgent groups, will only make a bad situation worse. Syria is not Libya which has a small population in comparison with the 22 million plus people who are Syrians. It may well come to full scale civil war, but that is not something we should be pleased about or welcome with open arms, far from it in fact.

MH
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The BBC is facing criticism after it used a picture taken in Iraq in 2003 to illustrate the senseless massacre of children in Syria.

Photographer Marco di Lauro said he nearly “fell off his chair” when he saw the image being used, and said he was “astonished” at the failure of the corporation to check their sources.

The picture, which was actually taken on March 27, 2003, shows a young Iraqi child jumping over dozens of white body bags containing skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad.

It was posted on the BBC news website today under the heading “Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows”.

The caption states the photograph was provided by an activist and cannot be independently verified, but says it is “believed to show the bodies of children in Houla awaiting burial”.

A BBC spokesman said the image has now been taken down.

Mr di Lauro, a professional photographer, said: “I went home at 3am and I opened the BBC page which had a front page story about what happened in Syria and I almost felt of from my chair.

“One of my pictures from Iraq was used by the BBC web site as a front page illustration claiming that those were the bodies of yesterday's massacre in Syria and that the picture was sent by an activist.

“Instead the picture was taken by me and it's on my web site, on the feature section regarding a story I did In Iraq during the war called Iraq, the aftermath of Saddam.

“What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn't check the sources and it's willing to publish any picture sent it by anyone activist, citizen journalist or whatever. That's all.

He added he was less concerned about an apology or the use of image without consent, adding: “What is amazing it's that a news organization has a picture proving a massacre that happen yesterday in Syria and instead it's a picture that was taken in 2003 of a totally different massacre.

“Someone is using someone else picture for propaganda on purpose.”

A spokesman for the BBC said: “We were aware of this image being widely circulated on the internet in the early hours of this morning following the most recent atrocities in Syria.

“We used it with a clear disclaimer saying it could not be independently verified.

“Efforts were made overnight to track down the original source of the image and when it was established the picture was inaccurate we removed it immediately.”

By Hannah Furness.

Colonisation via settlements of West Bank enters an alarming phase; as Israel plots an endgame

2012-05-30T02:30:00Z

Israel’s colonization policies are entering an alarming new phase, comparable in historic magnitude to the original plans to colonize Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the war of 1967.

On 24 April, an Israeli ministerial committee approved three settlement outposts - Bruchin and Rechelim in the northern part of the West Bank, and Sansana in the south. Although all settlement activities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal by international law, Israeli law differentiates between sanctioned settlements and ‘illegal’ ones. This distinction has actually proved to be no more than a disingenuous attempt at conflating international law, which is applicable to occupied lands, and Israeli law, which is in no way relevant.

Since 1967, Israel placed occupied Palestinian land, privately owned or otherwise, into various categories. One of these categories is ‘state-owned’, as in obtained by virtue of military occupation. For many years, the ‘state-owned’ occupied land was allotted to various purposes. Since 1990, however, the Israeli government refrained from establishing settlements, at lease formally. Now, according to the Israeli anti-settlement group, Peace Now, “instead of going to peace the government is announcing the establishment of three new settlements…this announcement is against the Israeli interest of achieving peace and a two states solution”

Although the group argues that the four-man committee did not have the authority to make such a decision, it actually matters little. Every physical space in the occupied territories – whether privately owned or ‘state owned’, ‘legally’ obtained or ‘illegally’ obtained – is free game. The extremist Jewish settlers, whose tentacles are reaching far and wide, chasing out Palestinians at every corner, haven’t received such empowering news since the heyday of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The move regarding settlements is not an isolated one. The Israeli government is now challenging the very decisions made by the Israeli Supreme Court, which has been used as a legitimization platform for many illegal settlements that drove Palestinians from their land.

On 27 April, the Israeli government reportedly asked the high court to delay the demolition of an ‘unauthorized’ West Bank outpost in the Beit El settlement which was scheduled to take place on 1 May. The land, even by Israeli legal standards, is considered private Palestinian land, and the Israeli government had committed to the court to take down the illegal outposts – again, per Israeli definition – on the specified date.

Now the rightwing Netanyahu government is having another change of heart. In its request to the court, the government argued: “The evacuation of the buildings could carry social, political and operational ramifications for construction in Beit El and other settlements.” Such an argument, if applied in the larger context of the occupied territories, could easily justify why no outposts should be taken down. It could eradicate, once and for all, such politically inconvenient terms such as ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’.

“Previous Israeli governments have pledged to demolish the unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank, but only a handful have been removed,” according to CNN online. In fact, that ‘handful’ are likely to be rebuilt, amongst many more new outposts, now that the new legal precedence is underway.

Michael Sfard, an attorney with Yesh Din, which reportedly advocates Palestinian rights, described the request as “an announcement of war by the Israeli government against the rule of law.” More specifically, “they said clearly that they have reached a decision not to evacuate illegal construction on private Palestinian property.”

Some analysts suggested that Netanyahu was bowing down to the more rightwing elements in his cabinet – as if the man had, till now, been a peacemaker. The bottom line is that Israel has decided embark on a new and dangerous phase, one that violates not only international law, but Israel’s own self-tailored laws that were designed to colonize the occupied territories. It appears that even those precarious ‘laws’ are no longer capable of meeting the colonial appetite of Israeli settlers and the ruling class.

Israeli settlements have been contextualized through Israeli legal and political references, as opposed to references commonly accepted in international law. The emphasis on differences between Israeli governments, political parties and religious/ultra-nationalist settlement movements is distracting and misleading; colonizing the rest of historic Palestine has been and remains a national Israeli project.

An article in the rightwing Israeli Jerusalem Post agrees. “Support for settlement is not simply a program of right-of-center Likud. Its history has firm roots in Labor party activity during the periods of its governments, and activities by predecessors of the Labor party going back before the creation of the Israeli state” (27 April).

The only variable that might be worth examining is the purpose of the settlement, not the settlement itself. Following the war of 1967, the Allon plan sought to annex more than 30 per cent of the West Bank and all of Gaza for security purposes. It stipulated the establishment of a “security corridor” along the Jordan River, as well outside the “Green Line”, a one-sided Israeli demarcation of its borders with the West Bank. Then, there was no Likud party to demonize, for that was the Labor party’s vision for the newly occupied territories.

While the Israeli settlement drive since then has swallowed much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, populating them with over half a million Israelis, the international community’s response was as moot in 1967 as it is now in 2012. Responding to the latest sanctioning of illegal outposts, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declared that he was “deeply troubled” by the news. Meanwhile, Russia was ‘deeply concerned’ and so was the European Union’s Catherine Ashton. As for the US, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland insisted that the Israeli measure is not “helpful to the process.” What process?

While Israel has now showed all of its cards, and the international community declared its complacency or impotence, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah continues to plan some kind of UN censure of the settlements. Even if a watered-down version of some UN draft managed to survive the US veto, what are the chances of Israel heeding the call of international community?

There is no doubt that Israel is plotting its version of the endgame in Palestine, which sees Palestinians continuing to subsist in physical fragmentation and permanent occupation. Unless a popular Palestinian uprising takes hold, no one is likely to challenge what is actually an Israeli declaration of war against the Palestinian people.

By Ramzy Baroud, an internationally-syndicated columnist and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).