Game of Stones...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88ClpLbD0wY

Watch this bar erupt as Arya kills the Night King...  The Youth Will Save us From Climate Change!

Kulture Kommissar
April 30, 2019

Slavery Never Really Died

“Slave States – the Practice of Kafala in the Gulf Arab Region” by Yasin Kakande, 2015

Kakande is a Muslim journalist from Uganda, who combines his personal and journalistic experience in the Gulf to paint a dire portrait of the situation for migrant (ostensibly ‘temporary’) workers in the theocratic Gulf states.  He approaches the situation as a liberal moral Muslim, not as an anti-capitalist.  His many stories resonate with anyone who is aware of the situation of migrants in the U.S., who suffer some of the same fates, but not all. 

And It Is 2019...

Indeed, the ‘Kafala’ system is more brutal.  It is the legal name (ridiculously based on the Arabic word for ‘guest’!) for the immigration labor system of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates (which includes 3 emirates), Qatar and Bahrain.  These countries are all in the Gulf Cooperation Council – GCC.  The sponsors of Kafala workers, be they individuals or companies, have all power over those they ‘sponsor.’  Money, passports, healthcare, communications, movement, etc.

Kakande himself worked in Dubai and Sharjah, UAE, and in Doha, Qatar as a low-paid, Kafala journalist for years.  This gave him a wide view into the lives of migrant construction workers, taxi drivers, domestic servants, security guards and airport workers imported into the GCC states to do their hard work.  These wealthy oil emirates are seen by the poor living near them as money magnets, much as the U.S. is seen in the Americas.  Yemen, the Red Sea and the deserts of Saudi Arabia have become deadly transition zones for illegal migrants from Africa, especially Ethiopia, where many die of drowning, thirst or hunger.

In practice wealthy citizens and their monarchical governments in the GCC view the Kafala system as virtual slavery.  

The UAE and other Gulf states abolished chattel slavery in the 1960s, not so long ago.  The Islamic Republic of Mauritania was the last country in the world to outlaw chattel slavery in 1981, but it continues with an estimated 10-20% of darker Moors enslaved.  Only one slaver in Mauritania has been convicted.  While Kakande asserts that Islam is against slavery, he never explains why Islamic theocracies continue/d the practice – not ‘de jure’ but certainly ‘de facto.’  Salafist, Wahhabist and certain Shia religious thinkers continue to support slavery to this day.  Certain ‘habits’ of some rich Arab men, such as forcing themselves on maids, come from the days of the Arab slave trade, which brought Africans to the middle east.

The Shangri-La of the Middle East

Kakande hits on many topics, including the censorship, self-censorship and deportations that face journalists in the GCC.  He cites cases of the legal inviolability of royal families and the sham nature of both ‘secular’ and Sharia legal systems related to Kafala.  These same families and their corporations buy off Muslim inmans and muftis, who then bless their activities with Islamic fatwas.  Each country filters the profits of government projects into private pockets.  Even "Islamic" banking is a fraud that merely changes the name of interest to 'profit.'  Kakande details the widespread penchant for not paying workers at all by sponsoring companies, governments and rich Emirati citizens, or nicking them with constant fees and fines.  Kakande also describes the overwhelming racism in the Gulf states based on skin tone and national origins.  

The situation of immigrant women is the most grim.  Rape, injuries and murder of non-Arab maids occur on a regular basis, sometimes without punishment or light ones.  Conditions are similar to those for female house slaves in the U.S. South during slavery days.  A child born out of wedlock can lose an immigrant woman her job and also get her a jail term, so babies are killed or abandoned.  Qatari women who work for Qatar Air are forbidden from getting married or being pregnant.  Street harassment of women, including cameras in toilets and hotel bathrooms, are huge problems.  Prostitutes are imported into the brothels of the GCC, many unable to leave.

Kakande reports on the terrible conditions and quandaries faced by Kafala proletarians from Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, Uganda, Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines and the like.  Many fall out of the system and continue illegally within the GCC as ‘runaways’ or escapees.  Mass deportations occur.  Strikes break out which do not last or succeed. The immigrants are the great majority in these countries, which have never had a local proletariat.  As such, Kafala is the local capitalists’ way of controlling or crushing that proletariat.  Kakande gives you an inside, personal look into how these glitzy profiteering economies work that no GCC government or corporation wants known. 

Other reviews related to this topic, use blog search box, upper left:  “Modern De Facto Slavery,” “The Death of the Nation,” “Lipstick Jihad,” Libertarian Atheism versus Liberal Religionism,” “Female Genital Mutilation,”  “The Left and Islamic Literalism,” “Islamophbia and the Politics of Empire,” “The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism,” “Armed Madhouse,” “The Party’s Over,” “The Race For What’s Left,”  

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

April 29, 2019

Not Your Expected Story

“A Viet Cong Memoir – an Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath,” by Truong Nhu Tang, 1985

Tang was an intellectual culled from the upper ranks of Saigon society under French rule.  He eventually became the Minister of Justice for the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) – i.e. a high-level official of the Viet Cong.  This is a revealing story of the brutal war waged by the U.S. and ARVN and the efforts of many south Vietnamese nationalists against them.  But it is also revealing as to the political positions of the NLF and the PRG - which were eventually at odds with those of the “Tonkinese” northern Vietnamese and the Lao Dong (Vietnamese Workers Party.)  Because of this, in 1978 Tang became a ‘boat person’ and ended up in Paris, where he had been educated, first became politically aware and first met Ho Chi Minh.

Very few in the U.S. know this story.  Tang was a supporter of a national and democratic revolution, which was originally the perspective of Ho for the South, and why he joined the NLF while the rest of his family supported the various U.S. sponsored regimes.  One of the highlights of the book is the story of how Tang and the NLF, PRG and COSVN (southern Lao Dong command) lived in the Iron Triangle jungle under heavy B-52 bombardment for years.  And how, during the criminal U.S. bombing of Cambodia, they were forced to go into northern Cambodia with the support of the Prince Sihanouk, who had been ousted.  (Tang actually went to school with Sihanouk for a time.)  The Viet Cong leadership barely survived between pincers from the Cambodian Lon Nol government’s army on the west and an ARVN offensive from the east, but no one was lost. 

Tang always calls many of the cadre from the North or from the local Lao Dong ‘ideologues' - though they were corrected by the top leadership sometimes.   After the military victory in the south in April 1975 by NVA and Viet Cong units, a more harsh and bureaucratic version of ‘democratic unity’ was administered by the Lao Dong.  Tang considered he had been duped, as had the whole NLF leadership.  Anyone reading it from a Trotskyist or other position will recognize the ‘errors’ made by the Lao Dong after the end of the war were because of the influence of the Soviet and Maoist bureaucracy on their training.   

“Re-education” camps that were merely long prison sentences.  Complete shunning of intellectuals, even those in the Party, who questioned affairs.  Cadres seizing wealth.  Dictatorial rule over workers and peasants, with arbitrary arrests for small matters.  A military-style social structure, with one Party giving orders.  The ignoring of mass organizations outside the Party orbit.  The misuse or non-use of various trained people in engineering, agriculture, medicine and other skills. 

Tang and most of the NLF leadership were against taking sides in the Soviet v. China debate that began in the early 1970s.  The Lao Dong came out for the Soviets, though both countries had supplied help to the national liberation struggle.   Tang quotes Ho Chi Minh a lot and maintains that after Ho died, the new leadership failed to follow Ho’s line regarding southern Vietnam. 

Viet Cong at work

To me the key issues beyond national liberation are those of land reform and workers control.  At one point Tang mentions that he didn’t want to touch the land reform subject in his work writing the future laws of south Vietnam, which might ‘alienate peasants.’ Which seems odd given the popularity of land reform to Vietnamese peasants!  For workers, the NLF/PRG program was limited to promoting more generous labor laws, but not nationalization, workers control or a guaranteed job. 

This is a valuable book to anyone who participated in the anti-Vietnam war movement, as I did.  Tang and the NLF/PRG kept a great eye on domestic events in the U.S., which was part of their 3-sided ‘people’s war’ strategy in forcing the U.S. out of Vietnam.  The U.S. itself only relied on one side - military power – and had no idea of why their choice of puppets like Thieu or Diem might undermine their position.  It is especially a window into the more elite, nationalist stratum in Saigon, which also sacrificed to expel the French, the Americans and their Vietnamese puppets.  While ultimately I disagree with his bourgeois views, Tang makes valid points about the type of ‘socialism’ introduced after the April 1975 victory.  That issue is in the ending chapters of the book, so the majority of the book is Tang’s training, then his role in the governmental Viet Cong during the wars.

Other reviews on Viet Nam.  Use blog search box, upper left, on word 'Vietnam' or:  “Kill Anything That Moves,” “Matterhorn,” “The Sympathizer,” “People’s History of the Vietnam War,” “In the Crossfire - Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary,” “Working-Class War,”"Tree of Smoke," "What It Is Like to Go To War," "Ken Burns," "Soldiers in Revolt."

And I bought it at May Day's used/discount section!

Red Frog

April 23, 2019

Time, Time, Time is Not on Your Side

“Time and Time Again,” by John Zerzan, 2018

This book by an academic anarchist is chock full of quotes on the oppressive role of time in elite-run societies.  In its 78 pages it contains over 150 cited quotes and many more uncited, so if you want quotes on time, this book is a good compendium!  Otherwise, it flip flops between idealist philosophy and materialism.  Zerzan is a primitivist philosopher who wants to go back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.  Which, given the coming climate Armageddon, might be doable in larger parts of the world in the next 20-30 years.  However, the proletariat might question his agenda. He’s now a middle-class consultant to non-profits and museums.  I question whether this guy has ever tried living off hunting or berries.  After all, most animals are nearly gone.

The Civic God

Zerzan’s main point is that the development of the calendar, the clock, maps and other technologies of economic change (the computer!) have imprisoned us in a false sense of time.  And certainly anyone working and living in the present understands the terrible crushing role of time that is demanded by modern, world-wide capitalism.  He enlists Marx in one quote about clocks as driving industrialism, hoping to turn Marx upside down.  Zerzan’s angle ignores class struggle and economics .  He says: “…the beginning of Time – constitutes the Fall: the initiation of alienation, of history.”

Marx and Engels actually pointed out that economic factors and classes made calendars useful in the agricultural slave societies of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Meso-America; religious clocks and calendars useful in the medieval economies of serfdom; and the punch clock and watch of capitalist industrialism a necessity.  Now the 24/7 ‘clock’ of a sped-up computerized global web never sleeps - a natural outgrowth of globalized imperialist economics.  Class society introduced alienation, not calendars. The calendars and clocks amplified the economic structures, facilitating each mode of class production.

Zerzan is inconsistent in talking about time’s origins, and sometimes claims that ‘the division of labor’ caused different methods of time-keeping.  Yet he does not explain why there was a division of labor. In addition, Zerzan rages against ‘linear time,’ yet no one has proved any other kind exists.

Megalith stone circles - Portugal

Zerzan insists that prior to ‘the Fall,’ hunter-gatherers had no sense of time.  He insists that natural rhythms are not time, yet any musician knows otherwise.  The seasons, the moons, the movement of the sun, the process of day and night, the weather – all are a natural form of time.  Death of humans and animals itself certainly ends at least one form of existence, even among primitive societies who might believe in an afterlife.  Early people constructed circular megalith ‘clocks.’  Native American tribes tell oral tales of the past, of their origins, of their people, so for these hunter-gatherer societies, history also exists.  Children and teenagers, especially during summers outside the time-controlled regimentation of schools, can still experience a sense of timelessness – a timelessness which seems to be Zerzan’s goal.

In the same sense regarding ‘space,’ mercantile trade demanded exploration, which required maps, astrolabes and primitive compasses.  Horses, canoes, ships, trains and planes expanded the sense of space necessary to various modes of production and commodification. He also addresses the alienation caused by the development of language, which is too absurd and ahistorical to deal with. At bottom, he doesn’t believe that change is built into existence or society.

In all this, he fails to chart a rational path back to a timeless primitive communist hunter-gatherer society – perhaps because it is impossible at this point except through disaster.  Communists have always been inspired by the initial classless nature of this period in history, and want to use present technologies to create a modern communism, where people live longer, work less, are able to be creative, do not fight (hunter-gatherers practiced warfare on a regular basis) and have their necessities taken care of.  I.E. getting rid of alienation will not come from getting rid of time but firstly, getting rid of capital and its notion of labor and production.  Zerzan never mentions this.

Other reviews on the subject of time or primitivism, use blog search box in the upper left with these terms:  “Time Wars,” “The Big Bang,” “The Philosophy of Space-Time,” “Captain Fantastic,” “Flash Boys” “Ten Assumptions of Science,” “Factory Days,” “Night Shift.”   Or ‘anarchism,’ ‘Dimitry Orlov,’ and ‘deep ecology.’

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

April 19, 2019

Bury the Hatchet?

“Divide and Conquer or Divide and SubDivide? – How Not to Refight the First International,” by Mark Leier, 2017

This pamphlet by an anarchist attempts to bridge the old divide between Marxists and anarchists. Not a bad goal, given the sectarianism on the actual Left. Leier attempts to do this by showing the close history of Marx and Bakunin, and mentions the problems both ideologies have encountered – bureaucratic state ‘socialism’ and small group violent adventurism.  He mentions the many ideas they shared, but identifies one of the problems as their roles in the movement.  Marx was an ‘educator’ and Bakunin a ‘rebel’ – part of 4 identities he thinks most leftists have, along with ‘activist’ and ‘helper’.

They Met Several Times

Leier thinks what happened in the 1^st International, which ultimately expelled Bakunin in 1872, was “a sad story with no victors.”  He does not detail what happened ideologically, except to question the typical narrative.  He does not see Marx advocating for a repressive state or a vanguard party or that Bakunin believed that “revolutions were made only by will.”  Leier thinks instead the divisions were one of temperament – the “narcissism of minor differences.”  He thinks it similar to academia – where “the fights are so fierce because the stakes are so small.”

I doubt any careful analysis of the differences will make them seem trivial.  Ultimately the split did lead to a division over legal social struggles versus ultra-left and many times violent actions.  Leier would do better to point out similarities – such as forms of ‘council communism,’ which both Marxists and anarchists have embraced.  Or both opposing fascism.  He does not. In the same sense, Leier mentions the “horrors of Leninism and Stalinism” without explanation.

Nevertheless this pamphlet points out that perhaps both sides can learn something from their past respective successes and failures.  This could lead proletarian socialists and proletarian anarchists to work together in some kind of ‘Left Front’ or ‘Workers Front.’ 

Other Books on anarchism, use blog search box, upper left, with these phrases:  "Anarchism and Its Aspirations," "Non-Violence Protects the State," "Something in the Air," "Hayduke Lives!," "Dressed Up for a Riot," "The Unseen," "The Dispossessed," "The Beach Beneath the Street," "Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs,"

And I bought it at May Day’s excellent pamphlet section!

Red Frog

April 17, 2019

WTF Series, #5 - Lexit-Brexit-Smeckzit

Left Confusion on Brexit

If you’ve been watching the slow-moving train wreck that is Brexit, you might be wondering?  What does a leftist advocate?  Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour Party, now seems to be a Euro-sceptic and won’t call for another vote.  Though in 2016 he wanted to “Remain and Reform” the EU.  I asked a member of Socialist Action in the U.S., perhaps a branch of the United Secretariat, what their position was.  I got crickets.  They didn’t know the position of their co-thinkers in the U.K. – or evidently have a position themselves.  I asked a young member of the Irish Socialist Party, affiliated with U.S. Socialist Alternative, about a hard border between the two Irelands, and she thought it was a ‘Sinn Fein’ issue.

Behind the Green Brexit Door

The British CP, SWP and SP all have a passive ‘Lexit’ position – to stand aside.  These people claim to be leaders...

Clearly, some have not thought out what the nationalist ‘Little England’ counter-revolution called Brexit actually means in broader terms.  Because many English workers voted for it in the mistaken belief that it will improve their lot, parts of the left have failed to lead.  Yet Corbyn wants to be prime minister after May.  Really?  It seems his strategy is:  Hard Brexit = Recession = Labour victory.

On the broadest level, it is a step back from a form of capitalist internationalism, the EU - to capitalist nationalism.  Workers will end up with an England again totally ruled by the Tory bastards in Westminster, the English working classes’ long time enemies.  After all, the British capitalists were the originators of ‘neo-liberalism’ under Thatcher … not Germany or France. Privatization was initiated in Whitehall, not Brussels.  Britain is actually part of the right-wing in the EU.  

Given the international dimensions of any economy, the U.S. imperialists will increase their weight in the U.K. after Brexit.  Meet your big, violent best friend again!  Yes, Brussels and specifically Germany has the greatest weight in this so-called international combine, the EU.  That domination by wealthy nations is inevitable in a bourgeois formation.  Now the ‘weight’ will come from somewhere else. An Atlanticist wing of the London ruling class favors an alliance with the U.S. over a bloc with Europe – that favored by the other wing, the Remainers.  The Trans-Atlantic imperialists in the U.S. also favor Brexit, as do right-wing U.S. ‘think tanks’ like the Heritage Foundation.  A ‘free trade’ deal between the U.S. and Britain will no doubt follow, along with closer military ties and more hostility to U.S. enemies such as Russia.

Marxists have always called for internationalism, and specifically, a United Socialist Europe.  To withdraw from a capitalist Europe is sort of like a workers’ state withdrawing from the U.N. – which incidentally has always been the slogan of the far right in the U.S.  Or the refusal to participate in the U.S. Congress by electing a socialist representative - because it is a bourgeois body.

Patriots Sink the Ship

The young Irish socialist thought that a ‘hard border’ in Northern Ireland was not an issue socialists should worry about – it was just ‘identity politics’ pushed by Sinn Fein.  Catholic workers and local farmers are certainly angry.  However, at this moment some Protestant workers in Northern Ireland are not happy about leaving the EU either, no matter the attitude of the leaders of the Protestant ‘Democratic’ Unionist Party (DUP).  The DUP is in league with the Tories.  This would be a chance to break these proletarians from the DUP (with more sure to change their mind) and also possibly and finally unite Ireland in an EU separate from England!  The sorry truth is that with Brexit a military conflict might return to Northern Ireland, as the national question remains unresolved.

The Scottish national question is also involved.  Labour failed to support the Scottish independence referendum in 2014.  Right now all the delegates of the Scottish National Party in the House of Commons oppose Brexit.  Brexit could again wreak havoc on what is left of England’s rule over Scotland, and perhaps push them out too.  We could see the beginning of the end of what is left of the English empire, King Albert’s dream, if Scotland leaves England to stay in the EU.

Specifically, many labor laws, food laws, privacy laws and environmental laws in the EU are superior to those in the U.K.  EU fishing laws aim at preventing terminal depletion of fishing stocks.  The English will have no such law.  Overtime and leave laws are better for workers under EU law than in British law. Part-time workers have the same rights as full timers in EU law.  Zero-hour contracts are banned by the EU.  Tax avoidance and off-shoring regulations are stricter.  In 2018 the EU passed a law that mandated employers could not give those from other EU states lower wages and benefits than local workers.  It was the British and The City that opposed a recent EU proposal for a ‘transaction tax’ on financial trades, for instance.   With the disappearance of EU laws, U.S. food companies are salivating at the idea of flooding the U.K. market with GMOs, hormone and chlorine saturated meat and factory-farmed food.  Monsanto can’t wait to sell the bee-killer, Round-Up©.  Every inferior U.S. product will be available in Britain, which is why some U.S. capitalists are cheering.

Brexit is already creating a recession in the U.K., with warehouses, offices and plants closing and average incomes declining.  EU funding for poorer areas in the U.K. will end with Brexit.  The pound sterling is dropping in value.  Truck drivers’ jobs will be made much more difficult, as they wait at hard borders.  Free movement to the rest of Europe will become more difficult.  Recession may even stalk Europe. The ramifications are endless. 

Socialists want a world without borders, with a unitary set of laws and compatible economies, with an international dimension.  This is the prelude to global socialist societies.  Brexit goes in the exact opposite direction, weakening ties with the working classes of Europe – even scape-goating them. This is British National Party nativism at work.  Any struggle in Europe will need increasing ties with workers in other countries, not less.  This is one thing the destruction of the Greek economy by the EU banking structure showed, as the isolated Greek working class could not stand up to the EU bankers.  Even after an imagined social revolution or re-nationalization in the U.K. wished for by some socialists, this whole structure would have to be resurrected again.  All-be-it in a different way, but still starting from scratch.  

P.S. - Additional Facts:  Varoufakis opposes Brexit, which is significant, given his role in the Greek issue.  NATO will continue, with or without the EU.  Iran just dropped the dollar for the Euro, and within a minute, the U.S. increased its military activities. It is not about 'nuclear,' it is about $$$.  Which country immediately lined up with the U.S. in their claims against Iran?  The U.K.!

Red Frog

April 12, 2019 
2^nd Brexit Day

Oppression Oppresses

“Meridian,” by Alice Walker, 1976

Alice Walker grew up near the smallish middle Georgia town of Eatonton with her sharecropper parents, then went to college on a scholarship at Atlanta’s Spelman College.  She had some personal troubles there, then became a feminist, (or what she called a ‘womanist’ – a feminist of color) civil rights and political activist.  Her life and Meridian’s life seem a bit intertwined. 

Personal Civil Rights Fiction

Meridian is an African American girl who lives a confused rural life before discovering the 1960s Civil Rights movement in her small town, as it tries to sign up people to vote.  She then gets a scholarship to go to Atlanta’s Saxon College and continues working in the Civil Rights movement in her own way.  During the book she has a child that she abandons, is sexually molested by a series of older men, is beaten by police and thrown in jail for demonstrations, has an abortion in college, thinks of suicide and starts to go a bit crazy.  No wonder.

Meridian only feels safe in the coil of an Indian burial mound on her father’s lost farm, or under the massive old ‘Sojourner’ tree at Saxon, which is later destroyed.  Both connect her to the native American past and the slavery past.  She ends up weirdly oblivious to danger – assaults, cops, guns, cars.  As she gets older, she sometimes stiffens and collapses in the street.  She returns to a small rural community and lives in a bare-bones little house with help from the local African-American community.  There Meridian continues to help people register to vote, tries to integrate the swimming pool, opposes the intentional and deadly flooding of a poor African American neighborhood and stands up for the darker kids in town.

On a personal level, the book is a constant triangle – Meridian herself, a light-skinned African American man named Truman and his blonde Jewish wife, Lynne.  On a political level, Meridian believes that the rich white people have to be eliminated.  Some of the students at Saxon, like her, read Marx and like socialism.  She does not believe in martyrdom and she is generally an atheist.

The book deals with several themes.  Do you have to be willing to kill someone to be a ‘revolutionary?’  The sad attraction some darker skinned men have for light-colored blondes, and visa versa.  Guilty light-skinned women.  Killing babies.  The beneficial changes in African-American religion wrought by Martin Luther King.  The beginnings of ‘black nationalism.’  The enduring power of dark-skinned mothers.  How to get cynical, non-political people to vote. 

This book has no essential plot.  It wanders from thing to thing, poetically taking in life in Georgia and a bit of New York.  Much of it is inside the heads of the characters or conflicts between them, dealing with their lives on a personal level.   This book is not my mug of coffee, but it might be your cup of tea.  It seems to be a disjointed rumination on various ideas and experiences Walker had between 1968 and 1976. 

Walker’s best novel, “The Color Purple,” was published in 1982.  Her first novel published in 1970, ‘The Third Life of Grace Copeland,’ was about violence within the African-American community in the South, based on a true event in Eatonville.  The second to the last novel dealt with more personal Southern stories (‘The Temple of My Familiar’), similar to the stories of Zora Neale Thurston, a writer she identified with.  The last book involved female genital mutilation in Africa (‘Possessing the Secret of Joy’).  In 1983 she developed the term 'colorism' to describe the prejudice against dark skin tones even in the African American community.  'Colorism' is world-wide, of course.

Examined together, all of her novels are not afraid to deal with problems among the African American community, not just the strengths.  The books do not put everything on the dominant racist system.  Or as I put it: ‘Oppression oppresses.’  Alice Walker knows this.

Other reviews on this theme, below.  Use blog search box, upper left:  “The Souls of Black Folk,” “Things of Dry Hours,” “A Time to Kill,” “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” “Atheist in the Attic.”

And I bought it at Normal Books, Athens Georgia

The Cultural Marxist

April 9, 2019

Mass Killing & Mass Tourism

BALINESE POLITICAL ART

‘New Gods, Old Gods’ is a political art exhibit at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art (ATHICA), in Athens, Georgia, USA.  It showcases the work of Balinese artist I Made Bayak Muliana, who was visiting from Bali.  Bali is an island in the Indonesian archipelago, now heavily favored by non-Indonesian tourists, retirees and surfers from places like Australia, China, the U.S. and Japan. This is what happens to a place that has been declared ‘paradise.’

History in a Painting, Layer by Layer

Made Bayak’s work references the mass killings of Communists, leftists, ethnic Chinese and ‘critical thinkers’ in 1965 by the Indonesian military and their militias, with support from the U.S.  Between 500,000 to 1 million were slaughtered, though some estimates run as high as 3 million.  The U.S. government under Dean Rusk provided ‘kill lists’ for the military, along with backup support from U.S. troops in nearby Vietnam and Subic Bay, the Philippines.

This slaughter eliminated the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and led to an Indonesia tightly controlled by a three decade-long right-wing dictatorship under Sukarno’s successor, Suharto.  These massacres had a lasting effect.  They cleared the way for the present economy of mass tourism in Bali, eliminating any social forces that would question this kind of development.   For instance, Communist women’s groups were liquidated, who would have opposed homes being leveled for hotels. The issue of mass tourism forms the second inspiration of Made Bayak’s artistic work. 

Mass tourism is now displacing the Balinese and making parts of the island unaffordable through the familiar process of gentrification.  It has taken land away from farmers and fisherman and has put the island ‘up for sale’ to the highest bidder.  It also has an environmental effect.  The tourist industry dumps tons of garbage, depletes the water supply, damages the mangroves, while the building of hotels and retirement homes reduce forest cover.  Indonesian and foreign investors are now planning to build an artificial tourist island in the most beautiful bay in southern Bali near the largest city of Bandung.  This tourist Disneyland is a focus of an oppositional ‘Bali Not For Sale’ movement which Made Bayak is a member of.

Made Bayak learned nothing about the 1965 mass killings in his Indonesian school, and only later did he talk to survivors who remembered it.  He has a series of excellent small pictures depicting life in an Indonesian prison as described by one of these survivors.  One of his large canvases contains elements of Balinese history – the arrival of the first tourist ships in the 1920s, the bloody 1965 slaughter and the modern dredging and construction damaging the Balinese environment in the present.  Another presents a pastoral tourist scene of rice fields, peasants, bamboo, palms and mountains, with the word ‘Sold Out’ over it, with black skyscrapers punching the sky, surrounded by demons and skulls.

Made Bayak works in acrylic paint on canvas, partly because it dries quickly and its colors are vibrant, while breathing oil paint fumes is smelly and can be toxic.  He uses traditional Indonesian Hindu colors - red, black and white - and Hindu cosmological figures to tell some of the stories depicted in his works.  Large long-tongued red demons, gods, dragons and witches populate some pictures and tell part of his stories.  

Mass Killing in Bali 1965

In a live performance, the artist covered a map of Bali with the words “For Sale” plastered across it and covered another map with the words “Mass Killing” all over it.   He also has a series of works, not shown at the Exhibition but in a booklet called “Plasticology – Trashed Island.” He uses plastic waste picked up in Bali and its surrounding waters to create sculptural art.  This art references his concern for the Balinese environment, which is being choked by plastic, some of which is the product of the tourist economy.

In a discussion, Made Bayak pointed out that many of the things happening in Bali are happening all over the world – gentrification, over-tourism, uncontrolled waste, destruction of environments, displacement of people, privatization of land, deforestation and the crushing of any opposition.  Mass tourism can be seen in Barcelona, Venice, Amsterdam, some Caribbean ports, Dubrovnik, the Taj Mahal, Italy’s Cinque Terre, Maya Bay in Thailand, the Great Wall of China, Kyoto, New Zealand, Iceland and anywhere large tourist ships dock.  Even Mount Everest, where the trash and bodies are piling up. 

At present, political art in the U.S. is for the most part invisible, a sidelight to the emphasis on ‘personal expression’ or marketability alone.  This is similar to Bali, where most ‘art’ is the creation of idyllic landscapes for tourists.  This exhibition breaks through the taboo that art should only be about decoration in style, method, color or personal individuality.  That it should be more than ‘arts for arts sake.’  It points to the wider social issues the world is facing, as the ‘old gods’ of life are being replaced by the ‘new gods’ of profit and capital.

Made Bayak has websites here:  https://madebayak.wordpress.com/  and here:  http://madebayak.com/about/

The Kulture Kommissar

April 4, 2018

April Fools?

Ponzi Unicorns!

Lyft Inc. went public on Friday at $72.00 a share, bumping up to $78.29 at the end of the day, even reaching $88.60 in one market.  Connected monied investors, who got the initial shares in the IPO, hopefully dumped them at that point.  By the way, this is typical IPO sales behavior, to sell quickly and make a quick profit on the strength of the hype.  On Monday, the shares closed down at $69.01.  What it will do today and in the future is not predictable.  This is in an ‘up’ market nearing the record highs of January 2018.

U.S. version of Indian Dabbawalas lunch box delivery boys.

What is obvious is that Lyft has never made a profit.  Many of their drivers, who are wrongly classified as ‘independent contractors,’ sometimes average as little as $3.57 an hour.  There are efforts to form a union and to change the classification to ‘employee.’ A strike by drivers against Lyft and Uber just happened in Los Angeles over what can only be called a wage cut.  The Intercept pointed out yesterday that ‘gig’ companies are trying to race to the IPO finish line before labor laws catch up with them.  Heavy legal liabilities hang over these companies related to the 'independent contractor' fiction.

Lyft-Uber drives Taxi drivers into poverty

Last year IPOs from ‘Snapchat” and “Blue Apron” still exist below their IPO price, though Docusign is above it. Of the 20 companies that went public last year from Silicon Valley and bio-Pharma, only a few ever made a profit before their IPO offering. 

Are there other Silicon Valley-type firms that have never made a profit besides Lyft and Tesla, yet might do an IPO on Wall Street this year?  Well yes!  Uber Technologies Inc., Pinterest Inc., Palantir, Zoom, Slack Technologies Inc., Postmates Inc. and WeWork all are in the pipeline.  Airbnb Inc. is another, though it became profitable 2 years ago after being in business since 2007.  These companies have been floated by venture capitalists, and will now go on to try to get money from the general public.

All these firms do not return a dividend to their investors. So the only way to make a profit is that their price will go higher.  Then ‘investors’ can sell the stock to the next gambler for a better price than what they bought it for.  That is the ‘ponzi’ trade. 

The poster child for recent no-profitability is Theranos, which was a privately held company once valued at $7B, but now worth $0.  Theranos was a Silicon Valley tech outfit that claimed it could test for 200 kinds of health problems through a simple ‘fingerprick’ blood test submitted to a smallish black box called the “Edison.”  It was run by a wide-eyed blonde sociopath named Elizabeth Holmes, who duped people like George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton and Betsy DeVos into endorsing her and her product.  The box and pinprick didn’t work, though it sucked in multi-millions in investor money and got a short contract from Arizona Walgreens.  Theranos never made money.  The SEC, CMS, the courts and the press eventually caught up to Theranos in 2015 and it is now defunct.  Its story is now an excellent documentary on HBO, “Out For Blood in Silicon Valley.”

Does History Repeat Itself in the Markets?

If you have any kind of memory of financial crashes, the 1999-2000 ‘Tech Wreck’ should come to mind in the present situation.  A vast gaggle of internet dot-coms used venture capital and Wall Street backing to promote iffy software products that eventually became a huge wave of IPOs.  Even though almost all of them had never made a profit.  Sound familiar?  They sucked in money from the public and many subsequently collapsed, causing the stock market to take a nose dive, with many individuals losing their shirts.  The NASDAQ lost $5T in stock valuations in two years.

Today, Wall Street has christened these high-valuation, no-profit firms as ‘Unicorns,’ which should give us pause.  Is this new wave of magical IPOs another uni-wreck waiting to happen?  These firms certainly have a longer track record than the dot-coms, but the lack of profits over a number of years remains a heavy cautionary note in a capitalist economy.  This can put a crimp on any prospects of their stock price going up.  A recession in 1-2 years, being predicted even by most bourgeois economists, will not buoy these companies either. So would you like to buy an imaginary and magical creature?

Other reviews on this subject:  “The Ponzi Factor,” “The Great Crash,” (Galbraith); “The Big Short,” “Flash Boys,” “Liar’s Poker,” (all 3 by Lewis); “The Wolf of Wall Street,” (Scorcese); “Griftopia,” (Taibbi); “House of Cards,”  “Liquidated – An Ethnography of Wall Street,” “Den of Thieves,” “Kraft Heinz.” These reviews are all below, so use the blog search box, upper left.

Red Frog

April Fool’s Day 2, 2019