The Sunday Papers of Iosaf's invention to air our grumbles and spite.

by iosaf¡s who's itch is now lessened Mon May 31, 2004 20:12

They are:-
1. Patrick Let (EU)
2. Silvia Ordaz Amor (España)
3. Matteo Zanotti (Italia)
4. John Dominguez Achalanda Vaso (España)
5. Maria Mar Dominguez (España)
6. Laloue Desperrier Roux (Canada)
7. Roxana Yanira Bestrin Fuentes (Australia)
8. Juan Francisco Maestre Morales (España)

There are still 44 local citizens awaiting trial.


Meanwhile, Bertie (Bartholomew) Patrick Ahern, TD an Taoiseach (don't over do it iosaf) The Supreme Little Rascal, leader of the Fianna Fail party, (really don't over do it joe) President of the European Union, (love dat) Knight of the Order of Constantine and St. George (jayzus man) Doctor of Law and Letters and not as bad as Mad Dog Snob well (dats de one)
has issued a statement on the EU Ireland website.
entitled
"Social Justice Necessary before Countries can Benefit from Free Market"

Social Justice means working towards equality, equal opportunities, and a society that perhaps values Doctors, Teachers and Educators over Lawyers.

Thank you Bertie. You do your best. We've a bargain. You're going into opposition in 2005 and will probably stand a very good chance of re-election in 2009 (or before) if we allow it.
And you're getting a big fat coffee table book in the meantime, just get that little snob interior minister off the table. We don't need that type of politics in Ireland.

by macmuckind :-) Mon May 31, 2004 21:54

singed by the states of South and Central America and the 25 states of the European Union.
is divided into 104 articles and several sections dealing with multi-polarism, bi-regionalism, democracy and rights.
(search terms)
With the right energy and effort and so on,
it might be a very good piece of paper.

Thank you Bertie.
(less of the barthelomew)
I really like article 23º, though its's quite vague, best stay vague for the moment, and
I really like article 5º.

our numbers came up @ least in the declarin of universal lurve and sweaty partnership.

Read it. Xerox it. Post it somewhere.
Suggest doing evening courses or something, put a notice in your local supermarket, "here is a blueprint for a new relationship".
Take it from there.
Kisses.
Hugs.
Good times, then the question gets popped-
See the banker.
then the questions
what do you farm for a living.

oh well, its a long long road.

Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus : Verum opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum
"oh should homer sleep what misery be ours yet in a great work one must sleep sometime"
from homer to bart-
get some sleep bertie ;-)

by - Mon May 31, 2004 22:03

The President of South Africa has welcomed Ex President Aristide into exile with an official welcome and red carpet-

it is not important whether you liked Aristide or not, or thought he ought to have got out before. what is important is that the South Africans have said it was a non-constitutional regime change.
You can't search _non-constitutional regime change_ here, only _regime change_ we put _non-constitutional regime change_ in the "coup section".
http://libe.com/page.php?Article=210671


Disaster stricken Haiti looks likely to be the next U.N. international security operation mandate.
The USA and UK already have their own international security operation mandate, so probably won't be invited.
But you know how they get, if you leave them out.

by nolympics Tue Jun 01, 2004 05:28

excellent roundup iosaf. I have to take issue with the following conflation though.

"Since Bush and the NeoCons of Dixie (the world HQ of anti-semitist propaganda and thought) took the white house, more jews have been attacked than ever before. Think about the assault on liberty which was the Turkish synagogue attacks a year ago, think about the almost weekly descration of graves in France, think about where "ultra-right" popularism comes from, in what soil it sprouts it's seed."

the conflation being, bush's gang are ultra right crypto fascists, ultra rightists and crypto fascists are often anti semetic, ips(i) facto anti semitism is the inevitable outcome of neo conservative leadership in DC.

Now here in the US the struggle to characterise criticism of Israel and Zionism as anti semitism is one of Israels latest PR victories. In part this has been managed through reference to the alleged increase in anti semitic incidents in Europe over the past few years. Coverage is of course selective and propagandistic as it is virulently anti intelectual but nevertheless it has worked a charm. And it is not all smoke and mirors if I am to believe Jewish comrades whose travels in europe have been marked by their registering a note of anti semitism as part of the liberal lexicon they encountered. this is among anti war or anarchoid types.

Meanwhile Europeans (and I am one myself if Irlantis can conceptually or culturally be separated from the US) tend to rely on the canard that your desecrations in France and other incidents elsewhere can be laid at the feet of hot headed Muslim youth doing their bit for the intifada. We all know this is a canard. i myself have been involved in anti fascist/nazi struggle in Spain Germany and Scandanavia in the last 10 or 15 years and it was not muslims who were the problem. Rather it is white racists and fascists. in refusing to acknowledge the problem of existing fascism in europe or the residual anti semitism in western and Eastern Europe (Rumsfelds new europe ironically) we play into the hands of the fascists and their political allies in Washington, Tel Aviv, Dublin, Paris and so on.

It is ludicrous to suggest that attacks on Jews and Jewish symbols has exploded due to Bushs policies. that is not to say that bushs policies, especially with regard to the Palestinians but also his xtian fundamentalism cannot possibly feed anti semitism, but in effect there is no difference between Bushs posture towards the Palestinians and Clintons. To refer to the attack in Istanbul as having something to do with bush or the neo cons per se is idiotic for what then explains the attack on the German jews in Tunisia while dollar bill was in office? Of course more jews than ever before being attacked since he took office needs no correction from me, simply google nazi or Limerick pogram or Catholic Popes and Spanish Jews and you will learn something. And finally the neo cons are followers of Jewish intellectuals (Strauss, kristol et al) and count among their prominents several Jews. they are also uniformally Zionists and not because they await the second coming as fundamentalist baptists or presbeterians do believing that a Jewish state from the river to the sea will allow the building of the second temple and all that shit that the Guardian allows Monbiot to write about. no, the neo cons believe in Israel becaus they see it as a civilising influence on the arabs and becuase it keeps the rabble in line.

i dont mean to be a train spotter here but it is mportant to point our that not everything can be credited to the US. Conspiracy threorists here love to blame the CIA for everything, or some other amorphous they which is so secret and frightening that it can never be imagined never mind explained. In fact the opposite is the case, more often than not the CIA and the various other agencies of US state power are incompetent, ignorant and naiive. Yes they are effective assasins and murderers and often destroyers of social movements but they are not in control of events, they are dealing with history as it unfolds rather than always making it. Iraq is a good example as was Vietnam. this sort of fuzzy thinking leads people to abandon all agency in the face of omnipotence, which would be the greatest victory of power, returning us to an age of god kings.

there are real forces now engaged in a fight against the imperialists of the US Britain Spain and whoever else we imagine as the craziest of the western powers. they are also fighting the resident oligarchs of Pakistan and indonesia while an actual civil war is going on in saudi arabia. this is not the CIA or the neo cons, this is an extremely rightwing disciplined capitalised and capitalist mutinational entity that is playing for keeps. in this sense washinton has met an adversary which is its measure in mendacity and dystopitude.

by iosaf Tue Jun 01, 2004 17:05

I think the changes in the nature of Right and Ultra Right political activity in Europe have prompted many of us, if not to "blame" the NeoCon Bush puppetmasters directly, certainly to ascribe them the sin of "omission".
In 1996 we worried about old school racism and xenophobia and jingoism in the form of Le Pen threatening to expand beyond his base in Marseilles and field candidates in Strasbourg.Meanwhile a newer school of racism, xenophobia and jingoism was finding a very able and keen leader in Jorg Haider of Austria. The lessons of municipal, general and other elections since that period have shown that neither of these party machines have withered away, though increasingly there are signs that they are turning to other methodology to further their aims. Last year in neighbouring France, I chose not to lobby against the Veil and Religious Symbol proscription as I saw in it an attempt to contain two types of extremism, that of Le Pen and that of the Islamic fundamentalism. I did so on the advice of Turkish fellow activists.
I certainly think there is something in the suggestion that young muslims in France might be involved in desecrations, though I think it more likely that they are the work of FN types. In the immediate aftermath of M11 in Madrid, there were two "revenge murders". One in the Basque, where an offduty policeman shot a shopkeeper for not displaying a antiETA poster, and the other in a small dormitary suburb of Barcelona where I at the time taught. In a town pretty typical of mediterranean europe, with a large immigrant community, a morrocan was beaten to death in the train station on M13. Since that week one ultra right bookshop and printing press has been closed, in central BCN (with funding in the USA) and there have been over 100 arrests relating to ultra-right activity in Spain. Most were skinheads, youngsters, but significantly also included were business people and academics. Those arrested last week (when the bookshop was closed) were charged with holocaust denial.

I have since 1996 and my experiences in Strasbourg thought of "anti-fascism" as mostly appealing to the young left, and or descendants of victims of fascism in European countries. However since the last general election primaries in France, and in the lead upto the General Election and Madrid bombing in Spain, I revised my threat assesment of extreme right groupings, propaganda and "other activity".
It is the "other activity" that worries me most.
It is the effect of their lobbying potential on the centre right policy makers of Europe, who faced with increasing unrest and terrorist threat in the neighbouring countries of the Maghreb and Levant have moved to legislate in terms which would have been thought in the 1980s to be racist.
The increased terrorist threat posed to the European Union is not an autochthonous threat, it is a result of US mis-adventure in the Levant and Middle East, and perhaps in lesser terms of the nationalist and jingoist government of Aznar in his relations to Morrocco.
This is if not directly the fault of Bush and Co., then a result of their _omission_ to properly think out their war and post war diplomatic and security strategies.

It might seem hyperbolic to say "this is velvet nazism", but our societies are now legislated as a result of financial pressure from lobbyists, and as silly as it might seem, interior political temperature taking /background noise of the cyber activists.

what I see is the acheivement of internal and pan european policies which long were advocated by Haider and his generation.
They are getting results. And those results are being given to them, by centre right politicians (such as Mc Dowell) who would sell to their voters the same sentiments of jingoism, ethnic paranoia, cultural isolationism my manipulating terminology and language of ersatz "liberalism".

This has become possible due to the post Cold War geo-political climate, itself a direct result of Bush (1)'s european policy.

The Left whilst in change, in flux, has been presented to "the lumpen voter" by leaders who fearful of permenant opposition adopted centre right post-Reagonomic social policies.
Blair is a perfect example.

I and many thousands of others after returning from Strasbourg and succeeding in "containing" Le Pen, set to work to install John Smith, but it was not to be, Blair came to Downing Street and the "liberal left" moved right.
The pole shift runs all the way across the spectrum.

Our Western Civilisation of Nations is underpinned by all US administrations, it is "the greatest sin of omission" that the current administration the most isolationist ever, has ignored our problems in Europe, and that is in direct contrast to Clintonian "kid gloves" charm attitude (apart from bombing those serbs [ :-)]

I for one _do_ think extreme right thinking has moved to the centre. And I see every sign of the previous messengers dismayed at thier language being "stolen" / "neutralised" by those such as Mc Dowell, of turning to extra-democratic activity. This is how I explain the 35% missing electorate in the French municipal elections of this year, one in which the FN didn't poll. = They didn't vote.

And it is at the same time most odd, that the previous "extreme left" have in such a short time come to be seen as many as the vanguard of what properly is termed the Liberal Democratic Tradition. And that was the distinct impression I got between M11 and M14 in varying conversations with representatives of authority. It was odd, quite suddenly "the anarchist" (enemy of democracy of old) had been welcomed as championing those rights of old, and in a twinkle of an eye, the enemy was percieved to be the extreme right.

it ought to be.
and Mc Dowell too.
he is their polite middle class messenger.
In Dublin 6, the words may seem liberal, but the mind that inspired them is not to be found in D6 nor will the worst effects be seen there.

i'm rabbiting on as usual-
call me next time you're in BCN.
0034 636 105 231

by mickey's shrink Tue Jun 01, 2004 17:27

Dr Chris Neilson of the Irish Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Survivors accused Justice Minister Michael McDowell of being “very, very racist” and claimed the Government was setting up an “apartheid regime”.

He is happy to call others Nazis - This kind of mental activity can be characterised as 'displacement'.

by nolympics Tue Jun 01, 2004 18:50

I suspect I have a few years on you. to my mind the fascist thing has been a serious issue in Europe at least since the fall of the wall. From that time there has been both a fascist street movement and various electoral formations which have pushed the eurocenter far to the right. Both zapatero (the death squad guy of a few years back) and blair (the imperialsit) are referred to as socialists unironically, indeed our own master ahern will describe fianna fail as socialist after a few pints, but that is unrelated.

But im not grasping the track of your argument here, i still fail to see how US omission or comission has resulted in fascists determining public policy in Europe which is unarguably what has happened here. Of course Im not arguing that the US wont maintain whatever influence and pressure it can in Europe to ensure rightwing hegemony but that is different and independant to the choices that the European political class have made as a matter determined by their own interests.Take the hajib issue. First off there is no way that a kid would be prevented from wearing a head scarf, a crucifix or a yarmulke to school in the US. there would be uproar and ultimately it would be struck down by the supreme court as state interfence with the practice of religion. (thats not to say that the US is in the business of exporting its own model, it is interested exclusively in arrangements allowing for the maximum extraction of surplus)

Im not surprised that your turkish pals support the ban as it has been in place in turkey for generations. That said the Turkish state resorted to Mosque building as a way to parse support from the PKK in the early 90s ultimately resulting in the electoral success of the Welfare party, islamofascists in nice suits but better than the communists as far as le monde are concerned. the question in turkey is not one of separation of the church and state but of the military and state so lets not take that model as definitive. the story of the Israeli state and hamas is similar. Any state threatened by secualr social movements will resort to theocratic solutions if possible, so parliamentary bosses whinnying about their fear of religion are really talking about something else. which brings us back to the headscarf and la france. this is clearly an attempt to be more right than the right and, as blair attempted unsucessfully in britain, to outmanouver fascists by assuming their platform. Nothing more. and just because the teachers union buys it doesnt mean we should have any difficulty understanding that fascist positions are now mainstream in europe. whether this is the result of some strategy by the US is secondary. Lets not kid ourselves here. when i see an orthodox jewish kid expelled from school or monks arrested in the streets for their clobber i might change my opinion but right now this is about muslims and nothing more. So yes the US inherited the responsibility to dominate the muslim world after the brits couldnt handle it anymore but there is a healthy appetite in europe for a clash of civilisations also.

There is a level of hysteria in Europe regarding bush. People are genuinely offended by him. but i think that the offense is partly because his regieme does not allow them to maintain their illusions. remember the appetite for military humanism, the disgraceful role of france in overthrowing aristide on the 200th anniversary of the haitian revolution earlier this year, britain and france and belgium in africa in the last couple of years. europeans like their genocidal racism with proper table manners and kind soothing promises and assurances. Bushs gang are uncivil in this dept, they are overly ideological regarding the role or need of bourgeois consensus, they care little of offending intelectuals if it is the cost of getting the job done. one will not see susan sontag appear with the president to endorse the latest bombing mission as she did with clinton. Bush doesnt give a fuck what you think and this is unbearable for Europeans. But it also disarms and disempowers them. Literally the center cannot hold. Therein lies the self doubt so clearly expressed now as xenophobia and hatred whether it is the hajib or the dreadfull referendum in eirsatz. We are anti war and anti muslim.

i dunno, i ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the way the european left is concentrating on the US as the author of catastrophe when Europe itself is the master enabler and co conspiracist. Where are the sanctions on Israel, the parliamentary debates about the arms shipments to the lunatic mass murderers of palestinains, it is only a matter of time before everyone falls back in line over iraq, indeed a kerry victory will consign iraq to the sports section as bush is the problem, though kerrys position is to escalate the war. and in 10 or 15 years we will have a german chancellor who is against nuclear power, if we are lucky. ha ha

by .:. iosaf Tue Jun 01, 2004 21:45

you may havea few years on me, yes, but without your real name we don't know. I'm 33.

It's been 59 years since WW2 ended.
It's been 36 years since Enoch Powell's speech "rivers of blood". It's been 13 years since "die wende" when the wall came down.
I think the problems to which we are reffering have distilled and altered much in teh meantime of any of those dates, which allow for your personal reflective experience "being older than I".

We now live on a continental superstate structure of 450,000,000 people some 130,000,000 of whom mostly did not grow up in the liberal western democratic tradition.
Xenophobia is naturally higher in the east, as there has been only one experience of migration, that of those who leave.

Yet this is to be balanced against the clear attempts in post WW2 Eastern and Central Europe to "de-nazify" the state. Something former East Germany was quite proud of.
This weeks debate before the German presence at Normandie for D Day memorial focusses on teh meaning of "befreiung", liberation. The Chancillor has thought to present the events of 1944 in terms of the liberation of Germany from it's Nazi regime.
Some would consider this to be revisionism.

It is less than forty years since the USA enshrined racial segregation.
Some would consider that USA to have been directly comparable to South Africa or Rhodesia at that time.

On the face of it, we can not say that we have as European or Western Nations come down exactly the same road, or at the same pace, to the XXI century, where now we consider what is to be understood as "racism", "xenophobia", "facism" and so on.

But it is my considered opinion, that such ideas, find ready funding and lobbyist support in the homeland USA, and play a role in continuing US global hegemony, and curtailing the "natural" effect of a unified European Union of 450,000,000 people on the greater world.

Apart from that, I am not uncomfortable at all with our "pro-Europe anti-USA" stance.
It is the wisest way to deal with the common prejudices of our greatly enlarged population and to build upon our ties with the world, which are in order of cultural and economic importance :-
the Americas, the Maghreb and Africa.

IT is a global condition, and you ought not worry about it @ all. We have never pretended that Europeans are not responsible for the ills of the world, but on a straight consideration of rights legislations, international conventions signed and encorporated into law, and external aid projects, Europeans are indeed "nicer, better, mroe generous, and more careful not to cause offence" than our U.S. cousins.

A banner sometimes makes an appearance in Barcelona, it describes the tripartite government as being "postmodern fascism", this is something that provokes my thought, for there is something in it.. AS long as city communities such as Barcelona, or nation states such as Ireland, continue to be subject to the "devolution of sovreignty" which they are to non elected and non accountable international and transnational institutions (as they are) then the mechanism of serving the concerns of citizens and the traditional "social estates" will continue to be subject to policy decisions made elsewhere.

Policy decisions made in the USA.

& that's it. its a system which _does_ owe more to fascist corporative state management than any other social model.
It's an effective model, for example the Irish Constitution has survived long enough no?
And the slogan does ring something through, a left wing alliance of republicans and nationalists and greens reflecting the true wishes of the electorate still can not find enough space to "really do what it wants".
why?
The most important decisions are made in:-
Washington or NYC or presented through Hollywood. And that's the empire.
And the vast majority of Europeans, of which the Irish count less than 1% don't like the USA be they left or right.
It is the oddity of IReland that thanks to it's relationship to the British Empire thinks to have such a fine relationship with the "Great Satan".
************
now if we go on exchanging comments and stuff, you could mail me "your real name", in case I get all sort of paranoid and delusional and start thinking you're Mikey Mc Dowell or one of his kids. Coz I sort of like this weeks sunday papers and don't want to fill it up with more chitchat.

by not looking for a pen pal Wed Jun 02, 2004 05:22

In fairness iosaf this is not a penpal forum nor is it friendster. You choose to publish your ideas here and i choose to criticise some of them. that is the arrangement, no? If it is a stain on your newspaper gag to fill it with 'chitchat' then perhaps rather than publish it on the web you should print it and paste it above your bed.

by .:. admonished. Wed Jun 02, 2004 21:56

over my bed I have a collection of photos of the Twin Towers taken on Sept 9th two days before they came down, and my whiskey tasting certificate that I forged when Prionsais de Rossa was minister for doleys, sorry sarah, i tippexed out your name, thought it would get me a job, I suppose writing a CV would have helped more.

anyway, my address for this type of thing is:-
[email protected]
other than that, I appreciate the criticism and it has served my well, I feel the better for learning an older reader's opinions and quite happy with how you pointed out the hyperbole.

I love you.
in a platonic sort of way, not a bit sexual, just sort of like a clappy handy Xian the week after the delusional rebirth, if you were here now I'd throw my arms around you and hug you.
You may be an old and cranky fart, but you've still a part to play in our movement.
:-)

by john smith Thu Jun 03, 2004 15:01

dear dear iosaf, a shy child. again with your personal web log. That has nothing to do with any movement, just narcisism. And actually we are the same age, i imagined you were younger by your writing. You should continue though, it is entertaining if a little befuddled and uninformed.

by rumi Thu Jun 03, 2004 15:28

i brought yussef a mirror
for what could i bring him
who had so much
so that he could
reflect a light

what should you bring the
friend if not a mirror
to reflect the light?

= yep, I'm an egotist. I'm zelig, I'm there personally blogging away for eight years and only two are presented with my name.