Tidbits and Reader Responses - January 5, 2012

* Comment and Response - Whose Egypt? (Marieme Hélie-Lucas)
* Re: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School
  Success - Readers' Responses and Comments   1. 4. 2012
  (Eric A. Gordon)
* Re: Charismatic Mara Soars in Dragon Tattoo (Dan Jordan)
* Re: "Un-American Activities" (Sterling Vinson)
* Michelle Alexander on the New Jim Crow - New York, Jan. 12
* Organize! (Richard A. Levins)

==========

* Comment and Response  on Whose Egypt?

I want to register my protest re some specific paragraphs in
the article by Adam Shatz: 'Whose Egypt' you recently sent
out on your lists. To say the least, I was slightly appalled
at the 'analysis' of the Tunisian situation: indeed there
are no massive killings by the state so far, but the
conclusions that are drawn from that are not correct.

Quoting: 'The only country to have been spared such
turbulence is Tunisia, where, in an extraordinarily smooth
post-revolutionary segue, the moderate Islamists of the
Nahda have come to power in elections, reassuring secular
Tunisians that they intend to respect the country's
progressive family code.'

Has the author not read any Tunisian newspaper? or the
Algerian ones which reported extensively on the violent
actions of Tunisian so-called 'moderate Islamists', even
before they won the elections? Didn't he notice that
fundamentalist mobs attacked cinema halls and TV stations
which were showing 'un-Islamic' programs? that they attacked
physically and sexually peaceful secular women
demonstrations as well as used very violent means to prevent
the communist party to hold pre-elections meetings? that, -
even more telling to an Algerian witness of the rise of
fundamentalism in the region -, armed groups patrolled
Tunisian beaches to send back home women who, for
generations already, had enjoyed the right and pleasure to
swim and sun bath in swimming costumes, and that armed
groups also forced the doors of homes in which families were
celebrating the success of their children to the final
secondary school exams, to check whether there was wine on
the table? that men sitting in bars were beaten up? (* for
more information, below is an article listing such wrong
doings, published BEFORE the day of the elections in
Tunisia).

And after the results of the elections were public, many
more women were forced to 'cover' not just with any Tunisian
traditional outfit but with the imported head to toe black
Saudi type of covering (- so much for the defense of our
culture and traditions !); female teachers in universities
were prevented to give their lectures because they were not
'properly covered', and molested for refusing these orders;
in over populated universities with limited number of class
rooms, space was forcibly taken to be turned into prayer
rooms; etc...

Does any of this seems in keeping with the electoral promise
to 'respect the progressive family code'? are we fooling
ourselves?

Moreover, this concept of 'moderate Islamists', so loosely
used by so many journalists and intellectuals, is a
contradiction in terms, unless one abusively equates
'Muslim' to 'Islamist': there are indeed politically
moderate Muslims, as there are believers of any faith who
stand tor secularism and socialist ideas; but there cannot
be 'moderate Islamists' for the very same reason that there
cannot be moderate fascists: the Muslim Far Right in our
countries has to be identified in political terms, not in
religious ones. Like Fascists and Nazis in their times, they
stand - not for the superior race - but for the superior
creed, they also believe in a mythical past which is -
not the glorious past of Rome but - the Golden Age of Islam
and that grants them the right to physically eliminate the
'untermensch' of the day, i.e. the kofr (unbelievers) i.e.
all those who do not share their political vision of
religion; like Nazis and Fascists they are pro capitalists (
which probably explains why Western coalitions strive to put
them in power, in place of -yes -undemocratic and corrupt (
but not fascist) governments in our regions, and like
Fascist and Nazis, they put 'women in their place' i.e.
'Church -read mosque-, cradle and kitchen'. That 'the Left'
uses such inadequate concepts as 'moderate Islamists',
designed to make our local brands of Far Right political
movements sanitized and acceptable partners for capital,
should be denounced and combated.

Finally, let me say that, in my own experience, saying such
things inexorably calls for attacks from... the Left in
Europe and North America. Isn't it sad? We feel as abandoned
by those who should be our allies, as the anti Nazi Germans
must have felt in the pre-war period.

marieme helie lucas

==
Source: Secularism Is A Women's Issue
http://www.siawi.org/article2624.html

==========

* Re: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School
Success - Readers' Responses and Comments   1. 4. 2012

George Fish makes valid points about education and the
dumbing down of society, but why attack the Left as the
responsible party? It seems to me that the US ruling class
(forgive the crude expression--shall I say the 1%?) has
exactly the kind of educational system it needs...dumb kids
who don't know how to balance a checkbook, can't read or
understand a mortgage, don't know the history of unions,
can't read a newspaper, know zilch about birth control and
communicable disease, know nothing about diet and nutrition,
etc., etc.

In other words, why educate a whole generation of young
people to graduate high school with those skills, much less
more advanced skills such as in college, when there are no
jobs (that they would be demanding)? You want another Egypt
or Tunisia here? This way, they are available for getting
hooked on drugs and drink (big money there), could easily
land in one of our nice for-profit prisons (way big money
there), or get lured into joining the armed forces, a lousy
deal for the kids but financial security of a sort, with
health benefits and three squares, if you don't get your
head blown off in some far-off imperialist war. Why train
technicians, scientists, doctors and nurses? That's
expensive! Let that be done by the Philippines, or Mexico,
or Ireland, and then adjust the immigration laws to welcome
in "specialized" workers from abroad, making sure, of
course, that farm workers just get temporary permits
(without their families, thank you very much).

That's the problem with "education reform." There isn't the
fundamental understanding that we put (or don't put) the
kinds of resources into our system to make it just the way
it is.

Eric A. Gordon
Los Angeles, CA

==========

* Re: Charismatic Mara Soars in Dragon Tattoo

Has anyone noticed the numerous sight gags in this movie?
All sorts of little bits fly by, you really have to be fast
to catch them. I want to watch it a second time. My favorite
was "The Girl" and "The Editor" in a heavy discussion, she
with her back or side to the camera most of it, wearing a
dark grey t-shirt. You can see something written on the
front. Then she finally turns for full view and in just
slightly lighter letters, you might miss it, is written (I
can't write it here) "F You You F'ing F." Both my wife and I
burst out laughing, it was so spot on and so incongruous all
at once.

Dan Jordan

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* Re: "Un-American Activities"

The lies and smears are worse than anything I remember - the
Republican candidates are following Dubya's model.

Sterling Vinson

==========

* Michelle Alexander on the New Jim Crow - New York, Jan. 12

Michelle Alexander on the New Jim Crow

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Abyssinian Baptist Church
132 Odell Clark Place
New York City
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
 Open to the public, no RSVP necessary
 
In today's "post-racial" society, nearly half of the
nation's young black men are behind bars, on parole, or on
probation--more than the number of slaves in the U.S. in
1850. Join Michelle Alexander at the Abyssinian Baptist
Church to discuss how racial caste has not been eradicated,
but simply redesigned instead. Though Jim Crow laws have
been abolished, once a person is labeled a felon, old forms
of prejudice--employment and housing discrimination,
exclusion from jury service, and the denial of the right to
vote, of educational opportunity, and of public benefits
such as food stamps-- become legal. As a criminal, you have
scarcely more rights than a black man living in Alabama at
the height of Jim Crow.

Michelle Alexander's moving call transcends the traditional
dialogue of civil rights and race politics to focus on human
rights in a way that Cornel West has called "a genuine
resurrection of the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr."
Already hailed as an instant classic, Michelle Alexander's
courageous new book The New Jim Crow is an expression of the
spirit of our age, in all its complexity.

"Alexander deserves to be compared to Du Bois"
--Darryl Pinckney, The New York Review of Books

"The New Jim Crow is the bible of a social movement."
--San Francisco Chronicle

The New Press
 38 Greene Street, 4th Floor
 New York, NY 10013
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Celebrating 20 Years of Independent Publishing
 www.thenewpress.com <http://www.thenewpress.com/> 
 
 ==========
 
* Organize!
by Richard A. Levins

I'm an economist. I sometimes get asked "Why is the new book
you are publishing about organizing? Why not another one on
economic ideas?"

It's a fair question. An obvious answer would be that
Playing Bigger Than You Are is a good read written by a
person I respect. That's true, but it's not why we chose to
publish it.

We're publishing Stewart's new book because organizing, not
ideas, drives our economic and political system. I can sit
in on college seminars forever, exchanging cool ideas on
what "we" should be doing, and nothing will happen outside
of the room.

Here's one kind of very effective organizing: corporations
merge and acquire each other in a process that leaves ever-
fewer, ever-larger players casting shadows over the economy.
Every economic textbook I know of will tell you this results
in market power; that is, the ability to push up the prices
you pay and to push down on the wages you earn.

Here's another kind of organizing: the wealthiest people in
the country buy the political system and use it to their
advantage. Should you really wonder that the banks get taken
care of while you go without a job and watch your home
become foreclosed? Organized money is powerful by any
measure.

So, where does that leave you? As an individual, you're
done. Economic power will make you poor, and political power
will keep you that way. But Stewart Acuff's new book gives
example after example of how ordinary people, acting
together, can gain the economic and political power
necessary to turn things their way. From stop signs in
Memphis to stopping Newt Gingrich in Georgia to major labor
campaigns, we see the power of organized people.

I'll close with this. I, and a handful of other economists,
have been writing about income inequality for several years.
Maybe the message got out to some, but not many. Then came
Occupy Wall Street.  Income inequality (the other 99%) is
now much closer to being standard media and political fare.

Check out Stewart's book at LevinsPublishing.com. Victory
will come from you, not from academics like me.

[Richard A. Levins is  Professor Emeritus of Applied
Economics at the University of Minnesota and president of
Levins Publishing.]

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