Category: Uncategorized

Editorial:
Nairobi — The American government has made good its threat to deal firmly with Kenyan leaders slowing down the reform process. It handed, or is handing, letters threatening travel bans on the supposed recalcitrant leaders, signalling the Obama administration’s distaste for poor governance.

By all counts, Kenya’s reform process has been disappointingly slow. Two years after signing the National Accord, most items listed under Agenda Four are yet to be acted upon. But this is not to say that nothing has been done.

The electoral process is undergoing changes, the police force is under new leadership and land policies are being reviewed.

However, the Judiciary, under Chief Justice Evan Gicheru, the State Law Office under Attorney-General Amos Wako and the civil service under Mr Francis Muthaura are untouched. Thousands of internally displaced people are still languishing in camps.

The appointment of kenya anti-corruption Commission director Aaron Ringera, which has consumed national energies in the past three weeks add to the disappointment about structural reforms. Even so, carrying out reforms is a long, tedious and arduous affair. It is not a one-person affair either; it is a collective undertaking.

So, whereas we welcome the push from friends like the US government to expedite the constitutional, institutional and political changes, we recognise the fact that the approach with which to deal with a leadership at a crossroads like Kenya’s matters most.
There is the danger of being seen to be too intrusive, patronising and antagonistic and, in the process, creating a backlash. Anti-reformists may seize this opportunity to whip up nationalistic emotions and turning the tide against the reform agenda.

It is questionable, for example, how in a situation in which several variables are at play, one can pin down 15 people as the obstacle to change.

AA

by Victor Grossman

Much of the media complained that the German election campaign was dull; after all, the two main opponents had worked together in a coalition for four years and generally agreed or compromised on most issues. Dull or not, however, it had three important results.

Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) will remain in office as chancellor, but no longer as an unhappy senior partner with the Social Democrats, once her party’s main rivals. In future, her party will share Cabinet seats in a new coalition with its favored partner, the Free Democrats (FDP), who stand even further to the right on most issues. Although they are the party of businessmen and conservative professionals, their leader, Guido Westerwelle, has been making all kinds of promises to the voters in his smiley manner which somehow gets across to voters. Since he will probably be the next Foreign Minister, the whole world may get the chance to enjoy his slimy smile. It was especially broad after the elections; the many votes for his party will permit Merkel to stay in office. Her own party, though still ahead of the others, took a bad beating at the polls.

The CDU’s losses were serious, but nowhere near those of the Social Democrats, which lost over 11 percentage points, its worst results since World War Two. The party is now down to about 23 percent; after eleven years in government it must now get used to the harder, colder seats on the opposition side. The disaster resulted from its policies of assailing working people, the jobless, and small business people while cutting taxes for the super-rich and the corporations. True enough, the three other main parties had also joined in or supported these policies, but it was the customary voters for the Social Democrats, working people and the jobless, who were most disappointed at this direction. They did one of three things: they fell for Guido Westerwelle’s beaming grin and promises, partly because his party has not had any government responsibility for decades; or they stayed home or went to the park to enjoy the wonderful post-summer weather — without voting; or they voted for the Left.

This helps explain the low turnout and a third main phenomenon. The Left, now gaining strength in West Germany, jumped from a national total of 8.7 percent in 2005 to about 12 percent this time, increasing the number of deputies sent to the Bundestag from 54 to nearly 80. There was clearly great distrust of both the CDU and the Social Democrats. While the two major parties, which shared in government for the past four years, licked their wounds, all three smaller parties made big gains: the Free Democrats, who now move into the government with Angela Merkel; the Greens, who finally — just barely — gained double digit numbers; and the Left.

Until now the Left was almost alone — except for a few mavericks from other parties — in opposing the military adventure in Afghanistan; majorities in all other parties voted to send in the troops though a solid majority of the German public were opposed to it. Only the Left fought the brutal cuts and pressures aimed at the jobless that increased unemployment or forced people into miserable low-paid dead-end jobs. The Left was alone in opposing the raising of the pension age from 65 to 67 at a time when almost no one over 50 can find a job. None of the other three parties supported the Left when it opposed cutting taxes on the wealthy and increasing a value added tax which hit all customers, but worst of all the poor.

MRZ

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

NEW YORK – United States President Barack Obama’s speech on Wednesday, the second day of the 64th summit of the United Nations General Assembly, was a strident challenge to world leaders – an ostensible rallying cry to join the US and its allies in the war in Afghanistan.

“Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone,” said Obama, in what many see as preparation for an expected troop surge in Afghanistan.

An even clearer signal of Washington’s quest for stronger participation from its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the non-NATO allies, was a secret meeting between Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta at New York’s Barclay Hotel earlier this week.

The meeting, reluctantly confirmed by Pakistani officials, was meant to review the next stage in the post-Afghan presidential elections and the regional “war on terror” theater. This next chapter in the war, many experts believe, will be its hottest time to date.

A formal request to Obama from the top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, to send more troops in Afghanistan is likely to be made soon. The Pentagon’s rationale for the increase is the upward spiral of Taliban violence – but some feel it has as much to do with protecting Pakistan.

Despite the excellent performance of the Pakistani armed forces against the Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas and the Malakand area, Washington remains unsure over the level of the Pakistan army’s cooperation. The Pentagon was quick to note that Pakistan army leaders recently refused a ground operation in the North and South Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, McChrystal is expected to ask for at least 40,000 additional troops to be deployed mainly in the southern border provinces with Pakistan, such as Helmand and Ghazni, and provinces such as Wardak and Kapisa, in Afghanistan’s northeast. The troops will reportedly undertake active operations against the Taliban as well as regular ground campaigns.

The Obama administration is worried that if Pakistan changes course and becomes inactive, US forces could be trapped along the border – resulting in an horrific casualty rate that would be catastrophic for the White House in the mid-term US elections next year.

The indications from different Asia Times Online sources are that next summer the battle between the Taliban and NATO forces will no longer be restricted to Afghanistan – it will expand inside Pakistan. The primary reason for this, sources say, is the deployment of coalition forces in Afghan border provinces such as Helmand.

The Taliban’s main sanctuary in Helmand is Gereshk district, which borders the Pakistani district of Noshki. The porous border between Noshki and Gereshk serves as a haven for anti-Western Taliban fighters as well as anti-Pakistan Baloch insurgents.

Neither Afghan nor NATO authorities have any control in the region – and neither does Pakistan. As a result, it is inevitable that in hot pursuit of the Taliban through the area, NATO troops will cross into Pakistan and expand the war. This threat also looms over Afghanistan’s Kunar province and Pakistan’s Mohmand area and some other tribal areas, but to a lesser degree compared to Helmand.

AT

Gordon Brown’s bid for a secret inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq war has backfired spectacularly, with the Chilcot inquiry threatening to return Iraq to the headlines before the general election. But this is not the first time that Brown has sought to sweep the issue under the carpet.

Today I can reveal that Brown misrepresented an earlier promise to “learn the lessons” of Iraq. A Labour member of the Commons foreign affairs committee (FAC) has compared this to the spin scandal that took Britain to war.

It was during a visit to the country in June 2007, just before he became prime minister, that Brown first sought to take the sting out of the Iraq issue. He announced that he had asked cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell to make two major changes to the way that intelligence is used.

Brown said he had instructed O’Donnell to separate intelligence analysis from the political process, and to ensure that any intelligence published in future was “properly verified and validated”. The announcement was spun as a criticism of the spin in Tony Blair’s September 2002 dossier on Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction.

A few days later, in a set-piece television interview with the BBC, Brown repeated these promises. He said he would put “rigorous procedures” in place to ensure “that where public information is provided it has gone through an authoritative process and it is free of political influence”.

In reality, Brown’s promise to separate intelligence analysis from politics actually returned government structures to the situation that had existed at the time of the dossier, where the chairman of the joint intelligence committee was nominally separate from the political process. And his claim to have asked O’Donnell to ensure the validity of published intelligence was as much of a pipedream as the dossier itself.

In response to my freedom of information and other enquiries, the Cabinet Office has told me it has no written record of Brown’s request to O’Donnell. It says the request was made orally to O’Donnell’s private secretary.

But the Cabinet Office has twice given accounts of the request that differ from Brown’s version. In each account, Brown is only said to have asked O’Donnell to ensure that intelligence analysis is separated from politics — making no reference to the future publication of intelligence. Although it has refused to publish O’Donnell’s recommendations, the Cabinet Office has admitted that they did not include any recommendations relating to the future publication of intelligence.

IOC

By William Blum

www.killinghope.org

September 29th, 2009

Ridding the world of the sickness of pacifism

Picture the scene: Afghanistan, two hijacked tankers filled with highly inflammable fuel, surrounded by a crowd of Afghans eager to syphon off some for free … What’s the last thing you want to do? Right — drop bombs on the tankers. That’s what a German military commander signaled an American drone airplane to do September 4. Kaboom!! At least 100 human beings incinerated. This incident has led to a lot of controversy in Germany, for Article 26 of Germany’s post-war Grundgesetz (Basic Law/Constitution) states: “Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense.”

But NATO (aka the United States) can take satisfaction in the fact that the Germans have put their silly pacifism aside and acted like real men, trained military killers; although prior to this incident the Germans had engaged in some aerial and ground combat, there hadn’t been such a dramatic and publicized taking of civilian lives. Deutschland now has more than 4,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent in the country after the US and Britain, and at home they’ve just finished building a monument to fallen members of the Bundeswehr (Federal Armed Forces), founded in 1955; 38 members (so far) have surrendered their young lives in Afghanistan.

In January 2007 I wrote in this report about how the US was pushing Germany in this direction; that circumstances at that time indicated that Washington might be losing patience with the pace of Germany’s submission to the empire’s needs. Germany declined to send troops to Iraq and sent only non-combat forces to Afghanistan, not quite good enough for the Pentagon warriors and their NATO allies. Germany’s leading news magazine, Der Spiegel, reported the following:

At a meeting in Washington, Bush administration officials, speaking in the context of Afghanistan, berated Karsten Voigt, German government representative for German-American relations: “You concentrate on rebuilding and peacekeeping, but the unpleasant things you leave to us.” … “The Germans have to learn to kill.”

A German officer at NATO headquarters was told by a British officer: “Every weekend we send home two metal coffins, while you Germans distribute crayons and woollen blankets.” Bruce George, the head of the British Defence Committee, said “some drink tea and beer and others risk their lives.”

A NATO colleague from Canada remarked that it was about time that “the Germans left their sleeping quarters and learned how to kill the Taliban.”

And in Quebec, a Canadian official told a German official: “We have the dead, you drink beer.” 1

Ironically, in many other contexts since the end of World War II the Germans have been unable to disassociate themselves from the image of Nazi murderers and monsters.

Will there come the day when the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents will be mocked by “the Free World” for living in peace?

The United States has also engaged in a decades-long effort to wean Japan away from its post-WW2 pacifist constitution and foreign policy and set it back on the righteous path of again being a military power, only this time acting in coordination with US foreign policy needs.

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

“In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.” — Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, 1947, words long cherished by a large majority of the Japanese people.

In the triumphalism of the end of the Second World War, the American occupation of Japan, in the person of General Douglas MacArthur, played a major role in the creation of this constitution. But after the communists came to power in China in 1949, the United States opted for a strong Japan safely ensconced in the anti-communist camp. It’s been all downhill since then. Step by step … MacArthur himself ordered the creation of a “national police reserve”, which became the embryo of the future Japanese military … Visiting Tokyo in 1956, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Japanese officials: “In the past, Japan had demonstrated her superiority over the Russians and over China. It was time for Japan to think again of being and acting like a Great Power.” 2… various US-Japanese security and defense cooperation treaties, which, for example, called on Japan to integrate its military technology with that of the US and NATO … the US supplying new sophisticated military aircraft and destroyers … all manner of Japanese logistical assistance to the US in its frequent military operations in Asia … repeated US pressure on Japan to increase its military budget and the size of its armed forces … more than a hundred US military bases in Japan, protected by Japanese armed forces … US-Japanese joint military exercises and joint research on a missile defense system … the US Ambassador to Japan, 2001: “I think the reality of circumstances in the world is going to suggest to the Japanese that they reinterpret or redefine Article 9.” 3 … under pressure from Washington, Japan sent several naval vessels to the Indian Ocean to refuel US and British warships as part of the Afghanistan campaign in 2002, then sent non-combat forces to Iraq to assist the American war as well as to East Timor, another made-in-America war scenario … Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2004: “If Japan is going to play a full role on the world stage and become a full active participating member of the Security Council, and have the kind of obligations that it would pick up as a member of the Security Council, Article Nine would have to be examined in that light.” 4…

One outcome or symptom of all this can perhaps be seen in the 2005 case of Kimiko Nezu, a 54-year-old Japanese teacher, who was punished by being transferred from school to school, by suspensions, salary cuts, and threats of dismissal because of her refusal to stand during the playing of the national anthem, a World War II song chosen as the anthem in 1999. She opposed the song because it was the same one sung as the Imperial Army set forth from Japan calling for an “eternal reign” of the emperor. At graduation ceremonies in 2004, 198 teachers refused to stand for the song. After a series of fines and disciplinary actions, Nezu and nine other teachers were the only protesters the following year. Nezu was then allowed to teach only when another teacher was present. 5

Which brings us to Italy, the remaining member of the World War Two Tripartite, or Axis. Article 11 of the 1948 Italian Constitution says in part: “Italy rejects war as a means for settling international controversies and as an instrument of aggression against the freedoms of others peoples.” 6

But Washington laid claim early to Italy’s post-war soul. In 1948 the United States all but took over the Italian election campaign to insure the Christian Democrats (CD) defeat of the Communist-Socialist candidate. (And the US remained an electoral force in Italy for the next three decades maintaining the CD in power. The Christian Democrats, in turn, were loyal Cold-War partners.) 7 In 1949, the US saw to it that Italy became a founding member of NATO. This was not seen as a threat to Article 11 because NATO has always painted itself as a “defensive” organization, even in 1999 when it carried out a 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia as both Italy and Germany supplied military aircraft and a NATO air base at Aviano, Italy served as the main hub for the daily bombing runs. For decades, Italy has been the home of US military bases and airfields used by Washington in one military adventure after another from Europe to Asia.

There are now some 3,000 Italian soldiers in Afghanistan performing a variety of services which enables the United States and NATO to engage in their bloody warfare. And 15 Italian soldiers have also lost their lives in that woeful land. The pressure on Italy, as on Germany, to become full-fledged combatants in Afghanistan and elsewhere is unrelenting from their NATO comrades. 8

The Berlin Wall — Another Cold War Myth

Within a few weeks many of the Western media can be expected to turn on their propaganda machines to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989. All the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny will be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don’t like people to be free, to learn the “truth”. What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returned to the East in the evening. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. The wall was built primarily for two reasons:

1. The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: “West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin.” 9
2. During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country’s economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from terrorism to juvenile delinquency; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions … all this and much more. 10

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets’ erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West.

Let’s not forget that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union and wipe out Bolshevism forever. After the war, the Soviets were determined to close down the highway.

In 1999, USA Today reported: “When the Berlin Wall crumbled, East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism.” 11

About the same time a new Russian proverb was born: “Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth.”

Health care: ignoring the huge red elephant in the room

In the frenzied search of recent months for a better way of delivering health care to the American people, the American media has often discussed health-care systems in other countries, particularly Europe. Usually, little, if anything, is mentioned about Cuba’s system, where everyone is covered, for everything, where pre-existing conditions do not matter, and no patient pays for anything; i.e., nothing at all. The reason the Cuban system is seldom mentioned in the mass media is probably that it’s kind of embarrassing that this otherwise poor country, laboring under the awful yoke of (choke, gasp) socialism, can deliver health care that most Americans can only dream of.

Now we have a new book by T.R. Reid, former correspondent for the Washington Post and commentator for National Public Radio. It’s called “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care”. Reid does not avoid giving some credit to the Cuban system, but he makes sure that the reader knows that he’s not taken in by any commie propaganda. He refers to the Cuban government as “a totalitarian Communist fiefdom”, and adds: “In every country (except, perhaps, a police state like Cuba) there is one group of citizens who are not bound by the unified health care system: the rich.” 12 Thus, the fact that Cuba has an egalitarian health care system is made to seem like something negative, something one could expect to find only in a police state.

In discussing the World Health Organization’s giving Cuba high marks for fairness in its system, Reid points out: “Of course, fairness and equal treatment extend only so far; when Fidel Castro himself fell ill in 2007, medical experts were flown in from Europe to treat him.” 13 Aha! I knew it! Americans, and not just the right-wing crazies, would never accept a medical system where everyone got completely free care for all ailments if the president ever got any kind of special treatment. Would they? We could at least ask them.

Speaking of the right-wing crazies, there was a report in the New York Times which said: “Tomorrow night, getting right into the thick of the battle,” the president will “carry his message to the people in a nationwide television and radio speech” fighting for enactment of his health reform bill, which opponents tagged as “socialized medicine” and “an entering wedge for the takeover of private medicine by the federal government.” The president was John F. Kennedy, the program was Medicare, the Times story was published on May 20, 1962. Despite the speech, the effort failed until passage in 1964. 14

And speaking of the totalitarian communist socialist fascist Cuban police-state dictatorship, Mr. Reid and others might be interested in an article I wrote which demonstrates that during the period of its revolution, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best human-rights records in all of Latin America.

But how to get past a lifetime of conditioning and reach the American mind with that message? At the recent convention of the AFL-CIO, the country’s leading labor organization, there was a very progressive resolution put forth calling for the right of all Americans to travel to Cuba and for an end to the US embargo against the island nation. But at the end of the resolution the authors reminded us that they’re Americans, calling upon Cuba “to release all political prisoners”. 15

To appreciate what’s wrong with that resolution one must understand the following: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government officials, particularly in Havana through the United States Interests Section. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States, evidence gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba’s “political prisoners” are such dissidents.

Notes

1. Der Spiegel (Germany), November 20, 2006, p.24
2. Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1994
3. Washington Post, July 18, 2001
4. BBC, August 14, 2004
5. Washington Post, August 30, 2005
6. Wikipedia: “Article 11 of Italian Constitution”
7. William Blum, “Killing Hope”, chapters 2 and 18
8. For further discussion of US opposition to Post-WW2 Axis pacifism, see “Former Axis Nations Abandon Post-World War II Military Restrictions”
9. New York Times, June 27, 1963, p.12
10. See Killing Hope, p.400, note 8, for a list of sources for the details of the sabotage and subversion
11. USA Today, October 11, 1999, p.1
12. p.234 of Reid’s book
13. Ibid., p.150-1
14. Washington Post, September 9, 2009
15. PDF of resolution

–

William Blum is the author of:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
* West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
* Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

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by Marcelo Guimarães Lima

A review of:
Peter McLaren –
Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and The Pedagogy of Revolution
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD (USA), 2000

To many, the latest book of Canadian-American educational theorist Peter McLaren: Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and The Pedagogy of Revolution, will probably appear as a sort of “unusual conjecture”: presenting a number of “surprising”, or even, in many ways, “baffling” considerations.

On one hand, the book revisits some of the themes, works and authors related to the genealogy and the relevant issues of critical pedagogy as understood and practised in the USA by a number of educators and critics, such as McLaren himself, for over two decades now. Among the important sources of critical pedagogy we have, naturally, the works of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, whose significance for the contemporary debates on education in North America, as well as in other places, since the late sixties and early seventies, is constantly emphasized, with reason, by McLaren.

On the other hand, claiming the figure and symbol of Che Guevara as relevant to the understanding of the theory and practice of a pedagogy for social change today in the North American context, is, apparently, a much less evident proposition, one that may be met with a certain degree of uneasiness or even with frank disbelief. Is it possible, or even necessary or desirable, to put together a Latin-American revolutionary and a Latin-American educator to construe a critical understanding of education today in order to build a revolutionary pedagogy for our time?

And certainly, the present time is a time of triumphant capitalism, or rather, of super-capitalism, and consequently not only of intensified, global exploitation of workers, that is, of all of those who have to sell their labour power in the market place for a living, but a time in which the commodification of all spheres of life and of all the domains of human activities, including Education, has reached proportions that perhaps, one is tempted to say, not even the early Marxist cultural-political critics of capitalism in the early part of the 20th Century, such as Lukacs, Gramsci, Korsch and others, for all their radical insights on the capitalist lebenswelt, could imagine. The novelty of the present context is precisely the urgent need of a radical and practical critique of the status quo, experienced as the lack of such a critique: a double need and double absence, opening a gap between the present and the not so distant past in which historical consciousness meant the possibility of historical invention, in which as Benjamin once observed, historical recollection could open the way to the imagination of the future, and memory could represent the poetical key to a redemption of history and from it. Double lack better understood perhaps by Henri Lefebvre’s notion of the contemporary “alienation from alienation”.

Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and The Pedagogy of Revolution is a book that plays at different levels. In many ways it can be said to constitute the project or first essay of a book, or rather, a group of works, yet to be written. The project of a revolutionary pedagogy for the present time is one faced with plenty of difficulties. Educators are faced with the daily degradation of their working conditions and of their works, with the devaluation of their profession, in spite of all ideological fanfare around the “importance of education nowadays”, with the devaluation therefore of their skills and knowledge. Faced with the unrelenting, shameless and increasingly authoritarian subordination of educational goals and processes to the “logic of the marketplace”, that is, in plain language: the transformation of a social-cultural process of crucial importance for society as a whole into a “business like any other”, commanded by profit making goals and strategies, with the reduction of Education to a “consumer’s good”, educators may feel that to affect real changes that will benefit their students and themselves more is needed than occasional “educational reforms” that, most of the times, in fact increase rather than abate the educational malaise and contribute to the persistent loss of autonomy of the educational process, of its institutional basis and of its practitioners. In such a context, the social-political grounds of the institution of Education may be quite clearly apprehended, in a more or less explicit way, even if not always as clearly expressed, by many, or most, of its practitioners. From here to the grounding of a critical social-political project of Education, however, the road is less clearly seen.

In this respect, if anything, what the experience of progressive Education, that is, of Education for social justice and democratic praxis, in Brazil, in Latin America and in the Third World as a whole (of which the work of Paulo Freire constitutes a specific moment), has shown, and continues to show today, is that the effectiveness of educational programs and projects is directly related to their embedding (through specific forms of mediation) in social movements of change in determined historical contexts of transformation, to which they present their specific contributions and from which they take their energies, impulse and general goals. In these historically specific contexts the autonomy of Education becomes a product of its mediation by the transformative movements in society and in turn it mediates social change in the larger perspective of reconstruction, reproduction and renewal of social relations.

We can observe that the correct understanding of critical pedagogy in its “First World” context, that is, in the North-American context, would imply also and fundamentally the understanding of, for instance, American Education in relation to the social forces at work at the present time in American society, including the forces and social movements directed to challenge and change the status quo with the aim of building democratic participation (by no means a given or “unproblematic reality” in the self-proclaimed “Great Democracy of the North”) and those forces that oppose it. It is within specific contexts that the works of critical educators have to be analysed in order to better understand their contributions, their limits and the possible or actual relations between, for instance, the experiences of popular democratic movements for progressive education in Latin America and in the US.

One could expect that, due to its subject, Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and The Pedagogy of Revolution would sketch the beginnings of such an analysis, that is, regarding central aspects of the sociology and the political economy of Education. There are reasons, or so we believe, why it does not. Reasons that may clarify the present turn of critical pedagogy itself, of which the work, or rather the works, of Peter McLaren, a major player in the North American developments of critical pedagogy, is both a source, in a way a sort of “emblem” and, at the same time, in what regards the analysis of the theoretical-practical conjuncture, a “symptom”.

CR

DAKAR, 28 September 2009 (IRIN) – Recently a commercial billboard near Guinea’s presidential palace featured three towering question marks on a white background. That image matches the way many Guineans describe their country’s current condition, eight months after Moussa Dadis Camara came to power in a bloodless coup: utter uncertainty.

When Camara took power citizens poured into the streets cheering; Guineans say they were celebrating a rupture with the 24-year regime of Lansana Conté.

“We hate that the military has taken power again,” a Guinean told IRIN the day of the coup. “But we hate it less than we hated the Conté regime.”

Now many Guineans are wondering where the Camara government – which calls itself the National Council for Democracy and Development – is taking the country. Here is a timeline of some events since independence from France in 1958.

28 September 2009 – Guineans take to the streets protesting the candidacy junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara, defying a ban by authorities on a planned rally. Residents say scores killed and injured as military cracked down on demonstrators

22 September 2009 – International contact group on Guinea welcomes a decision by the African Union expressing concern about whether junta members keeping to a commitment not to run in presidential elections; contact group expresses “grave concerns” about delays in the electoral process and the deterioration of the political, human rights and security situation in Guinea

22 September 2009 – Supporters of Moussa Dadis Camara demonstrate in the capital Conakry

19 September 2009 – Leaders of political parties and civil society call for a 28 September rally to protest Camara’s candidacy

17 September 2009 – Peace and Security Council of the African Union threatens sanctions against junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara “and all other individuals, both civilian and military” whose activities run counter to a commitment that no members of the ruling National Council for Development and Democracy would be a presidential candidate. AU expresses “deep concern over the deteriorating situation in Guinea” and “strongly condems the repudiation” of this commitment by Camara

23 August 2009 – Coalition of civil society organizations, unions, political parties, religious groups call on Guineans not to allow junta “to confiscate power”

19 August 2009 – Junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara tells journalists whether he runs for president “is up to God”

17 August 2009 – Ruling National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD) accepts recommendation by civil society organizations, political parties, unions and religious groups to hold presidential election in January 2010, legislative election in March 2010

IN

By V. VENKATESAN

The Ishrat Jahan case exposes how the Gujarat Police developed “encounter killings” as a strategy for career development in a communalised atmosphere.

photo:RANJEET KUMAR

In Patna on September 11, members of the Muslim United Front protest against the June 2004 “encounter” killing of Ishrat Jahan and three others in Ahmedabad after the Tamang inquiry report on the case was made public.

THE conflict between civil liberties and the pursuit of an effective counter-terrorism strategy has never been easy to resolve. State authorities, in their eagerness to deliver results on the counter-terrorism front, make serious inroads into personal liberties, often by compromising the fundamental values of our Constitution. On September 7, Ahmedabad Metropolitan Magistrate S.P. Tamang made public his inquiry report into the killing of four people by the Gujarat Police in 2004 in what it claimed was an encounter. The report described the encounter as fake.

The report led to a huge controversy over whether in its fight against terrorism, the state is authorised to use unjustified force against terror suspects. Although the Gujarat High Court subsequently stayed the report on the grounds that Tamang exceeded his jurisdiction, the questions posed in the report were embarrassing to both the State government and civil society.

The Gujarat government cited the Union Home Ministry’s affidavit in the Gujarat High Court to suggest that the four slain persons were terror suspects. The Union Home Ministry responded by saying that its intelligence inputs passed on to States could not be taken as a licence to kill terror suspects with impunity.

In his report, Tamang gave detailed reasons, citing the principles of medical jurisprudence, and also pointed to the flaws in the police version to conclude that the encounter was fake (story on page 10). In the incident, a 19-year-old girl, Ishrat Jahan, and her employer were allegedly abducted by the Gujarat Police in Mumbai and brought to Ahmedabad where they were killed in a so-called encounter along with two others, described as Pakistani nationals who were suspected terrorists on an alleged mission to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

FL

By NATASHA SINGER

The oral contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin are the top-selling pharmaceutical line for Bayer HealthCare, largely as a result of marketing that presents them as much more than mere pregnancy prevention.

Yaz, in particular, the top-selling birth control pill in the United States, owes much of its popularity to multimillion-dollar ad campaigns that have promoted the drug as a quality-of-life treatment to combat acne and severe premenstrual depression.

Yaz, a newer sister drug to Yasmin, contains less estrogen. The franchise had worldwide sales of about $1.8 billion last year, based on Bayer’s successful positioning of Yasmin and Yaz as the go-to drug brands for women under 35.

But recently, the Yaz line’s image has been clouded by concerns from some researchers, health advocates and plaintiffs’ lawyers. They say that the drugs put women at higher risk for blood clots, strokes and other health problems than some other birth control pills do.

Those critics, though, are up against a large European health study, sponsored by Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant, that reported the opposite conclusion. The Bayer-financed study said that cardiovascular risks in women taking Bayer products were comparable to those taking an older formula of birth control pills.

But regulators are finding other faults with the Yaz franchise. The Food and Drug Administration early this year asked Bayer to correct misleading television commercials. Last month, the agency cited the company for not following proper quality control procedures at a plant that makes hormone ingredients.

NYT

By Ethan Remmel

THE PHILOSOPHICAL BABY: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. Alison Gopnik. x + 288 pp. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. $25.

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a baby, or how a young child’s perceptions and introspections might differ from those of an adult? Reading Alison Gopnik’s new book, The Philosophical Baby, is probably the closest you will ever come to knowing.

Gopnik is a leading developmental psychologist, an expert on philosophy of mind and an excellent writer. What distinguishes this book from others on children’s cognition is the author’s emphasis on philosophical issues such as consciousness, identity and morality. She argues that the psychological study of children provides a rich source of insight into these issues, one that philosophers have traditionally overlooked.

Within developmental psychology, Gopnik is perhaps best known for promoting (with Henry Wellman, Andrew Meltzoff and others) the “theory theory”—the idea that children construct implicit causal models of the world (theories) using the same psychological mechanisms that scientists use to construct explicit scientific theories. In other words, children are like little scientists—or, as Gopnik prefers to put it, scientists are like big children. The focus in this book is broader. Gopnik argues that although young children’s thinking may seem illogical and their play functionless, their imagination and exploration actually reflect the operation of the same powerful causal learning mechanisms that enable our uniquely human achievements in areas such as science or art.

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