Captain and Mate Arrested After Ship Collides with Fishing Boat off Iceland

Icelandic police suspect the Longdawn collided with the fishing boat (FARMAR file photo of Longdawn)

PUBLISHED MAY 17, 2024 3:53 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

Icelandic officials are confirming that a court has ordered the captain and second mate of a cargo ship that was sailing off the southern coast held after a suspected collision with a fishing boat early on May 16. Miraculously, the fisherman survived uninjured from his capsized boat but the cargo ship continued sailing with the Coast Guard later tracking the vessel into the port of Vestmannaeyjar.

According to the Coast Guard and the Search and Rescue Service, it was approximately 0300 local time on May 16 when a fishing boat came upon an object in the water. According to the operator, he first thought it was a container and then realized it was the boat of his friend of 40 years. The two men had headed out earlier that evening fishing on their boats and the one was a few miles ahead of his friend who ended up saving his life.

Realizing it was an overturned boat he placed an emergency call and the Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter while the search and rescue team was sailing toward the scene. The fisherman reports his friend suddenly appeared from under the boat in a survival suit. The suit however was waterlogged, and the man had to cut it off his friend to retrieve him out of the water.

The survivor was taken by the Coast Guard to shore and he told them it happened quickly but that he thought his fishing boat had been clipped by a passing cargo ship. He was reported to be cold and wet but suffering no serious injuries. He had been able to pull on the survival suit as his boat capsized. The rescue services were also able to recover the capsized fishing boat.

The Coast Guard tracked the Longdawn sailing from Rotterdam. The 8,250 dwt vessel is registered in Antigua & Barbuda. It is 423 feet (129 meters) and is operated by a shipping company Longship in the Netherlands. 

“There are traces of collision on both vessels, which is considered to strongly strengthen the police’s suspicion of a collision as the cause of the capsizing of the boat,” the police said in a statement. Media reports and pictures showed scrapes on the bulb of the cargo ship’s bow.

Initially, the police detained the captain, chief officer, first mate, and second mate while they were investigating. They were also sending for an interpreter reporting two of the men were from Russia and a third was Asian. The chief officer and first mate were later released.

The court ordered the captain and second mate who had been on duty Thursday morning arrested with a detention of up to four weeks while the investigation continues.

The Longdawn departed from Iceland on Friday on its return trip to Rotterdam. 

 

Oregon’s Port of Portland Gets State Funds to Maintain Container Ops

SM Line began operations to Portland in 2020 (Port of Portland)

PUBLISHED MAY 17, 2024 5:41 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

ALL CAPITALI$M IS STATE CAPITALI$M

The Port of Portland, Oregon’s only ocean-going seaport, announced it will reverse course and not suspend container operations. The move came after the state’s governor, Tina Kotek, released a letter on Thursday reporting she would provide stop-gap funding and would include long-term funding for channel maintenance in the state’s budget. In total, she is proposing $40 million in future support to the port and its container operations.

“Farmers, union members, shippers, and business leaders have all asked me what the state can do to keep this important service in place,” Governor Kotek wrote in announcing her decision. She said the port and specifically the container service provides a competitive advantage for Oregon growers and other businesses which would have been forced to truck their shipments hundreds of miles to neighboring ports.

In April, it leaked out into the media that the port authority had sent a letter to shippers informing them that it would be ending container operations at the port as of October 2024. The port reported losing $30 million from the container operations over the past three years, including a projected $14 million shortfall this year. They said talks with an independent operator had collapsed and that they had no other choice but to end container service at the T6 Terminal but would maintain the bulk, RoRo, and other operations at the port.

“The port has been working to rebuild container service since taking over the operation in 2018, following a temporary shutdown under former operator ICTSI,” the port authority writes in its response to the governor. “Without direct state support or a financially acceptable third-party lease, container operations have not been sustainable.”

The governor said it was important to send a strong signal to the state’s business partners and as such she would ask the legislature for $5 million in September to stabilize near-term operations at the port. It is part of an overall $40 million investment she said the state would be making to support the continuation of container service.

In offering the funding and support, the governor said she understands that the port’s location makes container operations economically challenging. She cites the limitations of an upriver port within a relatively small metropolitan area, saying she understands they can not fix those limitations. She however calls on the port authority to use the state’s commitment and to pursue an aggressive strategy to make the container operations sustainable for the long term.

“I expect the port to pursue all viable strategies for making T6 operations sustainable over the long-term,” writes the governor.

In addition to the stop-gap funding, she said she will include an initial investment of $15 million for dredging of the Lower Columbia River. She says the state previously committed nearly $28 million but notes the federal project is due to expire in 2025. She expects up to $70 million will be required in a new round of investment for the river. 

She also recognizes the high cost of repairing and replacing needed infrastructure at the port to support container operations. As part of the 2025-2027 recommended budget, she will also support a $20 million investment in a capital program to support container operations.

The Port of Portland has had a difficult history with container operations. They attracted ICTSI to operate the terminal but the company became embroiled in a dispute with the union that ultimately led to the company walking away and a long legal battle. The legal battle was recently settled, but the port had attempted to run the container terminal. It attracted several lines including SM Line during the pandemic offering an uncongested alternative.

Port officials came in for strong criticism from the union, elected officials, and others when they confirmed in April the decision to suspend the operation. In a press release, they said they were grateful to the governor for the declaration of support and for helping to maintain the operation.
 

 

IMO Urges More Efforts as World Marks Women in Maritime Day

IMO calls for more efforts to support equality and enhance the workforce (IMO)

PUBLISHED MAY 17, 2024 6:58 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

Organizations around the globe marked the annual Women in Maritime Day, on May 18, highlighting the advancements women are making in the field while calling for continued actions for training and to support equality. The International Maritime Organization marked the day with its 36th annual program while also urging the industry to invest in the future by ensuring gender equality. 

To highlight the continuing inequalities, the IMO cited data saying that currently only 29 percent of the overall maritime workforce and 20 percent of the workforce of national maritime authorities are women. They reported that despite all the efforts globally, women make up less than two percent of seafarers worldwide.

“We must – and will- do more,” said Arsenio Dominguez, the Secretary-General speaking at the IMO event to mark the day. “By investing in women’s education and professional development, we empower women, drive innovation, and foster sustainability within the maritime industry, to benefit of all.”

The numbers show slow progress and growth from a minuscule base. For example, the industry trade group BIMCO and the ICS did a survey in 2021 that reported women only represented 1.2 percent of the global seafarer workforce. While saying it was a 45.8 percent increase versus 2015, UN officials highlighted that it was possibly one of the lowest levels in any industry.

“Today is an opportunity to honor the remarkable achievements of women in the maritime sector while advocating for gender equality and inclusivity in this vital industry,” said the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) Executive Director Policy and Regulation Leanne Loan. “Elevating female role models, embracing diverse perspectives, and fostering collaboration, is vital to a safer, more inclusive maritime sector.”

The IMO's Women in Maritime program, initiated in 1988, takes a three-pronged approach of “training-visibility-recognition” for women. Under the theme of “Safe Horizons: Women Shaping the Future of Maritime Safety,” live broadcast one hour-45-minute symposium featuring a line-up of seafarers, maritime professionals, and maritime leaders. 

Education and training was one of the persistent themes from many organizations. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for example highlighted its efforts at advancing women into one of the most difficult sectors of the maritime world. Through its Global Maritime Crime Program (GMCP), and in cooperation with the Sri Lanka Navy, in August 2023 they conducted the first Inshore Patrol Craft (IPC) navigation training for female officers in Southeast Asia. The one-month training, incorporating both theoretical knowledge and practical exercise of running an IPC vessel at sea, helped strengthen the participants’ boat navigation skills, thus preparing them for a commanding duty in the future.

“Change is both necessary and coming…,” said Dominguez. “With increase in trade and the transition towards a greener and more sustainable sector, the opportunities to enhance diversity and inclusion are in front of us.”

The IMO points to emerging industry issues such as the rise of digitalization and automation as well as green technology in the sector. They highlight that these issues will require new skills and potentially signal new career opportunities for women. 

Domingues concluded by calling on all the participants in the program, and around the globe, to look at how they can drive understanding, awareness, and change within their organizations and help achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and in particular Goal 5 to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

 

UK Royal Fleet Auxiliary Officers to Launch First Job Action Says Nautilus

RFA is currently assisting with the Gaza aid efforts as part of its RN supply role (RN)

PUBLISHED MAY 17, 2024 8:06 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

The officers of the UK’s Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the civilian support service for the Royal Navy, will start a work slowdown according to their union Nautilus International. It is the latest step in a long-running dispute over wages but will stop short of a full-on strike. 

Hundreds of Nautilus members working onboard RFA vessels, which include the Royal Navy’s fleet of tankers and supply ships, starting June 1 will only undertake work responsibilities commensurate with their job title according to Nautilus. They are emphasizing that this is an “action short of a strike,” where the members will “not provide cover or act in a capacity above or below their job title.”

Nautilus acknowledges the vital contribution and role in the national defense of the RFA. As such, they are emphasizing that members will continue to work in full compliance with all safety guidelines and policies, ensuring the safety of people, the safety of the vessel, and the safety of the environment at all times. 

“However, after 14 years of pay austerity – representing more than a 30 percent real-terms cut in wages – and a resulting recruitment and retention crisis, they have finally had enough and have made the momentous decision to undertake industrial action for the first time in RFA history,” says Nautilus executive director Martyn Gray.

Nautilus has been threatening some form of job action for months reporting in November 2023 that it was planning to conduct a ballot among members for an industrial action. They are now saying that an overwhelming 85 percent voted “yes to action short of a strike,” while 79 percent also voted to support a full-on strike.

“It is now up to the UK government to put forward a serious offer, one that reflects their hard work and the essential role that they play in defense of this country, so that this dispute can be ended with a fair settlement for RFA personnel.,” said Gray.

Nautilus International says it has conducted a series of meetings with RFA, Royal Navy, and Ministry of Defence representatives, each trying to try to resolve the pay dispute. They contend that the organization has received no offer that members are “able to accept,” reporting in September 2023 membership voted to reject a 4.5 percent raise offer. With no further movement, Nautilus says the situation has now been escalated further.

The RMT (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) represents other portions of the RFA workforce and it too is locked in prolonged negotiations with the UK government primarily over wages. The RFA offered the same 4.5 percent wage increase to RMT members and the union responded by announcing in October it planned to conduct its strike vote.

Both unions emphasize that it has never come to a strike in the past and hope it will not this time. However, they contend it was a close call in 2019 when the RFA offered just a 1.5 percent increase.

They contend that RFA members have consistently seen their pay fall below other services, such as the armed forces, police, fire, and ambulance.

 

ILWU Canada Delays Strike Notice for DP World’s Vancouver Terminals

Local representing ship and dock foreman delayed a strike notice at DP World's Vancounver contaienr terminal (Port of Vancouver file photo)

PUBLISHED MAY 16, 2024 5:00 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

Canadian officials are again preparing for a potential strike that would impact DP World Canada’s West Coast operation, including the second-largest Vancouver container terminal, while holding out hope for a new round of federal mediation. Yesterday, May 15, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 agreed to delay serving a 72-hour strike notice. So far, the contract negotiations however remain deadlocked.

The Local represents over 700 ship and dock foremen working at terminals including DP World Canada’s Centerm container terminal in Vancouver. The facility was expanded in 2023 increasing capacity by 60 percent to 1.5 million TEU annually. It operates six gantry cranes on two berths and is separate from Deltaport operated by GCT which is the larger Vancouver container terminal. DP World Canada also operates the Nanaimo (Duke Point) break bulk and Fraser Surrey multipurpose terminal as well as at Prince Rupert on the West Coast.

Union leadership said it is doing everything it can to avert a potential strike at the port while noting that the local’s contract expired on March 31, 2023. Bargaining began at the end of May and with pauses continued till January 2024 when the BC Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) negotiating on behalf of DP World filed a Notice of Dispute. That triggered a 60-day Conciliation Period and attempts at federal mediation. That was followed by a Cooling Off period that expired on May 10.

Canada’s West Coast ports suffered a devastating strike in 2023 that stopped container movements. The federal government recently launched a commission to investigate the 2023 circumstances to prevent a repeat, but elected officials are worried that another disruption is in the offing now with the Local. 

BCMEA contends that the 2023 strike caused a C$10.7 billion (US$7.9 billion) loss due to disrupted and diverted cargo. They also say that much of the diverted business never returned to Canadian ports. 

Both sides are now free to move toward either a strike or lockout but under Canadian labor rules they would have to be a vote and then filing of a 72-hour notice. The Local has taken its vote and was prepared to file its notice but said it was willing to wait while an effort was underway to try and restart the negotiations. They however are accusing the BCMEA of being misleading and trying to negotiate in the media.

The local is demanding direct talks with DP World Canada saying under arbitration its rights were confirmed. They contend the impasse centers around three issues, including the use of semi-automation at the container terminal without bargaining for a tech change. They are in arbitration over centralized dispatching and are also opposing the use of management instead of union members as dispatchers at the Nanaimo terminal. The local contends the arbitration already ruled against this third point.

The BCMEA accuses the local of “intransigence at the bargaining table,” saying it was left with no choice but to file a complaint with the Canada Industrial Relations Board last week. They contend that a generous offer was made for a four-year contract with a 19.2 percent wage increase, a signing bonus, and a 16 percent increase in retirement benefits. There would also be retroactive pay to April 1, 2023.

Businesses fear that Canadian commerce and trade could be brought to a halt by a series of strikes including DP World, but also a threat against Canadian rail and another at the East Coast ports. The rail strike could begin as early as next week involving both CP Rail and CN, Canada’s two carriers, but last Thursday, May 9, Canada’s Labor Minister Seamus O’Regan intervened asking the Canada Industrial Relations Board to review the situation.

Wealthier voters in poorer areas most likely to have voted Brexit, new study finds

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Today
Left Foot Forward

PETITE BOURGEOISIE

Because of greater financial security particularly home-ownership, more affluent voters were less wary of the potential risks of changing the status quo.

Since the 52-48 percent vote in favour of leaving the European Union in June 2016, the correlation between wealth and how people voted in the 2016 EU referendum has been widely researched and discussed. It is broadly acknowledged that voters in economically deprived and left-behind areas were more likely to have voted to leave the European Union. But a new study has found that while poorer areas were more supportive of exiting the EU, wealthier people within these areas were more inclined to have voted for Brexit.

The ‘Mind the Gap: Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit’ report by the King’s College London was published in early May in the British Journal of Political Science. It found that because of greater financial security particularly home-ownership, more affluent voters were less wary of the potential risks of changing the status quo.

Conversely, younger voters, who were less likely to have security against economic shocks and did not own property, were more likely to have voted to remain, as they were more risk averse.

“People living in left-behind areas were more likely to support Brexit than those living in prosperous areas. The gains of Brexit were perceived to be greater in areas of the country that had experienced economic decline. But within those areas, given people’s preferences, we show that wealthier individuals were more likely to vote for Brexit, and poorer individuals were more likely to vote for Remain,” said the authors.

The study involved analysing data from a British Election Study internet panel and several Bank of England panel surveys surrounding income and expenditure in 2016 – 2018. Both panels included information on a participant’s political preferences and wealth. Across the two panels, the researchers found the likelihood of a Leave vote increased as property wealth increased. The Bank of England data showed that the standard deviation increase in property wealth increased Leave support by as much as 7.1 percentage points.

Noting how wealth provides self-assurance against financial risk, thereby reducing risk aversion, the authors said: “We apply this insurance mechanism to electoral behaviour, arguing that a voter who desires a change to the status quo and who is wealthy is more likely to voted for change than a voter who lacks the same self-assurance.”

“Studying the effect of wealth in the Brexit case, we found that variation in personal wealth – especially property wealth – enabled wealthier individuals to support Brexit and less wealthy individuals to support Remain,” said the researchers.

The King’s College London research follows a study in April which found the majority of British voters now regret Brexit. Research by UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE), found that because as many as 16-20 percent of those who voted to leave have switched sides, compared with only 6 percent of those who voted to remain, the balance has swung against Brexit.

UK

DWP to hire ‘external agents’ in crackdown on benefit fraud that government’s own data shows doesn’t exist

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead

Today

LEFT FOOT FORWARD


‘If the government is concerned about fraud, it would be serious about the £15.2bn that multinational companies hide from the UK via tax havens.’

As the government continues to crack down on so-called benefit fraud and reform the welfare system with stricter measures, newly released statistics by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that there were almost no recorded cases of disability fraud in the financial year ending 2024.

Disability Living Allowance fraud was just 0.1 percent, rounded off to £0m. Personal independence payment (PIP) cheating was found to be 0 percent in the same period, the data showed.

PIP overpayments represented 0.4 percent, equating to around £90m lost in a year, marking a significant decrease from the previous year, when such overpayments stood 1.1 percent (£200m). The overpayments were said to be mainly due to errors made by the department when allocating award levels at the assessment stage.

In response to the DWP’s figures, Mikey Erhardt, campaigner at Disability Rights UK described PIP fraud as a ‘non-issue.’

“New data shows what we, as disabled people, have known for years – PIP fraud is a non-issue. PIP fraud is now the lowest on record – despite the government placing fraud front and centre of their latest public announcements,” said Erhardt.

“If the government is concerned about fraud, it would be serious about the £15.2bn that multinational companies hide from the UK via tax havens. Money which could fund public services that we all need and use. Instead, disabled people continue to be demonised,” he added.

Official figures also showed that benefit claimants were underpaid by £3.3bn last year, the highest level on record, despite a government drive to eliminate a ‘sick-note culture’ and crack down on benefit fraud.

In its ‘Fraud Plan’ published on May 13, the DWP announced it was hiring 2,500 ‘external agents’ to ‘help spot incorrectness in Universal Credit claims.’ Artificial Intelligence will also feature in the ‘crackdown’,’ with the DWP investing £70m into high-tech ‘machine learning’ in an attempt to identify patterns and anomalies being used in welfare applications that could suggest fraud. Additionally, DWP investigators will be given powers to conduct searches and make arrests, as well as retrieving information from the bank accounts of claimants.

Mel Stride, secretary of state for work and pensions, said: “We are scaling up the fight against those stealing from the taxpayer, building on our success in stopping £18bn going into the wrong hands in 2022-23.”

The Anti-Colonial Marxism of Mahdi Amel

The Lebanese Marxist thinker Mahdi Amel was assassinated on this day in 1987. Amel developed a version of Marxism that was grounded in the experience of colonized societies, showing how class struggle converges with the fight for national liberation.

Lebanese Marxist Mahdi Amel. (Archives of Assafir Newspaper)

BYHICHAM SAFIEDDINE
05.18.2024
JACOBIN

With rare exceptions, non-Western theorists of Marxism receive short intellectual shrift. When they register on the radar of ideological debates at all, such debates summarily present their work as proof of Marxism’s universalism rather than a means of transforming Marxism itself.

This has largely been the case with the Arab Marxist Mahdi Amel, who was assassinated on this day, May 18, in 1987. Born in 1936, Hassan Hamdan, who later adopted the pen name Mahdi Amel, was a member of the Lebanese Communist Party and had joined the party’s national leadership by the time he was killed.

Amel’s legacy did experience a revival during the Arab uprisings that broke out a decade ago. His work garnered further attention after a volume of his selected writings was translated into English in 2021. But interest in his philosophy of Marxism and its implications for how we understand colonialism in relation to capitalism remains rudimentary.

A historical materialist reading of Amel would integrate his conceptual contribution and praxis into the ideological canon of twentieth-century Marxism. This requires a sustained and critical analysis of his philosophy’s assumptions, arguments, and conclusions in comparison and contrast to European Marxism as well as heterodox or radical schools of Marxism that emerged after World War II, such as dependency theory and racial capitalism.

We can take a modest step in that direction by briefly examining his methodology and its application to major themes of post-WWII national liberation, including the ongoing struggle for a free Palestine.

Marxism, Colonialism, and Methodology

Amel called for a “methodological revolution” in Marxist philosophy in order to understand and overcome the historical reality of colonialism. He opposed the application of preformed Marxist thought to the colonial social structure, but not in the name of some supposedly authentic precapitalist thought. He equally rejected forms of postcolonial analysis that threw the historical materialist baby out with its Euro-centric bathwater. Instead, Amel labored in a dialectical fashion to construct a theory of Marxism born out of colonial social reality and employed for its socialist liberation, which he argued, is also the liberation of all humanity.

Amel laid out the logic of his methodology, first in brief and later in detail, across a series of essays and book-length treatises. He then applied it to a wide range of historical phenomena and forces including sectarianism, Islam, education, and revolutionary culture. These writings were engaged in direct conversation with ideological debates that emerged during his age and remain relevant to ours.Mahdi Amel called for a ‘methodological revolution’ in Marxist philosophy in order to understand and overcome the historical reality of colonialism.

While Amel’s texts may be dense and at times repetitive, his reasoning was straightforward. Karl Marx’s discussion of colonialism was incidental to his general analysis of capitalism. Given Marx’s own historical context in a capitalist Europe and his ignorance of the socioeconomic conditions of colonized countries, he was incapable of taking full stock of colonialism and incorporating it into his theory of capitalism.

The historical reality of colonized peoples is the inverse of that experienced by Marx. Their encounter with capitalism was incidental to, or mediated via, colonialism. Colonization, in the words of Amel, “cut the thread of continuity” in their history and “sent through it violent tremors.”

He believed these tremors reached all the way to the strata of the relations of production, as the material basis for precapitalist production was destroyed while the material basis for industrialization was denied. To put it another way, the difference between capitalist and colonial social formations does not merely concern the level or scale of production, but the entire structure of production.


For Amel, it follows from this point that the colonial relation, which is all-encompassing rather than purely economic, is the fundamental contradiction in colonized societies and that colonialism is the “objective basis for the colonized country’s social structure.” Consequently, colonialism does not end with the end of military occupation or by gaining political independence, but with the total severance of this relation in a process of violent and revolutionary transition to socialism.

Amel’s inquiry along these lines yielded the concept of the colonial mode of production (CMOP), which he defined as “the form of capitalism structurally dependent on imperialism in its historical formation and contemporary development.” Marx’s distilled observations on colonialism furnished Amel with a sound theoretical basis to develop his model. In each step, Amel drew on Marx’s relevant commentary and identified first principles.

For instance, Amel relied on Marx’s reference to the “fusion” of modes of production and on Vladimir Lenin’s description of different modes coexisting in a single social space to support the idea of a colonial mode of production as a fusion of capitalist and precapitalist modes of production under the rubric of colonial conquest, and thereby distinct from either. This methodology retained Marxian logic and concepts like class formation, class struggle, capitalization, and class consciousness, but tried to elucidate their specific historical form in a colonial setting.

Colonialism and Class Struggle

Amel’s theorization led him to conclude that the process of class formation under a CMOP is characterized by a lack of class differentiation. Thanks to the structural inhibition of large-scale industry, the colonial bourgeoisie is necessarily a mercantile rather than an industrial bourgeoisie.The instability of rule in colonized countries is a result of the stability of the colonial social structure, not a reflection of orientalist proclivities for military rule or dictatorship.

Small-scale manufacturers in this context are a faction of the petty bourgeoisie, whose members occasionally engage in finance on a similar scale. This apparent diversity in economic activity is not due to some “excess energy” of this social class, but rather stems from the limitations upon concentrating production.

These constrained economic relations of production had political implications. Tied in its own class existence to its colonialist or capitalist counterpart, the colonial bourgeoise is incapable of carrying out a political revolution and establishing a liberal democracy in its European bourgeois form. The instability of rule in colonized countries is therefore a result of the stability of the colonial social structure, not a reflection of orientalist proclivities for military rule or dictatorship.

An extreme case of the lack of class differentiation is the fusion of the two social factions, urban merchants tied to foreign trade and landowners who direct their agricultural production toward colonial trade. This fusion negates the existence of either a national bourgeoisie, usually associated with industrialists, or a feudal class, usually associated with a colonial alliance.

Similarly, the process of proletarianization of the colony’s toiling masses — prominently peasants — is never complete at the economic or social level. Given the centrality of land in colonial agricultural production, which is concentrated around cash crops and extractive labor, peasants are the overexploited class under the CMOP.

When peasants migrate to urban centers seeking employment relief, they rarely, according to Amel, experience a radical transformation in terms of class existence and consciousness. Although embedded in a new class position that involves small-scale consumer industry, they preserve their previous class connections and retain much of their past class consciousness, transitioning between the two positions with ease.

Amel described the pattern in Lebanon:


The worker returns to his village at every opportunity, for holidays, vacations, and funerals. In this way, his village becomes his centre of gravity and exerts a pull over him stronger than that of the city. Ultimately, he longs for the land he left and demands to be buried there, home to his ancestors.

Amel warned that the lack of class differentiation does not mean that class struggle is absent in the colonial setting, as nationalist forces would have it. Nor does it mean the national question is insignificant, as some anti-imperialist or internationalist Marxists would have it. Given the indirect relation of exploitation under a CMOP that is governed by the colonial relation, class struggle is directed against a structure of dependency and domination, not another social class. This means that socialist revolution in colonized societies is synonymous with national liberation:


The struggle for national liberation is the sole historical form that distinguishes class struggle in the colonial formation. Whoever misses this essential point in the movement of our modern history and attempts to substitute class struggle with “nationalist struggle” or reduces the national struggle to a purely economic struggle loses the ability to understand our historical reality and thus also to control its transformation.

Amel prevented his philosophy from lapsing into determinism or economism by placing his structural analysis in a historical perspective as he theorized class struggle.

He emphasized the nature of class consciousness as a historical force of class becoming and resistance. He argued that before World War II, sectoral and economic forms of struggle by different factions of the toiling masses independent of each other precluded their very formation as a class. The period after 1945 saw these struggles converging in a broader political struggle for liberation from colonialism.

At that moment, the colonial relation became mutually constitutive of colonizing and colonized societies. It is necessary to sever this relation in order to transcend, and thereby destroy, both capitalist and colonial social structures.The global ascendance of neoliberalism in the 1970s precipitated a conservative, culturalist turn across the Arab region.

The global ascendance of neoliberalism in the 1970s precipitated a conservative, culturalist turn across the Arab region. Amel’s intellectual labor focused on pertinent questions of culture and the growing role of religion, namely Islam, in politics.

In contrast with other Arab leftists or secularists such as Sadiq Jalal al-Azm and Adonis, Amel’s thought did not lapse into orientalist tropes. He countered the ideology of defeat that ascribed the Arab loss in the 1967 war with Israel to cultural rather than military factors and lambasted the Arab bourgeoisie for portraying their own political failings as universal failings of Arab civilization and cultural heritage.

For Amel, turath, or cultural heritage, was itself a problem of the interpretation of the past by a colonial present rather than a precolonial problem that persisted in the contemporary world. At the same time, Amel avoided absolutist perspectives toward Islam of the kind to be found in secular or communist polemics that saw Islam as being inherently reactionary.
Islam and Revolutionary Thought

By the 1980s, the culturalist turn led to the emergence of what Amel called “everyday” thought. He warned against this new discourse that depoliticized social struggle by ignoring the role of geopolitics, structural forces of history, and class interests as motivations in sectarian or regional conflicts.

Amel developed critiques of different manifestations of this new trend, some of which he categorized as nihilist, obscurantist, or Islamized bourgeois currents. His denunciation of the latter current did not lead him to dismiss Islam as an ontologically regressive force at all stages of history. Unlike many scholars of Islamic intellectual history who saw the primary contradiction in Islam — or any other religion — as being that between faith and atheism, or between religious and rational thought, Amel identified a dividing line between those who defer to power and those who defy it.

The traditional classification of precapitalist Islamic scholars is one example. Conventional scholarship associated progressive thought with reason, exemplified in the figure of Ibn Rushd (Averroes), while ascribing conservatism to philosophies that elevated religion or belief over reason, exemplified in the figure of al-Ghazali. Amel argued that such a classification was simplistic and rested on the assumption that reason was a monolith.The different manifestations of Islam demonstrate, according to Amel, that Islam was never a singular force.

He pointed out that one could find a single scholar, such as Ibn Khaldun, invoking scientific reasoning as well as Salafi legal reasoning. These contradictory forms of reason remained within a religious logic or paradigm, which meant that they were never fully antithetical to each other. As a result, subversive thought, as expressed in illuminationist Sufi Islam, took the form of rejecting reason in toto.

For Amel, the primary contradiction was not between religion and earthly life, but between two concepts of religion: spiritual (Sufi) and temporal (juridical). Spiritual Islam, however, was not atemporal in a metaphysical sense. Islam, by force of historical becoming, was temporal and by extension political. Sufism, or certain strands of it, negates the institutionalization of Islam, which turned it into an authoritarian apparatus.

The different manifestations of Islam demonstrate, according to Amel, that Islam was never a singular force. It was Islam’s material rather than otherworldly existence that determined its reactionary or revolutionary character, even if, in Amel’s estimation, it had mostly served the interests of the ruling classes.

He identified notable exceptions to this rule in precapitalist Islamic societies that included the revolt against the third “Rightly Guided” Caliph, ‘Uthman Ibn Affan, in the period following the death of Muhammed, as well as a certain phase of Qarmatian rule in Arabia. Modern examples that Amel cited of Islam forming part of a revolutionary struggle in the age of national liberation included the Algerian War of Independence and armed resistance against Israel.
Revolution, Liberation, and the Palestinian Cause

Amel’s treatment of the Algerian revolution and resistance to Israel shed light on the particularities of class struggle under colonialism, which included the role of noneconomic factors such as racism and cultural identity. In the case of Algeria, Amel noted that the overwhelming majority of European settlers, whether they were artisans, farmers, bourgeois, or workers, opposed the revolution for national liberation.

The politicized working class was no exception. The working-class Algiers district of Bab el-Oued had been nicknamed the “red neighbourhood” for serving as a popular base of the Algerian Communist Party. Yet it became “a haven of European racism” and “centre of fascist European terrorism against the revolution” after the outbreak of the war of independence.

The same anti-colonial logic applies to theorizing class struggle in Palestine. So-called labor Zionism was a racialized ideology complicit in the oppression of Palestinian workers and peasants and as such cannot be characterized as socialist. By contrast, Amel saw the Palestinian struggle for liberation from colonialism as a force of revolutionary class struggle.

The failure of Arab communist parties to recognize this distinction and their willingness to blindly follow Moscow’s directive led the leadership of these parties to support the 1948 partition of Palestine. They rationalized this decision by a simplistic depiction of the conflict as a struggle between workers, both Arab and Jew, and a mercantile and landed bourgeoise, both Arab and Jew. It caused the communist movement to suffer a loss of popular support in Arab societies.Amel saw the Palestinian struggle for liberation from colonialism as a force of revolutionary class struggle.

In the case of Lebanon, the Communist Party’s revision of its pro-partition stance in the late 1960s and its alliance with the Palestinian liberation movement was a radicalizing force that had an impact on class struggle in Lebanon itself. Following the Israeli invasion of 1982, Amel ridiculed left-wing pundits who minimized the significance of successful armed resistance against Israeli occupation in the name of focusing on strengthening the central Lebanese state at a time of right-wing Phalangist hegemony.

Israel’s own attitude toward Lebanese and Palestinian political factions was and remains determined in the last instance by the decision of those movements to adopt or reject national liberation strategies, including armed resistance, regardless of whether their ideology is secular or religious. For Amel, the significance of armed resistance to Israel and its allies derives from the objective centrality of the colonial relation in determining the character of class struggle in a colonial context.

Unlike many leftists of his time, Amel was careful to assess Islamist resistance forces in relation to this structural contradiction without ignoring the role of political (and therefore subjective) consciousness in swaying this struggle toward a socialist or progressive horizon. In 1984, when sectarian Islamist forces rebelled against pro-Israeli sectarian Christian forces in Beirut, Amel identified the objective revolutionary significance of the military victory, while stressing that it was uncertain whether this victory would point toward the end of sectarianism or its reproduction:

Either they go against the reactionary sectarian form of their ideological consciousness, i.e. in the direction of radically changing the sectarian political system of rule by the dominant bourgeoisie, or they align with this same reactionary sectarian consciousness — (but against the class interests of their toiling factions) — and lean towards sectarian reform of this system. In the latter case, the system would catch its breath in a movement that would renew its crisis, and subsequently the conditions for civil war.

There is no sectarian crisis in Palestine similar to that of Lebanon. But the leading armed resistance forces today in Palestine and across the region are Islamist in their ideology. Analyzing this resistance without centering the colonial relation, as Amel showed elsewhere, is a methodological error that mischaracterizes its revolutionary role as the latest stage in the war of national liberation.

The twentieth-century global conjuncture of national liberation may have passed in relation to other regions of the world. The colonial social reality of Palestinians, however, remains unchanged, as does their right to resist by all means necessary. A Marxist analysis that ignores this primary contradiction is bound to repeat the mistake of early Arab communists, and, in this case, contrary to Marxist tradition, the second version will be as tragic as the first.

CONTRIBUTOR
Hicham Safieddine is an associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Banking on the State: The Financial Foundations of Lebanon (2019) and the editor of Arab Marxism and National Liberation: Selected Writings of Mahdi Amel (2021).

How the Big Lie is meant to finish off America

A group of pro-Trump protesters climb the walls of the Capitol Building after storming the West lawn on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
D. Earl StephensMay 17, 2024

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020, America began tallying the vote to see who would be her next president.

Would the poisonous orange tide that had gripped and gagged her the previous four years finally drag her down for good after 244 years of resiliently staying afloat and rising above it all through Civil Wars, World Wars, killer pandemics and her greatest sin?

Predictably, it was an agonizingly close election thanks to our antiquated, racist Electoral College, but at 11:26 a.m. ET on Saturday, November 7, the Associated Press called the race for Democracy’s darling, Joe Biden.

An audible sigh of relief echoed through the countryside, and freedom rang. Anybody who cares even a little about Lady Liberty knows where they were, and what they did when they heard that gust of joyous news.

After four long, gruesome years, enough Americans had answered the call, and used their votes to remove the ghastly, orange, woman-abusing racist from office.

We had beat the bastards fair and square at the ballot box and were finally safe and sound.

Biden would go on to rack up 306 electoral votes to Donald Trump’s 232 in perhaps the most important election in American history. The man who faithfully served his country for nearly 50 years as a Senator from Delaware, and Vice President to Barack Obama, had vanquished the dullard who had served only himself over the crooked course of his long, miserable lifetime.

The popular tally wasn’t even close, as Biden absolutely demolished The Big Liar by more than seven million votes, or the combined populations of Arkansas, Mississippi, and South Dakota.

It was a remarkable time. We were being strangled by a once-in-a-century pandemic, and a morally busted incumbent who saw good people at KKK rallies, allies in dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, and ingesting Lysol as a cure for what was literally killing us under his watch.

Joe Biden and a majority of America defeated all that. It was an election to be savored and celebrated safely and appropriately, because there were still people dying by the hundreds and thousands each day.


Mostly, it was time to finally move on to better days …

We know now that was never allowed to happen. We know now the worst was actually yet to come from the dumpster-diver, and the reprehensible, anti-American filth who faithfully followed him into the swirl of his toilet, where he always did his most odious, anti-American work.

First, Trump refused to concede to Biden, which wasn't a total surprise. After all, he had never been a gracious man for even a minute. He was a spoiled brat — just another rich kid born with a silver spoon stuck up his endless, fat ass.

He was a notorious liar and cheater, who actually superimposed his ugly, orange face onto magazine covers, and taped them to the walls of the locker rooms of the golf clubs he harrumphed around in to impress people.


And how absolutely pathetic is that?

With each passing day following the election blowout, his nuclear-powered temper tantrums got worse. He got sicker and meaner. He lashed out and threatened election workers. He shook down campaign officials to find him votes.

He began relentlessly telling the Big Lie — that the election had somehow been stolen from him, and him alone. Forget the fact that Republicans had fared surprisingly well all over the map in the Congressional races that year, actually cutting significantly into the Democrats’ advantage in the House.

No, according to Trump and the leeches who sucked onto him, his election had somehow been singularly stolen.


This, of course, was complete hogwash, but the fact that everybody in his miserable political party had done better than he had was impossible for a revolting narcissist to process.

He was THE Big Loser. Yuge.

Still he pressed ahead, and used the proximity of the most powerful office in the world to pucker up, blow hard, and trumpet the Big Lie that he won an election he provably lost by more than seven millions votes.

He grabbed party members by the scruff of their chicken necks, and warned them to get on board with his latest evil scheme. In his best whiny, thug voice he said he was going to ignore the results of the election, see, and they were going to help him, see ...


Slowly the Big Lie starting gaining noxious steam among the terrible cowards in his revolting party, who suddenly couldn’t wait to blow Trump’s sweaty horn.

Convincing his supporters was far easier. They were standing by, ready to take orders. After all, they had long ago lowered themselves into the sewer, and were eagerly awaiting his next command, as they batted away the flies that buzzed around their empty heads.

All that led to the attack on January 6, 2021.

The day Joe Biden would officially become president … they day the people who truly love America were to finally have their long-awaited celebration … is now remembered as one of the saddest episodes in American history thanks to the traitor, Donald Trump, and the disgusting, anti-American sore losers who support him.

Trump still has not been punished for his failed coup attempt, and the damage he imposed on this country. Because of that, his attack continues. Citizens who love this country and stood up for her, have been abandoned by our Justice Department, which has failed us spectacularly by its gross inability to perform its most important job: keeping us safe from our enemies.

Our corporate media has been a complete and utter joke, and somehow still can’t come to grips with the fact that their freedoms are hanging by thread. I truly can’t stand the people who are staffing these newsrooms, and have no idea how to handle the biggest story in American history.

I don’t recognize the business, where I spent three decades of my life. They are damned, incompetent fools, all of them …

On the morning after Trump held yet another one of his unhinged, overhyped, dog-whistle rallies, where he praised Hannibal Lecter, confused tennis player Jimmy Connors with Jimmy Carter, called myriad people “fat pigs,” induced the tongue-draggers in his audience to hurl vulgarities at Democrats, and once again told the Big Lie over, and over, and over again, The Washington Post went out with this headline for their lead story in Sunday’s editions:

False claims …

FALSE CLAIMS????????

My God …

After everything I typed above … after all the damage Trump and his revolting party have done to this country … our corporate media STILL can’t (or simply won’t) type the word “LIE.”

The Big Lie is the most grievous piece of dangerous propaganda ever unfurled across our country, and it simply must be strenuously called out for what it most certainly is in our independent press.

Its aim is to end us and our Democracy. If it is allowed to further fester, it will irreparably damage the mechanism by which American citizens have been choosing their leaders for centuries.

We will descend into mob rule and chaos.

Already, many Republicans are refusing to commit to honoring the results of November’s election if they don’t get the results they want. They are telling us that they will not accept losing ever again. They are telling us they will do everything they can to steal power that they have absolutely no right to.

They have stacked our Supreme Court in their favor with a deadly purpose and intention. They most certainly mean us harm.

We have never been here before in American history. One major party honors our elections, the other party loathes them.

The very least our corporate media can do right now is sound the alarms loudly and repeatedly, and call a damn lie, a damn lie when they hear one.

The fact is, the truth is the only thing left that will truly set us free.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.

Thom Hartmann: How 'billionaire oligarchs' are pushing America to 'fascism' and 'civil war'

Members of the Proud Boys in Cleveland in 2020 (Creative Commons)

Alex Henderson

ALTERNET

May 17, 2024


The U.S. Supreme Court suffered yet another controversy following a bombshell report published by the New York Times on May 16.

According to Times reporter Jodi Kantor, an upside-down flag was hanging outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's home in Alexandria, Virginia on January 17, 2021 — which was only 11 days after a mob of Donald Trump supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol Building. At the time, an inverted flag was a symbol of the "Stop the Steal" movement and MAGA efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Alito told the Times, "I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag. It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."

READ MORE:'Trump is threatening violence on Americans': Internet pounces on ex-president's new video

But Alito critics are taking no comfort in that statement.

Progressive journalist/author Thom Hartmann, in a sobering article published by The New Republic on May 17, views the presence of that flag outside Alito's home as a symptom of a large problem: "billionaire oligarchs" who are pushing the United States to "fascism" and "civil war."

Hartmann writes, "The headline in this week's Fortune reads: Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warns U.S. is 'on the brink' and estimates a more than 1 in 3 chance of civil war. Billionaires and civil war? A billionaire-funded Supreme Court justice flew the American flag upside down outside his house after January 6 in apparent support of Donald Trump's attempt to overthrow our government."

The journalist/author warns that billionaires are making generous contributions to the MAGA movement and Trump's 2024 presidential campaign during a time of "political violence."

READ MORE: 'Partisan insurrectionist': Calls mount for Alito's ouster after 'Stop the Steal' scandal

"For a second time in American history," Hartmann explains, "we're confronted with a near-complete takeover of about half of our nation by America's oligarchs. And with it has come not just the threat of political violence, but the reality, from the death of Heather Heyer to the George Floyd protests to January 6th and the assault on Paul Pelosi. All driven by oligarchs determined to pit us against each other so we won't recognize how they're robbing us blind."

According to Hartmann, history shows that "oligarchies" and political unrest often go hand in hand.

"Oligarchies are inherently unstable forms of government because they transfer resources and power from working people to the oligarchs," Hartmann warns. "Average people, seeing that they're constantly falling behind and can't do anything about it, first become cynical and disengage — and, when things get bad enough, they try to revolt. That 'revolution' can either lead to the oligarchy failing and the nation flipping back to democracy, as happened here in the 1860s and the 1930s. Or it can flip into full-blown strongman tyranny, as happened recently in Hungary, Turkey, and Russia, and nearly happened here on January 6."

Hartmann continues, "To the end of cementing their own oligarchy here, the billionaires who own the GOP are now actively promoting the same sort of revisionist history the Confederacy did, claiming that the Founders were all rich guys who hated taxes, wanted rich men to rule America, and wrote the Constitution to make that happen."


Thom Hartmann's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.