Friday, January 24, 2020

Ukraine and Kazakhstan: Comparing the Famines (Roundtable on Soviet Famines)
Contemporary European History, 2018


Niccolò Pianciola

My two cents on Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine" (New York: Penguin Random House, 2017), published in Contemporary European History 27/3 (2018): 440-44. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/ukraine-and-kazakhstan-comparing-the-famines/D1D006A6A53BFD27F68E43CB8D91C6AA

Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777318000309

Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Page Numbers: 440-44
Publication Date: 2018
Publication Name: Contemporary European History


 
Ukraine and Kazakhstan: Comparing the Famines
 441
(
1948
) is instead not applicable. This seems a non sequitur. Once one claims thatthere was an intent to destroy, even in part, an ethnic/national group, as Applebaumdoes, the UN definition becomes immediately pertinent. As a matter of fact, AndreaGraziosi, Norman Naimark, Nicolas Werth and others, apply the UN definitionto the famine precisely because it is more inclusive than the definition more oftenused in historical studies, which implies a planned total physical extermination of thetargeted group.For Applebaum – as for most, if not all, of the above-mentioned authors – the useof the concept of genocide in relation to Soviet Ukraine rests on an interpretativebreakthrough developed by Terry Martin in his
 2001
 book
 The Affirmative ActionEmpire 
. No serious scholar still claims that Moscow purposefully organised the famineto exterminate the Ukrainians, or any other group. The argument for genocide nowrelies on showing that the Kremlin, after the famine broke out, used it as a weaponto smash what was perceived as a ‘national’ resistance to Soviet policies – therebytargeting Ukrainian peasants because they were Ukrainians, not just recalcitrant grainproducers. This argument goes way beyond Martin’s position, but it is based on hisreasoning. Martin showed that by the summer of 
 1932
 Stalin interpreted peasantresistance to collectivisation and requisitions in Ukraine as a nationalist challenge tothe Soviet state. Given Ukraine’s critical geopolitical position, this had the potential,if combined with external aggression, of putting Moscow’s grip on the region in jeopardy, and of endangering the overall success of collectivisation. Peasant uprisingsand foot-dragging, combined with the irresoluteness of Ukrainian party cadres whowere seeing the catastrophic consequences of Stalin’s policies, led the dictator to taketwo parallel decisions during November and December 
 1932
. First, he hardenedgrain requisition measures during the worst harvest since the end of the neweconomic policy (NEP), thereby multiplying the number of victims of the alreadyongoing famine. Second, policies of Ukrainisation (both in the cultural sphere andin the promotion of cadres) were abruptly interrupted. Ukrainisation had been toosuccessful in the eyes of Stalin, as he felt it risked the creation of a national communistadministration not entirely subjugated to the Kremlin. However, Ukrainisation wasresumed once the crisis had subsided, albeit to a lesser degree and with much reducedpropaganda. Martin concluded that ‘the famine was not an intentional act of genocidespecifically targeting the Ukrainian nation. It is equally false, however, to assert thatnationality played no role whatsoever in the famine’ (
305
). This seems to me still themost balanced conclusion.Historiography based on national paradigmsfocusing on one single reifiedethnic group, tends to entail a diachronic tunnel vision. ‘National history’ andcurrent political predicaments are the narrative contexts framing the understandingof the event studied. This approach does not encourage comparisons and broader contextualisation.Thus,inabookaimingtohighlightthesingularityoftheUkrainiancase within the wider Soviet famine, the comparison with other regions in the SovietUnion is at best cursory. Kazakhstan is probably the most important case in point,since it was the area in the Soviet Union that suffered most from the famine relative topopulation.Between
1930
and
1933
onethirdoftheKazakhsdied,whiletherepublics
use, available athttps://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777318000309Downloaded fromhttps://www.cambridge.org/core. Fong Sum Wood Library-Lingnan University, on 10 Oct 2018 at 05:29:06, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of 
 
442
 Contemporary European History
population was effectively halved due to mass death and migration. The usual factor superficially invoked to explaithis tragedy is supposed violent sedentarisatioof the pastoral population (about three-quarters of the Kazakhs). As a matter of fact,the famine made the Kazakhs totally dependent on the state and caused (partial)sedentarisation, not the other way around. Initially, the food crisis in Kazakhstanwas provoked primarily by grain requisitions and by the disruptions provoked bycollectivisation. Then, a specific decision taken by the dictator and his collaboratorsdramatically increased the magnitude of the famine much earlier than in Ukraine.This decision, taken in July
 1930
, was linked to the collapse in the numbers of livestock brought about by collectivisation everywhere in the Soviet Union (peasantsoften chose to slaughter their animals rather than turn them over to the collectivefarms). At this moment animal power was still the backbone of Soviet agriculture.In the Soviet capitals meat was disappearing from distribution while the urbanpopulationwasincreasingspectacularly.Livestockmassdeathwasalreadyaneconomicproblem and could become a political one if the state failed to feed workers andsoldiers. A couple of days after the sixteenth Party Congress and before leavingMoscow for their holidays, the Politburo members decreed extraordinary meat andlivestock requisitions from the North Caucasus and, especially, from the largestpastoral population in the Soviet Union, the Kazakhs. The procurement plan for the
 1930
 – 
1
 economic year amounted to up to one-third of Kazakh livestock, to betaken from a population mostly dependent on it for subsistence. Kazakhstan meatduring the famine largely ended up in Moscow, Leningrad and Russian industrialcentres, while livestock was distributed among collective farms outside Kazakhstan.Procurements only stopped two years later, when there was almost no livestock leftin the republic (
10
 to
 15
 per cent of the pre-collectivisation level).The flow of information from Kazakhstan to Moscow about the famine and themass flight of the Kazakhs from their republic, consistent from at least
 1931
, didnot lead to policy revision. The Kazakhs were consciously sacrificed in order toprop up the faltering collectivised agriculture system and to feed workers and Soviet‘elite cities’. Kazakh resistance to collectivisation and procurements was violent andwidespread, but the Kremlin saw it as politically unthreatening. In September 
 1933
Stalin noted that what he called ‘Kazakh nationalism’ was much weaker and lessdangerous for the Soviet state than the Ukrainian equivalent. Ukraine’s geopoliticalpositionclosertohostilepowersworriedMoscowmuchmorethanKazakhstan’smoreprotected location. However, Kazakh society was subjected to policies not dissimilar from the ones implemented in Ukraine. Deportations of the Kazakh pastoral elitestarted in
 1928
, at the same time as a wave of arrests of the former members of the Kazakh Alash movement, while religious practices and figures of authority wererepressed.If one includes the decision to carry on with procurement policies that wereclearly leading to mass death, Lemkian definitions of genocide could be invoked.However, the inclusive legal definition of genocide that prevails in international lawshould probably be left to legal scholars – or politicians. For historians, lumpingcases as different as the Shoah and the Ukrainian and Kazakh famines in the same
use, available athttps://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777318000309Downloaded fromhttps://www.cambridge.org/core. Fong Sum Wood Library-Lingnan University, on 10 Oct 2018 at 05:29:06, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of 
 
Ukraine and Kazakhstan: Comparing the Famines
 443
categorydoesnotseemusefulforunderstandingeitherthemorthepeculiaritiesoftheperpetrating regimes. Driven by communist ideology and a readiness to kill millions,Stalin built a system of domination that was much more exploitative, oppressive andmurderous than other regimes that instead unquestionably targeted ethnic groupsfor extermination (think no further than Wilhelmine Germany and the Herero). Inother words, we do not need the label ‘genocide’ for maximum political and moraldenunciation.A final point about the sources. Applebaum does a wonderful job of using thethousands of pages of published primary sources from Russian and Ukrainian archivesand the transcripts of oral history projects. The result is a chilling collection of personal and family tragedies. She achieves what many studies on the Soviet faminesdo not: giving a face and a human dimension to both the victims and the low-levelperpetrators. Applebaum describes the extremely limited room for manoeuvre thatrural administrators had. Some of them tried to save abandoned or orphaned children,for instance. However, their lives were at the mercy of Stalin’s envoys during the crisisof late
 1932
. In Ukraine and Kuban thousands of lower ranking rural administratorslagging behind in the grain procurement campaign were arrested; hundreds wereexecuted. No matter how tempting it has been for historians to look for politicalagency at the lower levels of the party state during the famine, the archival recordshows that the dictator took all the most consequential decisions. In my own earlier works on the famine in Kazakhstan, I suggested that the district level administratorsmight have played a role in allocating the damage brought by grain and livestockrequisitions during collectivisation, by favouring Russians over Kazakhs. To thisday, this remains just a hypothesis. On the contrary, the more sources I read inarchives in Kazakhstan and Russia, the more a strong central agency in the massdeath of Kazakhs becomes apparent. The Politburo decision on meat and livestockprocurements for 
 19301
 was the crucial watershed that explains the magnitude of the famine in Kazakhstan. A less devastating famine was probably likely to happenanyway, as previous procurements and collectivisation had already caused localisedfood crises in the region. When these documents are combined with statistical dataabout the eventual destination of the animals and their meat, the overall rationale of Stalin’s policies in Kazakhstan from
 1930
 to
 1932
 emerges
Viking Sex Slaves, Behind The Founding Of Iceland

VIKING SEX SLAVES, BEHIND THE FOUNDING OF ICELAND


Iceland has become among millennials a famous tourist destination with its incredible landscape, friendly people, and cheap flights.
Although, if any found themselves in Reykjavik and took a trip to the National Museum of Iceland, they might find a display there with an interesting statistic. In fact, it’s a statistic with some dark implications for Iceland’s past.
After analyzing the DNA of modern Icelanders, scientists have been able to come up with a fairly accurate idea of what the founding population of the country looked like.
Around 80% of Icelandic men were Norse, hailing from Scandinavian countries like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Of course, as a colony founded by Norse settlers, that’s to be expected.
But based on the mitochondrial DNA, which is only passed down in the female line, we know that over half of the female settlers were Celtic, meaning they came from Ireland, Scotland, and the northwestern islands of Britain. So essentially, the founders of Iceland were a strange combination of Norse men and Celtic women.
At first glance, that fact is just an interesting bit of genealogy. But it quickly grows more disturbing the more you think about it. After all, the people who settled Iceland were also the same people who produced the infamous Vikings.
However, as most people know, the Vikings had a habit of carrying off slaves. Given the genetics of Iceland and the nature of the people who settled it, it’s possible that a large percentage of the first women in Iceland were taken there as slaves.
Slavery played a much larger part in Norse society than most people are aware of. Slaves, or “thralls” as they were called, were present in most Norse communities, with many being taken in Viking raids across Europe. While the warriors spent most of their time fighting or drinking, it was up to slaves to do a great deal of the work around the village.
In fact, it was a serious insult to a Viking to say that he had to milk his own cows. That was considered work for slaves and women, and with so many around, no free-born Norseman needed to milk any cows.
The lives of slaves were often quite brutal. Slaves were regularly subjected to violence, both as punishment and for religious reasons. When their masters died, slaves were often murdered so that they could serve them in death as they had in life.

A depiction of Viking raiders.
Above all, Vikings prized young female slaves. These girls taken in raids could expect to be raped regularly while being pressed into a life of domestic servitude. The desire for women might even explain a lot about why Vikings began to raid Britain in the 9th century.
Some scholars have suggested that early Norse society was polygamous, and powerful chiefs married multiple wives, leaving none for other men.
According to this theory, Vikings first took to the seas to find women because there were few available in Scandinavia.
This theory could also explain why Vikings leaving to settle Iceland would have looked to Britain as a source of women.
There simply weren’t enough available women in Scandinavia to help settle the island. If this is the case, then the settling of Iceland involved Norse raiders making stops in Britain on the way, killing the men, and carrying off the women.
Once on the island, it’s harder to say what these women’s lives might have been like. Some historians have suggested that though they started out as slaves, the Norsemen in Iceland eventually took the women as wives. If so, then they may have treated them with a basic level of respect. Norse culture placed a heavy emphasis on maintaining a happy household with a spouse.
Others have suggested that these women may have willingly gone to Iceland with Norsemen who settled in their communities. But the Vikings were never shy about taking slaves, and there certainly were slaves in Iceland.
The most likely explanation is that there were Celts who volunteered to go to Iceland as well as Celtic women who were taken there as slaves. That means that, on some level, sexual slavery played a significant role in the settlement of Iceland.
It Could Be Your Daughter: White Slaves to Baby Prostitutes

Abstract
Human trafficking is one of the most pressing issues of our time, impacting diverse communities in multifaceted ways in every country across the globe. Despite this level of priority and complexity, the popular discourse around human trafficking remains focused on a single narrative. This focus has narrowed our understanding of the issue and stifled our ability to combat it. This paper seeks to analyze the rhetoric on human trafficking in the United States as both cultural myth and propaganda. Through the review of both documentary and fictional media representations of the human trafficking narrative, we create a composite “perfect victim” over three distinct eras. As with any persistent cultural myth, the details of this narrative shift with evolving cultural fears while the ultimate moral of the story remains the same. By unpacking these details, we can better understand the cultural fears of each era and explore why each story captivated the media. Also explored are the advocacy groups which promulgate these narratives,and with them their legislative agendas, which have consistently done more to hinder female migration and further criminalize “sexual immorality” than end exploitation.

BEYOND TRAFFICKING AND SLAVERY
'White slavery': the origins of the anti-trafficking movement
A nineteenth century drive to protect the morality of white women created the concept of ‘human trafficking’, and its legacies live on in border control systems and slavery-based campaigning.
Laura Lammasniemi







Lammasniemi_460.jpg
In the Grip of a White Slave Trader by the National Vigilance Association, 1911. Provided by author.
Anti-white slavery associations, such as International Bureau for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, stemmed from anti-white slavery organisations in England and were also active in continental Europe. Their campaigns resulted in the Agreement for the Suppression of the ‘White Slave Traffic’ 1904 (the 1904 Agreement) and later, the International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic 1910.

Are The Famous Five Heroes ?. Elu Valentine Elbow Park School 
October 7, 2009. The Persons Case. The Famous Five refers to five 
women from Alberta: Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, 
Henrietta Muir Edwards and Irene Parley.
EMILY MURPHY WROTE AN ANTI DRUG ANTI WHITE SLAVE TRADE
BOOK THE BLACK CANDLE, NOTE THE CHINESE OPIUM PIPE
A COMMON TROPE TO COVER DRUG USE IN THOSE DAYS

Image result for the black candle emily murphy

  Anti-Chinese Policies
Probably no immigrant group has been as heavily managed as the Chinese. Sought out as cheap contract labour, they were recruited to meet finite economic and infrastructural goals. While some Chinese arrivals saw themselves as  — temporary immigrants who would return to their country of origin once they’d amassed some money  many more were in for the long haul. This was not part of Ottawa’s plan and so steps were taken to limit immigration and thus encourage return migration.
The  was the main instrument used by Ottawa to regulate Chinese arrivals down to 1923. Some 81,000 people found the wherewithal to pay this fee before it was abolished, even though it rose from $50 in 1885 to $500 in 1903. In this respect, the Head Tax initiative was a failed attempt to stop Chinese immigration. It was, however, a money-maker: It is reckoned that the Head Tax pulled in $22 million for Ottawa, which equates to more than $300 million in 2015 dollars. Not everyone in the Euro-Canadian community supported the Head Tax, though for reasons that we might now consider discomfiting. A group of Euro-Canadian women argued that reducing the Head Tax would attract more immigrants, some of whom could be employed as houseboys and cooks. The Lib-Lab Member of the BC legislature, Ralph Smith, supported this idea and one local newspaper chided him that he was worried that “his gallant wife should have to roast her comely face over the kitchen fire every day because the Chinese Head Tax makes it impossible for him to get a Chinese cook.”[7] The rate of Chinese immigration varied because of the tax and global events and, like much human movement during World War I, numbers fell. After the war, immigration resumed. By this time, however, there was growing fear among the White community of the opium trade and allegations that young Euro-Canadian women were being lured into the sex trade, what was called at the time “White slavery.” Emily Murphy  a leading figure in first wave feminism, the suffrage movement, and counted among the Famous Five  wrote a series of highly popular pieces on the drug trade and its connections with Chinatown. The Black Candle (as it appeared in book form) was one of several diatribes against the Chinese community, one that catalyzed a revision of immigration legislation.
The 1923 Chinese Immigration Act terminated legal Chinese immigration and remained on the books until 1947. This complete ban on arrivals from a specified country was uniquely and exclusively applied to the Chinese. Prejudice might stand in the way of other groups but no others were treated this way in law. What immigration occurred between 1923-1947 was illegal and much of it involved reuniting spouses and family members. The 1923 Act, introduced on the 1st of July and thus coinciding with Dominion Day, was commemorated in the Chinese community as Humiliation Day in the years that followed. (For more on this topic, see Section 5.12.)
Limits on immigration is one thing; limits on immigrants is another. Chinese populations were contained (sometimes by choice but usually by civic regulations) to small urban areas  Chinatowns. They were forbidden, in Vancouver, from purchasing homes and opening stores outside of a few blocks of the city core. Like members of some other ethnic/racial/visible groups, they were also forbidden for years from attending post-secondary institutions and specifically from pursuing degrees through the University of British Columbia School of Pharmacy, a restriction that echoed  associations between the Chinese community and drug trafficking. Many of these constraints would survive into the 1970s and early 1980s.

Related image
https://search-bcarchives.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/heathen-chinee-in-british-columbia-amor-de-cosmos-and-caricature-of-chinese-man
Related image
https://www.blackgate.com/2016/05/12/blogging-sax-rohmers-the-insidious-doctor-fu-manchu-part-seven-karamaneh/
 Image result for WHITE SLAVE TRADE emily murphy


Image result for WHITE SLAVE TRADE emily murphy


MURPHY ACCUSING ASIANS OF PROMOTING DRUG USE CONFUSING
OPIUM WITH POT, LEADING TO THIS
Image result for the black candle emily murphy

IMMIGRATION WAS THE CONTRADICTION 
MEN NEEDED WIVES BUT WOMEN WHO WENT WEST WERE THEN CONSIDERED WOMEN OF LOOSE MORALS LEADING THEM TO FALL VICTIM OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE




Trafficked White Slaves and Misleading Marriages 
in the Campaigns Against Sex Trafficking, 1885-1927
Federal History, 2019




Image result for WHITE SLAVE TRADE

Image result for WHITE SLAVE TRADE
Related image
Related image
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kitaj-44-fighting-the-traffic-in-young-girls-p04495

AND WHO POPULARIZED THE MYTH OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE NONE OTHER THAN THE SALVATION ARMY 

... Fighting the traffic in young girls; or, War on the white slave trade; a complete and detailed account of the shameless traffic in young girls ..

https://archive.org/details/fightingtraffici00bell/page/n5/mode/2up




MODERNIST ISLAMOPHOBIA BEGAN WITH THE MYTH OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE WHICH FINDS ECHO'S TODAY IN WAR ON CHRISTIANITY CONSPIRACY THEORIES 
Image result for WHITE SLAVE TRADE
IT WAS THE REASON THOMAS JEFFERSON WENT TO WAR WITH THE BARBARY PIRATES DESPITE HIS AVOWED PRINCIPLE OF NON INTERVENTION BY AMERICA OR ITS NAVY
https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Forgotten-Africas-European/dp/0340895098
In the summer of 1716, a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow and 52 of his comrades were captured at sea by the Barbary corsairs. Their captors - fanatical Islamic slave traders - had declared war on the whole of Christendom. Thousands of Europeans had been snatched from their homes and taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis and Sale in Morocco to be sold to the highest bidder. Pellow was bought by the tyrannical sultan of Morocco, who bragged that his white slaves enabled him to hold all of Europe to ransom. The sultan was constructing an imperial pleasure palace of enormous scale and grandeur, built entirely by Christian slave labour. Thomas Pellow was selected to be a personal slave of the sultan and he would witness first-hand the barbaric splendour of the imperial Moroccan court, as well as experience of daily terror. For 23 years, he would dream of his home, his family and freedom. He was one of the fortunate few who survived to tell his told. Drawn from unpublished letters and manuscripts written by slaves and by the padres and ambassadors sent to free them, this shocking and extraordinary story reveals a disturbing and forgotten chapter of our history.

Image result for WHITE SLAVE TRADE

MEANWHILE THE IMAGE OF WHITE SLAVERY REMAINS IN THE POPULAR IMAGINATION AS HETEROSEXUAL MALE SEX FANTASY THE EXACT SAME IMAGERY THAT HAS EXCITED ANTI WHITE SLAVE TRADE ABOLITIONISTS AS WELL
Image result for WHITE SLAVE TRADE
Image result for WHITE SLAVE TRADE
THE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERIKA

Tennessee Star

Commentary: When Will Conservatives Understand That It’s Not a Contest of Ideas?   

ROFLMAO SO WILL YOU READ ON THIS IS AN EXCERPT

January 24, 2020


This is how the game works. It’s not a contest of ideas, it’s a competition for jobs. As leftists take over human resources offices, reduce the number of conservatives on the faculty to less than 3 percent, make appointments to political office contingent upon compliance with political correctness, and exile troublemakers and nonconformists such as James Woods and Charles Murray, the game as conservatives used to understand it is over. Conservatives lost the war of positions long ago. Woods is a great actor, but so what? Murray is one of the great social scientists of our time, but no academic department would have him.
For the Left, outcomes trump procedure just as politics eclipses intelligence, conscientiousness, and competence. One thing I saw in more than 30 years in academia was that while leftists on the faculty were not always the brightest bulbs in the room, they often managed to populate university and department committees where policies were created and passed. While we were teaching and researching; they were reshaping the institution. We were getting on with our work, pushing our individual careers, getting our names in print, and believing we were advancing the field and the school. They were taking over. Put it this way: We were clueless, they were canny.
Donald Trump understands this. That’s one reason the Left despises him. He typically doesn’t bother to debate ideas and ideals, but this is not anti-intellectualism, as the liberal says. It is, instead, his awareness that politics is now, first and foremost, a battle of persons, not ideologies or tax rates or trade. The Kavanaugh episode proves the point, for this battle was all about the individual (which is one reason why Supreme Court appointments are so heated).
In recent times, conservatives have tended to focus on ideas. If, after President Trump leaves office, they don’t start thinking more about personnel, if they don’t consider the population of institutions as much as they do the structure of institutions, if they choose a leader who thinks technocratically instead of ad hominem-ly, we will indeed end up with the permanent Democratic majority liberal intellectuals have predicted for the last 20 years.
– – –
Mark Bauerlein is a senior editor at First Things and professor of English at Emory University, where he has taught since earning his Ph.D. in English at UCLA in 1989. For two years (2003-2005) he served as director of the Office of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. His books include Literary Criticism: An AutopsyThe Pragmatic Mind: Explorations in the Psychology of Belief, and The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. His essays have appeared in PMLA, Partisan Review, Wilson Quarterly, Commentary, and New Criterion, and his commentaries and reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The Guardian, Chronicle of Higher Education, and other national periodicals.
Photo “Marco Rubio and Sean Hannity” by Michael Vadon. CC BY-SA 2.0.

WHY I AM A COMMUNIST WILLIAM MORRIS 1894

The Why I Ams: 

Why I am a communist - William Morris; 

Why I am an expropriationist - L.S. Bevington.


The why I ams: Why I am a communist - William Morris; why I am an expropriationi
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/vwwp/view?docId=VAB7195&doc.view=print
Dan Chatterton
Communist atheist pamphleteer, bill poster, slum dweller, early birth control advocate, fierce public ranter; Dan Chatterton is one of the most fascinating and undeservably obscure characters of the London radical scene in the second half of the 19th century.
From History Workshop Journal no. 25, Spring 1988, this article is a fine piece of historical research and the most detailed known writing about Chatterton. A collection of 'Old Chat's' selected works by some enterprising publisher is long overdue.
[Andrew Whitehead's website contains a page with further information on Dan Chatterton; http://www.andrewwhitehead.net/dan-chatterton.html ]
++++++++++++++

Dan Chatterton and his
'Atheistic Communistic Scorcher'
by Andrew Whitehead
The history of the left has conventionally been written as the story of movements and organisations. Those who left no institutional legacy, who were not pioneers of party or union, whose pamphlets have not been collected by libraries, have been more-or-less neglected. There's an injustice in this - not so much a personal injustice, as an injustice to the generations that follow who are deprived of a proper sense of the complexity of the past. Those mavericks who kept aloof from organised politics and struggled alone to preach and to persuade according to their own idiosyncratic values could have quite as much importance in transmitting ideas, in however vulgarised a form, to a popular audience as the closely-printed political journals and the in-house political rallies.
Most of these independent spirits cannot be redeemed from the condescension of history simply because little or no record survives of their lives and labours. It's only possible for Dan Chatterton to be the subject of an article because he attracted, by the exuberance and outlandishness of his propaganda, the attention of journalists and novelists, and more particularly because he took the trouble to deposit a of all (or perhaps nearly all) of his pamphlets and of every issue of his entirely self-produced paper, Chatterton's Commune, the Atheistic Communistic Scorcher, with the British Museum. His 'pamphlets elaborations' were preserved among the millions of books in `this one really social institute of the world', the individualist anarchist J. H. Mackay recalled, `bound, numbered, and catalogued just as carefully as the rarest manuscript of past centuries.'[1] And there still the curious can leaf through the fragile yellow tissue pages of the Scorcher, marvelling that such a precarious venture survived for almost eleven years, and can turn the pages of Chatterton's tracts with their irregular syntax and large, ill-matched type.
"We Have Never Allowed Such A Thing Here": Social Responses to Saskatchewan's Early Sex Trade, 1880 to 1920

Sarah York-Bertram

Despite what the title suggests, Saskatchewan had a booming sex trade in its early years. (THE SAME IS TRUE OF ALBERTA)

The area attracted hundreds of women sex workers before Saskatchewan had even become a province in 1905. They were drawn to the area by the demands of bachelors who dominated Canada's prairie west.

According to Saskatchewan's moral reformers, however, the sex trade was a hindrance to the province's Christian potential. They called for its abolishment and headed white slavery campaigns that characterized prostitution as a form of slavery. Their approach stood in contrast with law enforcement's stance on the trade. The police took a tolerant approach, allowing its operation as long as sex workers and their clients remained circumspect. Law enforcement's approach reflected their own propensity to use the services of sex workers as well as community attitudes toward the trade. Some communities were more welcoming of sex workers, while others demanded that police suppress the trade. Saskatchewan's newspapers also reflected differing attitudes toward the trade. While Regina's Leader purveyed a no tolerance view of the sex trade, Saskatoon's Phoenix and Star held more tolerant views. Saskatchewan's newspapers reveal that as the province's population increased and notions of moral reform gained popularity, police were challenged to take a less tolerant approach. However, reformers' efforts to end the sex trade dwindled with the onset of the First World War and attitudes toward sex workers shifted drastically as responsibility for venereal disease was placed largely on women who sold sex.

Using government and police records, moral reform and public health documents, and media sources such as newspapers, as well as intersectional analysis of gender, race, class, and ethnicity, this examination of Saskatchewan’s sex trade investigates the histories and social responses to the buying and selling of sex, revealing the complex and, at times, contradictory place of sex workers and the sex trade in Saskatchewan’s early history.


Middle East Studies Association annual conference, 2017
Christopher S Rose

On April 10, 1917, Dr. Alex Granville, director of the Alexandria Sanitary Service, filed sent a letter to the Ministry of the Interior regarding the fact that prostitutes were being treated in a government Lock Hospital in the Moharrem Bey district of Alexandria. Neighborhood residents, he reported, took exception to the treatment of prostitutes in their district and Dr. Granville demanded that the treatment facility be moved to somewhere less objectionable.

During the period of the British occupation, prostitution was legalized and well regulated by the Department of Public Health. Due to the influx of British troops during the war, the number of licensed prostitutes soared and special measures were taken to discover and treat both licensed and unlicensed prostitutes and, by late 1915, specific areas had been set off where licensed prostitutes could operate.

With almost no exceptions, these red light districts were all located in Egyptian quarters of major cities—Alexandria, Cairo, Port Said, Ismailia, etc--away from neighborhoods where European administrators of the government and military were likely to live and to encounter them on a regular basis. A secondary factor of this relocation was that it (theoretically) made it more difficult for foreign troops to solicit the services of prostitutes and, when venereal disease infection rates became high among troops, to cordon off the red light districts entirely for a period of time.

What makes the complaint registered by Dr. Granville somewhat unique is that Moharrem Bey was a native quarter, and that the residents requesting the relocation of the hospital were native Egyptians, not Europeans.

This paper aims to discuss the implications of relegating legalized brothels and licensed sex workers (and their medical treatment) into native Egyptian quarters during the war. While European attitudes toward these quarters—routinely described as filthy, miasmic, smelly, etc.—are well documented and help explain why they were seen as appropriate sites for sex work, what is less documented is how the inhabitants of these quarters felt about hosting said brothels and sex workers in the neighborhoods where they lived and worked. As we have seen above, they did object, and they used legal means to do so when and where possible. What were the complaints and methods of protest? And what were the tensions with colonial and military administrators, as well as the troops, that resulted from this imposition?

More Info: Middle East Studies Association conference 2017

History of Anarchism in Egypt until 1945

Caught between Internationalism, Transnationalism and Immigration: A Brief Account of the History of Anarchism in Egypt until 1945

Constantine Paonessa
Laura Galián
Laura Hernández

Anarchism first appeared in the Southern Mediterranean countries at the end of the nineteenth century with the immigration of European workers and political exiles. Despite the important role anarchists played in introducing radical and revolutionary political thought in Egypt, only historians Anthony Gorman and Ilham Khuri-Makdisi have paid attention to these narratives. The main goal of this article is twofold: on one hand, to analyse the reasons for the paucity of studies related to anarchism in Egypt, and, on the other hand, to delve into the history of anarchism in Egypt before and after the First World War to contribute to the writing of the history of postcolonial Egypt. This article explores two different anarchist experiences in Egypt. The first one is related to the Italian political exiles in Egypt who developed a strong anarchist movement in the country through the construction of trade unions, educational institutions and study groups. The second experience emerged in the interwar period due to the rise of Fascism and the disillusionment with parliamentary politics through the artistic and revolutionary project of al-Fann wa al-Hurriyya (Art and Liberty Group). Our goal is to demonstrate that before the arrival of Gammal Abdel Nasser, anarchism was a potent political culture and philosophy and an existing way of doing politics in the country. Tracing this hidden history is crucial to understanding the developments of non-party politics in the history of modern Egypt.

Anarchism in Egypt refers both to the historical Egyptian anarchist movement which emerged in the 1860s and lasted until ... Laura Galián; Paonessa, Costantino (2018). "Caught between InternationalismTransnationalism and Immigration: A Brief Account of the History of Anarchism in Egypt until 1945". Anarchist Studies.
by L Carminati - ‎2017 - ‎Cited by 4 - ‎Related articles
Anarchists were among those who frequently crossed borders and they were well aware of ... Fifteen were arrested right away, one in November 1898, and two more the ... “Introduction: Space and Scale in Transnational History,” International History ... “Anarchism in Egypt: A Brief Account of Its History until 1945,” Anarchist ...
'WHITE SLAVE TRADE'
Between Port Cities: Women Travelling Alone around the Mediterranean

Women’s Migration for Prostitution in the interwar Middle East and North Africa
Liat Kozma

This article examines the migration of women for prostitution around the Mediterranean Sea, particularly to and within the Middle East and North Africa, in the interwar period. Reading League of Nations’ reports on traffic in women and children along with other published and archival sources, it situates women’s mobility within three significant waves of
migration at the time: of south European men and women to Europe’s colonies in North Africa; of east European Jews westwards and south- wards; and of Syrians outside of Mt. Lebanon. It shows how women's migration can be explained and traced by following such temporary travelers as tourists, sailors, and soldiers and such more permanent migrants as settlers, refugees, and labor migrants. By using the category of migration, this article argues that “traffic in women” is insufficient as an analytical category in accounting for the geography of prostitution and prostitutes’ international mobility in the interwar Mediterranean.
In his 1930s play Awlad al-Fuqara (and 1942 film), Egyptian playwright Yusuf Wahbi presents Serena, an Italian prostitute. Her life story, narrated in broken Arabic, echoes traffic narratives of the time:Treacherous Carlo, after seven years he is laughing at me; he took me away from my mother. I was a young Mademoiselle . . . he married me, and I went with him to Alexandria. Then there was no work, and he told me I should be the one to bring money. I had no money, he told me to look for male strangers on the street.Then I came to Cairo, four years ago, and every day Carlo took 50 piaster from me, and I gave him because I love him, but today. . . another foreigner paid 50 pounds and told me that in seven days I must go with the other man to Marseille.
Serena is a fictional character, who tells a story of what came to be known in the interwar years as “traffic in women and children.” This phrase denoted the forced migration of unsuspecting women and girls for prostitution across national borders and elicited a moral panic about the exploitation of innocent young girls by unscrupulous traffickers. Serena’s narrative resembles others that appeared repeatedly in the press, rescue organizations’ writings, and League of Nations’ reports from the 1920s and1930s.