SOCIALIST UNITY

Bobby Sands died on 5 May 1981 after spending 66 days on hunger strike. In response to his death, Palestinian political prisoners smuggled out a letter paying tribute to Sands and to the struggle for which he gave his life. The letter arrived in Belfast a month later.

To the families of the martyrs oppressed by the British ruling class. To the families of Bobby Sands and his martyred comrades.

We, revolutionaries of the Palestinian people who are under the terrorist rule of Zionism, write you this letter from the desert prison of Nafha. We extend our salutes and solidarity with you in the confrontation against the oppressive terrorist rule enforced upon the Irish people by the British ruling elite.

We salute the heroic struggle of Bobby Sands and his comrades, for they have sacrificed the most valuable possession of any human being. They gave their lives for freedom.

From here in Nafha prison where savage snakes and desert sands penetrate our cells, from here under the yoke of Zionist occupation, we stand alongside you. From behind our cell bars, we support you, your people and your revolutionaries who have chosen to confront death.

Since the Zionist occupation, our people have been living under the worst conditions. Our militants who have chosen the road of liberty and chosen to defend our land, people and dignity, have been suffering for many years. In the prisons we are confronting Zionist oppression and their systematic application of torture. Sunlight does not enter our cell; basic necessities are not provided. Yet we confront the Zionist hangmen, the enemies of life.

Many of our militant comrades have been martyred under torture by the fascists allowing them to bleed to death. Others have been martyred because Israeli prison administrators do not provide needed medical care.

The noble and just hunger strike is not in vain. In our struggle against the occupation of our homeland, for freedom from the new Nazis, it stands as a clear symbol of the historical challenge against the terrorists. Our people in Palestine and in the Zionist prisons are struggling as your people are struggling against the British monopolies, and we will both continue until victory.

On behalf of the prisoners of Nafha, we support your struggle and cause of freedom against English domination, against Zionism and against fascism in the world.

By Noah Tucker 

“How does it feel to betray your own race?” These are the infamous last words of the mercenary colonel Miles Quartrich, snarled at the hero Jake Sully in the final minutes of James Cameron’s Avatar; set a century and a half into the future and 25 trillion miles from our planet. But Sully and the tiny minority of humans who change sides to fight alongside the Na’vi people in the 3D sci-fi epic were far from being the only ones who became traitors.

In the here and now of Earth in 2010, in the darkness of thousands of movie theatres, though purely passively and for the brief period of two and a half hours, more than one hundred and fifty million people (so far) have enthusiastically betrayed their ‘own race’, cheering on in their hearts- and often out loud- the defensive war of the imaginary blue-skinned Na’vi of the planet Pandora against the predatory corporate, militaristic, and environmentally destructive forces of homo sapiens.

And how did that feel? It felt very good; even, apparently, for the millions of people in the USA who have watched the movie. Under the headline ‘Avatar: the most expensive piece of anti-American propaganda ever made’, Dr Nile Gardiner wrote in the Daily Telegraph, a British Conservative newspaper:

When I saw the movie last night in a packed theatre, I was disturbed by the cheering from the audience towards the end when the humans – US soldiers fighting on behalf of an American corporation – were being wiped out by the Na’vi. Washington is one of the most liberal cities in America and you come to expect almost anything here – but still the roars of approval which greeted the on-screen killing of US military personnel were a shock to the system, especially at a time when the United States is engaged in a major war in Afghanistan.

That Dr Gardiner was shocked and disturbed by those roars of approval is quite understandable. He is an Englishman who works in Washington, for a very wealthy and influential right-wing US think tank, the Heritage Foundation. His mini-biography, published on the Heritage Foundation website, records:

Nile Gardiner is Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

His key areas of specialization include: the Anglo-American “special relationship,” the United Nations, post-war Iraq, and the role of Great Britain and Europe in the U.S.-led alliance against international terrorism and “rogue states,” including Iran . He was recently named one of the 50 most influential Britons in the United States by the London Daily Telegraph.

As a leading authority on transatlantic relations, Gardiner has advised the executive branch of the U.S. government on a range of key issues, from the role of international allies in post-war Iraq , to U.S.-British leadership in the War on Terrorism. His policy papers are read widely on Capitol Hill, where he is regularly sought after for advice on major foreign policy matters.

Prior to joining Heritage in 2002, Gardiner was Foreign Policy Researcher for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Working in her Private Office, Gardiner assisted Lady Thatcher with her latest book, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, published by HarperCollins. He served as an aide to Lady Thatcher from 2000 to 2002, and advised her on a number of international policy issues […]

He appears frequently as a foreign policy analyst and political commentator on national and international television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN , BBC, Sky News, and NPR . He has made over 500 television appearances, and given more than 400 radio interviews, discussing foreign policy issues.

In his Telegraph article, Dr Gardiner gives a summary of the plot and theme of Avatar:

The story is set in the year 2154, and centres on an attempt by a US conglomerate to exploit valuable mineral wealth on the planet of Pandora. In the background, earth is dying with limited resources, no doubt because a climate change deal could not be finalized at Copenhagen.

The American firm employs an army of marines to fight on its behalf against the Na’vi, who seem to be modeled loosely on native American tribes. Slogans such as “shock and awe” and “fighting terror with terror” are deployed to give the film a more contemporary feel. The US forces are portrayed in one-dimensional terms and are led by a sadistic general [sic], while the Na’vi are spiritual, nature-loving and peaceful tribesmen at one with the earth and creation. Humanity is ultimately redeemed by a paraplegic soldier (played by Sam Worthington) who goes native and sides with the locals against his own people.

In many respects, Avatar is a highly manipulative film […]

Avatar is more than just a 160 minute-long cinematic thrill-ride. It is an intensely political vehicle with a distinct agenda. In fact I would describe it as one of the most left-wing films in the history of modern American cinema, and perhaps the most commercially successful political movie of our time. While the vast majority of cinemagoers will simply see it as popcorn entertainment, Avatar is at its heart a cynical and deeply unpatriotic propaganda piece, aimed squarely against American global power and the projection of US economic and military might across the world.

Gardiner’s claim that the movie portrays the US forces in one-dimensional terms- which chimes in with assertions by other critics of Avatar that the film’s plot is simplistic- is wide of the mark. The North Americans in the movie are presented as being motivated by three distinct agendas, each personified by its own leader: the business executive Parker Selfridge, whose mission is to ensure the profits of the RDA mega- corporation by whatever means are expedient, including if possible a one-sided deal with the natives by which they would be relatively peacefully dispossessed of their territory and resources; the Marine colonel Miles Quartrich, whose aim is to ensure a brutal military solution to the conflict; and Dr Grace Augustine, the head of the team of scientific researchers who, while being employed by the corporation are motivated by the desire for knowledge about Pandora and its inhabitants, and in that learning process have developed some sympathies for the Na’vi people. 

Before he finds himself won over to a position of total identification with the Na’vi, the hero Jake Sully is conflicted by the demands on him to serve these differing agendas.

Contradictions of capitalism

Despite his relationship with the Murdoch-owned Fox News and Sky, Nile Gardiner’s description of Avatar as ‘deeply unpatriotic propaganda’, as with the other right-wing attacks on the movie, has not been propagated by the news outlets of the Murdoch media and entertainment empire. In fact, the Murdoch-owned Times commented approvingly on the political nature of Avatar in its review of the film:

With the use of such charged phrases as “shock and awe” and Sully’s curt summation of the situation (“When people are sitting on stuff you want, you make them your enemy”) Cameron adds a thought-provoking political dimension to the story.

The Murdoch media empire, despite the usual right-wing bias of its news outlets, has not leant the use of its powerful ideological cannons to the anti-Avatar campaign for a very sound commercial reason. 20th Century Fox, which is part of the Murdoch mega-corporation News Corp, is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from the film, and envisages that it will derive hundreds of millions more from the inevitable sequel. Further, the astounding success of Avatar is a commercial vindication of the advances in technology which were gained by means of the many millions of dollars invested in its production, opening up the prospect of a revival in the profits of the US-dominated global entertainment industry.

The film itself contains a scene with some relevance to this contradiction. Explaining the amoral basis of his mission on Pandora, the sleazy mining company executive Parker Selfridge remarks:

“Killing the indigenous looks bad, but there’s one thing shareholders hate more than bad press — and that’s a bad quarterly statement.”

To which one could add that a stunningly successful movie which condemns the killing of indigenous people, along with other aspects of imperialism and capitalism, helps spread the bad news about the system as a whole; but there’s one thing shareholders hate more than bad press — and that’s a bad quarterly statement.

As Forbes reported on 21st January, the huge takings from Avatar means that News Corp is predicted to issue an excellent quarterly statement in March 2010; its eventual revenue from the movie may be as high as 1.3 billion dollars.

Backward Christian soldiers

Nevertheless, as the audience numbers have risen inexorably, so has the strident political campaign against the message of the film. Robert W. Butler of McClatchy Newspapers observed in a syndicated article published on 21st January:

We all love a success story.

For a couple of days, anyway. Then we can’t wait to tear it apart.

That’s what has been happening to ‘Avatar’, James Cameron’s 3-D sci-fi epic. Evidently the film is making lots of moviegoers happy. It’s raking in the cash and awards - Golden Globes Sunday for best picture and director.

But it also has detractors nipping at its heels like overzealous Chihuahuas protecting their turf from the mailman.

…conservatives hate the film’s depiction of a ravenous multiplanetary corporation that invades Pandora, bringing with it a rapacious profit motive and an army of mercenaries to enforce its will against the blue-skinned natives, the Na’vi. It is argued that this depiction puts capitalism in a bad light.

Well, duh.

…’Avatar’ may be viewed as a not-so-subtle parody of real-life corporations like Haliburton and the private security firm Blackwater. Thanks to their behavior during the Iraq occupation, the names of these two outfits have become synonymous in many minds with ruthless imperialism, rampant cronyism, unrestrained greed and unprovoked brutality.

Enter the Roman Catholic Church. A Vatican newspaper and radio station have condemned ‘Avatar’ for becoming “bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature.”

They’re referring, of course, to the beliefs of the Na’vi, who regard everything in their world - animals, plants, rocks - as having spirits that must be honored. This sort of animism is hardly new, having preceded Christianity by 30,000 or so years, and it continues to be practiced today by some American Indians and by various ethnicities around the world.

This is the sort of ‘primitive’ thinking that more recent religions (those only a few millennia old) have sought to supplant.

But there is also another reason for the hostility of the Catholic hierarchy towards the movie: the Vatican cannot but be uncomfortable with Avatar’s allusions to the period of European colonisation of the Americas, during which the Roman Catholic church served an essential role, giving its blessing not merely to the robbery of the valuable mineral wealth of the continent- notably gold- but also to the process of enslaving and killing ‘the indigenous’.

One of the most intelligent political and military activists against the West Europeans during the early period of colonisation was Hatuey, a chieftan of the Taíno people who resisted the Spanish invaders in the Caribbean islands whose territory is now entitled Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. Hatuey’s analysis of the religion of the colonisers was incisive. During a speech to incite a group of the Taíno people to join his struggle, Hatuey showed them a basket of gold and jewels, and declaimed:

Here is the God the Spaniards worship. For these they fight and kill; for these they persecute us and that is why we have to throw them into the sea… They tell us, these tyrants, that they adore a God of peace and equality, and yet they usurp our land and make us their slaves. They speak to us of an immortal soul and of their eternal rewards and punishments, and yet they rob our belongings, seduce our women, violate our daughters. Incapable of matching us in valor, these cowards cover themselves with iron that our weapons cannot break…

Following a bitter guerilla war, Hatuey was eventually captured; the European forces tied him to a stake and built a fire. According to one observer, Bartolomé de las Casas, a priest asked Hatuey if he would accept Jesus and go to heaven. Bartolomé de las Casas recorded:

[Hatuey], thinking a little, asked the religious man if Christians went to heaven. The religious man answered yes… The chief then said without further thought that he did not want to go there but to hell so as not to be where they were and where he would not see such cruel people. This is the name and honor that God and our faith have earned.

The Christian soldiers burned Hatuey alive. Shocked and disturbed by this and many other distressing experiences, Bartolomé de las Casas, who was himself an upwardly mobile priest in the Catholic colonial establishment, went on to become an outspoken opponent of the brutal policies of the Europeans in the Americas, allying himself with the native people and eventually also with the black slaves who were captured from Africa and shipped to the ‘New World’ to be worked to death in the mines and plantations. Unlike the Jake Sully figure in Avatar, Bartolomé de las Casas did not go so far as to take part in an armed rebellion against the colonial masters. Instead, after being promoted to the rank of Bishop, he returned to Spain and worked to rouse public opinion against the vile methods used by the empire.

Despite that humanitarian effort, the vast majority of the indigenous population of the Caribbean islands were wiped out under European occupation, mainly from a combination of famine as they were dispossessed of their food sources by the colonisers, overwork in conditions of forced labour, and their vulnerability to smallpox and other foreign diseases which the colonists brought with them.

Today, Hatuey is recognised as a historical national hero in Cuba, and the country’s most popular beer bears his name and image.

‘Left’ critique

However, according to Robert W. Butler and many other sources, the shrill chorus against the political message of Avatar includes not only the right-wing neocons and Catholic religious zealots, but also leftists. Butler remarked:

‘Avatar’ also is taking heat from the left, with some objecting to one of the film’s essential narratives: A human comes to live among the Na’vi, is initiated into their society and at a crucial moment leads the tribe in an uprising against its oppressors.

To these critics this is just a variation on the old “white man’s burden” thinking, in which the poor benighted savages - people of color, of course - require the leadership of a white male to carry their cause. The assumption is that they certainly couldn’t do it without a “racially superior” individual in charge.

The originator of this mode of objection to the movie is a cultural commentator called Annalee Newitz, who describes herself as a Marxist. Newitz posted an article entitled ‘When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”?’ on her sci-fi website. Ms Newitz alleged:

Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy […]

Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color - their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the “alien” cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become “race traitors,” and fight against their old comrades. But then they go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed. This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It’s not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it’s not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It’s a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside.

Think of it this way. Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege. Jake never really knows what it’s like to be a Na’vi because he always has the option to switch back into human mode.

This is not an entirely accurate rendition of the plot of Avatar. In the film, Jake Sully is indeed eventually accorded- despite much initial skepticism- a leadership role among the natives; by taking that path he clearly loses the option of re-joining the ‘white’ side, and by the end of the movie his identification with the Na’vi is so complete that he emphatically closes off the possibility of returning to ‘human mode’, by deciding to allow his lover Neytiri to kill his physical human body.

Annalee Newitz’s own identification with the ‘people of color’ and, presumably, the exploited population of the Third World, is apparently so complete that she regards it as objectionable that it should be metaphorically represented that one of their struggles against white and colonial domination should be led by a privileged white ‘traitor’ from the USA; and furthermore she feels she must assume an intellectual leading role on behalf of the non-whites- by pointing out to them and their sympathisers that this is the dreadful subtext of Avatar.

No doubt she believes that it is her duty to do this because, as she asserts in her article:

…the fundamental experience of being an oppressed racial group […] is that you are oppressed, and nobody will let you be a leader of anything.

Ms Newitz herself is a privileged white person based in the USA. There is more than a hint of hypocrisy in her position.

Kill more natives

But, rather oddly for a supposedly ‘left’ critique, the main proponents who have enthusiasically espoused it can hardly be described as leftists. They include John Podhoretz, who wrote in the course of a splenetic article against Avatar in the Weekly Standard:

The only salvation for Pandora lies with our man Jake Sully turning into the leader of the blue-skinned people, rallying them to the cause of protecting their planet against the Evil Corporation. This, too, is unacceptably paternalistic, in my view; after all, why should giant blue people have to learn these things from a shrimpy white guy who doesn’t even have a tail or built-in Skype?

John Podhoretz was previously a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, and after that became a passionate advocate for the US invasion of Iraq. When that dream was realised, he criticised the tactics of the invasion from the point of view that the US forces, even under the leadership of George W. Bush, had failed to kill sufficient numbers of Iraqis, particularly those of the Sunni faith; and he extended that criticism to Israel, which in his opinion has not killed enough Arabs. In an article in the New York Post, Mr Podhoretz said:

What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn’t kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn’t the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?

If you can’t imagine George W. Bush issuing such an order, is there any American leader you could imagine doing so?

And if America can’t do it, can Israel? Could Israel - even hardy, strong, universally conscripted Israel - possibly stomach the bloodshed that would accompany the total destruction of Hezbollah?

John Podhoretz is a key intellectual figure of the US neoconservative movement, hence his role as regular writer for the Weekly Standard, which is an influential magazine of the radical imperialist right wing in the United States.

The other main US exponent of the supposedly ‘left’ objection to Avatar is David Brooks, who remarked in a piece for the (non-Murdoch owned) New York Times:

The plotline [of Avatar] gives global audiences a chance to see American troops get killed. It offers useful hooks on which McDonald’s and other corporations can hang their tie-in campaigns.

Still, would it be totally annoying to point out that the whole White Messiah fable, especially as Cameron applies it, is kind of offensive?

It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

Like Podhoretz, Mr Brooks is a prominent right-winger and a frequent contributor to the Weekly Standard magazine. He was was a keen supporter of the US invasion of Iraq, and following that he went on to lend his weight to the Republican candidate John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Recognising that the current US president is making no major shifts in the USA’s imperial policy, and is even implementing a big ’surge’ in US troop numbers in Afghanistan, David Brooks has since shifted his allegiance to Barack Obama.

Hell is a place on Earth

In Britain, the most strident opponent of the political message of Avatar is Will Heaven, whose three comment articles attacking the film on the basis that it is ‘racist’ have been published in the Daily Telegraph; a further ‘news’ article in that Conservative newspaper also promoted the claim that the sci-fi epic is imbued with a racist theme.

In his 18th January article, entitled ‘Two Golden Globes won’t change Avatar’s patronising and racist subtext ‘, Will Heaven expressed his exasperation at the success of the movie in almost hysterical terms:

Why has the world been so willingly taken in by James Cameron’s 250 million dollar con-trick?

…Cameron’s cringing acceptance speech highlighted the film’s real purpose. “This is best job in the world it really is,” he said. “Avatar asks us to see that everything is connected, all human beings to each other and us to the Earth.”

It’s an environmental parable, in other words, and a clumsy one at that. I’ve written at length about Avatar’s patronising and racist subtext: how the blue-skinned Na’vi, a pastiche of this planet’s “ethnic” races, are utterly powerless without the help of a principled white man. And how I was disgusted that the Na’vi – like the Africans in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – demonstrate a “triumphant bestiality”. (Cameron is so obviously 2009’s worst lefty.)

What I have yet to hit home, however, is Avatar’s overall failure as a film. But you know what? The Vatican newspaper already has that spot on . It’s “bland”, a reviewer wrote in L’Osservatore Romano last week. “It has a great deal of enchanting, stunning technology, but few genuine or human emotions. Its significance is in its visual impact rather than in the story, and in its messages, despite the fact that they are hardly new.”

Finally, the review lays into Cameron who, “concentrating on the creation of the fantasy world of Pandora, chooses a bland approach. He tells the story without any profound exploration.”

L’Osservatore Romano doesn’t speak for the Pope, but according to Father Federico Lombardi, the pontiff is worried by the transformation of environmentalism into “a new divinity.” He’s right to be worried – but you can bet Cameron, environmentalism’s very own prophet, won’t be listening.

Mr Heaven, an enthusiastic supporter of the US / UK troop surge in Afghanistan, has obvious loyalties to the Vatican; this is also the case with David Brooks, who is an advocate of the ‘progressive’ historical role of the Catholic church.

John Podhoretz, on the other hand, is Jewish; Annalee Newitz is of half-Protestant, half-Jewish origin. Another Jewish voice, that of the Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center, had a rather different take on the film. He noted:

The film AVATAR is an obvious metaphor for the European-USA destruction of Native America and Africa; for the corporate destruction of the Amazon forest and its tribal human eco-partners; for the US destruction of much of Iraq and parts of Afghanistan […]

Why does the Torah command that even in wartime, we must not destroy the enemy’s fruit trees? (The US Army did precisely this to the forests of Vietnam; the Israeli Army has done this to Palestinian olive trees; in AVATAR, the invading Earthians do precisely this to the sacred trees of the Na’vi. Why?)

In another article, entitled ‘Refuting The “White Savior” Attacks on Avatar Movie’, the Rabbi remarked:

Some knee-jerk leftists have criticized the heroism of Jake Sully as merely another racist case of a “white male Marine” becoming savior of the exploited community. Indeed, some conservatives have stolen that rhetoric to discredit a widely celebrated film that clearly threatens to undermine the corporate-military-NeoCon alliance. But there are two mistakes in this rhetoric:

… it is not Sully who leads the Na’vi; it is his Avatar who joins the resistance, becoming a blueskin transformed from his life as a Marine, just as Moses the Egyptian prince remakes himself into a leader of the Israelite slave revolt .

AVATAR describes how some Earthians turn their backs on the military-corporate attempt to shatter the Na’vi and instead join the Na’vi resistance. They become - let’s not mince words - traitors. Or rather, they transform themselves into the Avatars that actually become Na’vi, loyal not to oppressive Crushers but to the web of life. What do we Americans, we Westerners — who have already done so much to crush the life from many parts of our planet and threaten to destroy the rest by choking its Breath, its Climate — what do we make of that? What do we owe the indigenes of Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Nigeria, Burma?

Traitors and humanists

Avatar is not a documentary, nor is it Dostoievsky; it is mass-market Hollywood fiction. That a colonialist from Earth who learns about the alien natives, connects with them and becomes a military leader in their struggle against imperialism is a reliable plot device, which ensures that we the audience, who are humans and at the start know nothing about the blue-skinned Na’vi, can travel with the main character on a journey of understanding about not only the Na’vi and their culture, but also about the humans and their exploitative culture, from the standpoint of the natives with whom we increasingly identify.

Nile Gardiner remarks that Avatar is ‘manipulative’ in winning the adudience to cheer the armed struggle of the oppressed Na’vi against the mercenaries who are of our own species; but it is no more or less manipulative than any other successful product of the US film industry. That the former human Jake Sully becomes the action-hero of the alien forces is an extension of a tried and tested Hollywood formula, which- along with the innovative cinematic technology used in the movie- has guaranteed a record-breaking global adudience for a film which carries a pro-environmental and anti-imperialist message.

The allegation that the plot line of Avatar is ‘unoriginal’ misses the point by a mile. The story of the struggle of the oppressed against the exploiters, as Rabbi Waskow reminds us, is as old as Moses; and within that, the tale of the privileged person who takes the side of the oppressed and eventually becomes a leading figure in their struggle against the exploiters is an archetype which has strong factual roots.

The self-described Marxist Annalee Newitz might recall that Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, both from respectable privileged backgrounds, were the originators of the movement to create a global working class dictatorship and by that means to overthrow privilege itself.

Expelled from Germany for their radical activism, Marx and Engels settled in Britain, whose vast empire included the neighbouring island of Ireland. It is notable that in the struggles of the mainly Catholic Irish against the mainly Protestant British oppressors, some of the most important leaders were either ethnic Protestants, or were of British rather than Irish origin. Among them, Wolfe Tone, the leader of the 1798 rebellion against British occupation and who is considered the father of Irish republicanism, was a Protestant. Erskine Childers, who became a political and military leader of the Irish for independence and national unity in the early 20th Century, was the scion of an elite British-based Protestant family. Childers was executed in 1922 by the dominant faction in the Irish leadership who, having accepted a deal with the British government which involved Britain retaining control of the North of the country, were opposed to the continuation of the struggle to unite the whole of Ireland as an independent nation.

In another former colonial country, South Africa, white-skinned turncoats played a hugely important role in the African liberation struggle. The white males Joe Slovo and Ronnie Kasrils, both from Jewish families, were key leaders in Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress. Slovo was elected general secretary of the South African Communist Party, a party whose membership is mainly black and which is part of the ‘Tripartite Alliance’ comprising the ANC, the trade unions, and the Communist Party. He died in 1995. Kasrils went on to become Minister for Intelligence Services in the South African government.

Slovo was, and Kasrils still is, a forceful opponent of zionism and the anti-Palestinian policies of the US-sponsored Israeli state. Traitors to their ‘race’, loyalists to humanity and humanism. If Avatar moves even only a tiny minority of its multi-million audience towards a similar understanding, the talents of James Cameron and his team of actors and technicians have been well employed.

This article first appeared on 21st Century Socialism

See also Louis Proyect for more on this controversy, and for a view endorsing the critique that Avatar is racist see Third Estate,

The furore created by the recent announcement of a UK-based radical Islamist group that it intends to march through Wootton Bassett carrying coffins to symbolise the Afghan and Muslim victims of the war in Afghanistan should not deflect from the fact that such an initiative in itself is both necessary and overdue.

For far too long the government and supporters of the ‘good war’ in Afghanistan within the mainstream media have cynically used appeals to patriotism and nationalism to neutralise any opposition to the war which goes beyond abstract calls for peace and starts to challenge the received truths which attempt to equate being antiwar with undermining the troops on the front lines.

The ritual procession of the coffins of returning dead British soldiers through this small, Wiltshire town has sadly become an almost nightly item on the six o’clock news. And despite the protestations of the local townspeople, it has become politicised to the extent that it has served to place a ring fence around the role of the troops in making life a misery for the Afghan people living under occupation. In other words, the emotional impact of watching these sombre processions of returning dead soldiers, Union Jacks draped over their coffins as their hearses are led in silence past crowds of silent bystanders, has deflected attention from the invisible victims of this war, the many more Afghan men, women, and children who’ve been killed and yet whose deaths are never commemorated.

The war in Afghanistan is nothing more than a dirty, little colonial war, and like all colonial wars throughout Britain’s long and ignoble history of Empire, the dehumanisation of its victims has played a vital part in currying support and beguiling the working class, whose sons are sent to kill and die for the profits and privileges of the rich who sent them, into believing that its own interests are being served. In the case of the war in Afghanistan today those interests are portrayed as fighting terrorism abroad in order to make us more secure at home.

Of course, neither is true. Oppression breeds resistance and as such this war will only increase the spread of terrorism throughout the world, making us less secure in both the short and long term.

Like it or not, eventually the government will have to look beyond the tough posturing it prefers to engage in for public consumption and sit down to negotiate with the Afghan national resistance in order to reach a political settlement. Until it does many more young British soldiers will lose their lives in vain, as will many more Afghans.

Challenging the received truths which are used as the justification for this war must be a priority for the left and the antiwar movement in the meantime. It has to be said that we have failed to do so with sufficient vigour and effectiveness up to now, leaving a vacuum which is being filled by radical Islamist groups and the far right, both of which oppose the war and both of which are able to feed off the other.

Actions such as a cross-community procession commemorating both British and Afghan deaths would cut across the association of returning dead soldiers with the need to continue the war in order to ‘honour their sacrifice’. It would also begin to reverse the alarming trend of polarisation when it comes to the issue, denying oxygen to the odious politics of both the far right and radical Islamism.

Ultimately, it is a disgraceful lie to suggest that the young men killed in Afghanistan have sacrificed anything. The truth is they have been sacrificed on the altar of national prestige and the vanity of politicians who for all their metaphorical backslapping care little if anything for the welfare of the troops or their families.

We currently live in an increasingly divided society, due largely to the impact of nine years of imperialist war and occupation in the Middle East. Its effects have refracted back to poison society at home in the form of a body politic ridden with greed and corruption, attacks on civil liberties, the demonisation of the Muslim community, and attacks on immigrants in general. The emergence of the far right has been the culmination of this process, with the fracture of the left a reason for all of us to take stock and focus on where best our locus of intervention should be in order to maximise unity of action regardless of our differences.

Afghanistan is an issue crying out for such a unity of action, as is the priority of supporting the upcoming campaigns of Salma Yaqoob, George Galloway, and other left of Labour candidates in the general election. Islamophobia has to be continually and tirelessly resisted by the left if we are to pull radicalised Muslim youth into mainstream politics and dampen the fortunes of the far right. When it comes to issues of racism the British trade union movement has always played an exemplary role, but sadly with few exceptions it has yet to bare its teeth when it comes to Afghanistan. Both these issues are inextricably linked and therefore let’s hope we see the emergence of a newly invigorated antiwar movement bolstered by the huge force and influence of the unions in the coming year.

In the words of Abraham Lexner : Probably no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

Yesterday’s attack on a British army base in Antrim by the Real IRA will have come as no surprise to anyone familiar with politics in the six counties or who’s spent even a small amount of time there.

What has always seemed clear is that the peace process in Northern Ireland was cobbled together in state rooms and government ministries. It involved throwing money at the communities involved in a clear attempt to buy their support, hoping that in time the contradiction that lies at the root of the conflict – namely partition – would recede in importance in line with a peace dividend in the form of prosperity and a boom in consumption.

This latest attack, in which two British soldiers have been killed and four injured, comes fast on the heels of the controversy surrounding revelations that the PSNI had requested the help of British special forces in gathering intelligence on dissident republicans, revealing an increase in organisation and activity by people intent on resuming the war. Ultimately, both the news of British special forces being sent to the province, and now this attack, reminds us that the underlying causes of the conflict haven’t gone away. More importantly, it will place enormous pressure on the leadership of Sinn Fein by the British government and unionist parties to cooperate with the security services in apprehending and nullifying the threat posed by any resurgence of physical force republicanism in the province.

The Peace Process was well named given the years it took to get from the IRA’s original ceasefire in 1994 to the formation of a devolved government in the province in May 2007, signed up to by mainstream unionism and republicanism. This process went through a temporary setback in 1996, when the IRA broke the ceasefire due to the stance taken by the then British government, under John Major, on the decommissioning of weapons. It got back on track shortly thereafter, and in 1998 US Senator George Mitchell presided over talks which bore fruit in the form of the Good Friday Agreement. As for the IRA, despite announcing their original ceasefire back in 1994, it wasn’t until 2005 that they formally announced the end of the armed struggle and pledged to decommission all weapons.

In July 2007, two months after Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) formed a government, the British Army announced the end of Operation Banner, the name given their military operation in the province that began in 1969.

The significance of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness working together as First Minister and Deputy First Minister respectively of the nascent Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont seemed entirely justified. Throughout the Troubles, Ian Paisley personified loyalist intransigence and a commitment to preserving the status quo of loyalist ascendancy in the province. Martin McGuinness was a former IRA commander in Derry, whose status among the ranks was largely responsible for bringing on board the so-called ‘hard men’ of the IRA who were reluctant to end the war.

The mere fact of these two men, each representative of the hardcore in their respective movements, working together in government was proof to many that the war and, more importantly, the hatred underpinning the war, had absolutely and finally come to an end.

But has it?

Passing through the likes of Armagh, Newry, Portadown, Loughgall, small towns the names of which are internationally known as a result of the war, there’s little sign that the separation between both communities lasting generations has in any way dissipated. Marking the entrance to loyalist working class housing estates in every town are an abundance of Union Jacks, Red Hand of Ulster flags, red, white, and blue bunting, lampposts and kerb stones painted red, white, and blue, along with crests of King Billy and various other symbols in deference to loyalist militarism. Orange Order halls are also common, meeting places for an organisation which more than any other in the North represents a tradition of loyalist and protestant domination. Driving into Loughgall, for example, you pass under a massive arch painted red, white, and blue, over which a large metal crest of protestant King Billy on a white horse looks down imperiously, leaving visitors and residents in no doubt who rules in this part of the world.

As for the security apparatus, whilst there are no longer British Army patrols and armoured cars out on the streets, nor military helicopters flying overhead (especially in South Armagh, where the British Army and security forces were forced to abandon the road to the IRA at the height of the conflict), you still get a feeling that a heightened security apparatus is in place. Police stations in every town are more like armed fortresses, replete with high walls, wire fencing and watchtowers. Atop hills and mountains as you drive around the countryside are listening masts, used by the security and intelligence services for surveillance and which still appear operational.

Moving up to Belfast, the contradiction between the modern face of the six counties which the establishment is eager to project, and a past defined by over 30 years of war and conflict, is very much in evidence. The centre of the city is no different to that you will find in any modern European city. It is vibrant, affluent, and judging by the sheer number of construction cranes dotting the landscape, booming (at least in the summer of 2007 just before the credit crunch began). An abundance of cafes, restaurants, designer stores, and upmarket bars clog the streets, and the demographic seems predominately young. Indeed, passing Queens University, the energy and dynamism produced by so many young people out on the street is palpable.

But move out to the outskirts, to West, East, North and South Belfast, and you enter a different world. Despite the peace process, these areas remain citadels of sectarianism in the case of loyalist areas, and uncompromising resistance to British rule in republican areas. The preponderance of so-called ‘peace walls’ separating republican and loyalist communites, and the obvious continued attachment to their separate identities and traditions, rubbishes any notion of a meaningful peace bringing them together. Each community is decidedly off limits to members of the other, and the pride which each takes in their martyrs and the war is immediately evident in the elaborate wall murals which abound.

Clearly, the underlying cause of the conflict, partition and the contradictions it has wrought, still lies at the heart of society in the six counties. That said, whether any return to militant republicanism will enjoy popular support in republican communities, after 12 years of relative peace, is the key question - one that will largely determine whether or not we see British troops once again patrolling the streets of Belfast.

To support Peoples’ Anti-Imperialistic Resistance and the building of Alternatives to Globalization

On the initiative* and the support of several research centers, associations, syndicates and political, cultural and social movements, The Beirut International Forum was held on 16, 17 and 18 January 2009, attended by Arab and international delegations and eminent authorities from five continents (66 countries).

This Forum, in which South America, Asia and Near East were massively represented, embodied the spirit of the Tricontinental centre.

Two major topics characterized the Forum. On one hand, the heroic resistance by the Palestinian people of Gaza and their ability to confront an intense violence and unprecedented barbarity. On the other, capitalism’s global crisis, which is not only financial but also on economic, social, cultural and moral fronts, thus posing a threat to the survival of humanity itself.

Principles and rights

The Forum declares that:

• All Peoples have the right to resist. This right must be inalienable, supported by the entire international community and recognized as such within international law;

• The resistance’s fight against colonialism can’t be detached from the struggle carried out by world revolutionaries and free individuals when facing global capitalism, imperialism, militarization and destruction of social achievements. These have been the product of the working classes’ tenacious struggles for two hundred years;

• Peoples have the right to sovereignty over their own natural resources. Right to nourishment, health and education prevail over all commercial stakes;

• Every culture has to be able to help build humanity’s common good with respect for nature, the supremacy of human needs and a democratic management of societies;

• The right to democratic participation must be exerted not only on a political level but also on an economic one and it applies to men and women alike;

• The right to cultural differentiation and freedom of worship without any cultural or racial stigmatization.

Campaigns and resolutions

Concerning Gaza:

The Forum’s attendees declare their support of the Palestinian people’s resistance of Gaza. They condemn the terrorism, crimes, violations of the rule of law and disregard for human value, which Israel has inflicted on these populations.

Moreover, they call for:

1- Applying severe sanctions against Israel, such as: calling off relations and covenants and forbidding any sale of weapons to this country;

2- Legal proceedings against states and companies selling weapons to Israel;

3- Urging the EU to put an end to all economic, political and cultural relations with Israel and to cancel all the covenants and agreements linking it with this country;

4- Holding an international conference in order to judge war crimes and crimes against humanity inflicted upon Gaza’ s population, as well as economic and environmental crimes, and to bring to court the persons accountable for these actions, as well as for those committed in Lebanon in 2006;

5- Restoring UN Resolution 3379 which classifies Zionism as racism, and ousting Israel from the UN;

6- Launching an international campaign for rebuilding Gaza, lifting the blockade and having political prisoners released.

Concerning the support to the resistance and the anti-imperialistic struggle

1- The Forum participants expressed their support for both the Palestinian and Lebanese resistances against Israeli occupation, as well as to the Iraqis’ fight against American occupation. In addition, they back the Iraqi people’s endeavors to preserve their territorial unity.

2- The participants declare their support for self-determination for the Afghan people and to their struggle against the American and Atlantic occupation.

3- The participants salute Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales for their support to the peoples’ resistance. They express total endorsement of their fight against US’s interference in South America.

4- They call for lifting the embargo on Cuba and the release of Cuban prisoners detained in US’ prisons.

5- The participants condemn alliance between the USA and the government of Colombia which for four decades has terrorized its own people and work to destabilize the progressive regimes of the Latin America. Also they bring their support to the revolutionary movements in fight against this regime.

6- They demand the establishment of an international league of Parliamentary members in order to uphold the peoples’ right to resistance and self-determination, in order to restore accords relevant to the defense of civilian populations.

7- They urge the creation of an international media network that may expose the mendacious propaganda concerning Israel’s character and crimes.

8- Carrying on the moral imperative to judge war crimes, namely bringing to court the people responsible for the war crimes committed in Lebanon in 2006.

9- Launching a campaign to enforce the consultative advice by the International Court of Justice concerning the wall’s ethnic segregation in Palestine.

10- Setting up an international network with the aim of coordination between local delegations during crises and wars.

11- Refusing threats and provocations by the US against Iran with regard to its right to develop its nuclear program for civil purposes within the context of international laws. Refusing, likewise, the threats of war by the US towards Syria and Sudan.

12- Opposing American attempts to make international and humanitarian laws ineffective under the pretext of the war on terror.

The participants suggest the following as alternatives to the market’s blackmail:

1- Excluding agriculture and feeding-related sectors from the international negotiations contemplating the privatization of markets (GATT, OMC…)

2- Turning down accords and international policies that allow corporations to control living organisms thus jeopardizing biodiversity.

3- Setting up in opposition to Sarkozy’s neo-liberal project, a Mediterranean Common Market (leaving out the colonial state of Israel) based on fair trade between customers and producers, from the north and the south of the basin as well as within each country. All this is to be performed within a process for building a great region in Mediterranean area.

4- Fighting the excessive exploitation carried out by industrial fishing in favor of artisan fishery, by guaranteeing social costs.

5- Preserving the common asset of humanity and the fundamental resources for living. Developing organic agriculture and using renewable energy sources.

* Initiators:
The Center for Studies and Documentation in Beirut
International Campaign against American and Zionist Occupation (the Cairo Conference)
the National Gathering to Support the Choice of Resistance (Lebanon)
The International Anti-Imperialist and Peoples’ Solidarity Forum (the Calcutta- India Conference)
Stop War Campaign (London)

Organizations having adhered, supported and/or taken part in the Forum not appearing in this list many organizations which will be added thereafter (more…)

From the Stop the War Coalition.

The Stop the War meeting, GEORGIA, NATO & THE SPREAD OF WAR, held at Friend’s Meeting House on 14 August and at short notice was packed out. The meeting was a reflection of public concern and public knowledge, in the face of a political and media establishment who have, in this latest escalation of the ‘long war’, been feeding us untruths.

MARK ALMOND, lecturer in History, Oxford University and expert on the Caucasus, provided the meeting with the sort of background information on Georgia so sadly lacking on the BBC. Visiting a Georgian prison he had expressed concern to the prison governor at the possibility that political prisoners may have been tortured. ‘Don’t worry,’ he was told, ‘We torture everyone.’ Saakashvili, far from being a democrat brought to power on the shoulders of an orange, yellow or was it rose revolution, was and is a placeman of the United States. US-educated, he was the last person to win the Enron Prize for Distinquished Public Service. Georgian troops have been part of the US occupation force in Iraq (hurried back to Georgia in their desert fatigues). Mark reminded us that it was the Georgians who started the recent conflict with their blitzkrieg attack on South Ossetia and in doing so broke the peace treaty which they had signed with the Russians. The majority of Ossetians wished to be part of the Russian Federation and didn’t want to be embedded in Georgia. But, hey, when it comes to running pipelines from the Caspian basin through Georgia, democracy is not going to get in the way.

BORIS KAGARLITSKI, former director of the Institute of Globalisation Studies, Moscow and author of, ‘Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System’, said he was no fan of Putin or the Russian government, but the armed conflict was started by Georgia. He told us that the Russian people have no problem with the Georgians, they loved to drink their wine, which is now unavailable to them, and eat their food. There had never been a problem between Georgia and Russia so why now? Could it be, he argued, something to do with the attempt by the US to stir up conflict on the fringes of Russia, to spread NATO and to control oil resources? The US military have been heavily engaged in training and equipping the Georgian army. Boris added that his analysis was correct because he loved the Georgians and was less fond of the wronged Ossetians who had a reputation for exporting lousy vodka to the Russians, killing many more than have died in any recent conflict in the Caucasus.

KATE HUDSON, Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said that the conflict is in large measure the product of George Bush’s policy of US global hegemony, in the Caucasus as in the Middle East. Attempts to extend NATO eastwards, potentially incorporating Georgia, directly challenge Russian interests.The expansion of NATO began with the accession of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. It has now grown to include many more former east European states. This threatening situation for Russia has been exarcebated by the placing of the US missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

JOHN REES, Officer of Stop the War Coalition and author of ‘Imperialism and Resistance’ argued that the situation in Georgia was evidence of a dangerous inter-imperial conflict with the US and NATO trying to encircle Russia. There were important divisions in the West to be noted. Even Berlusconi has opposed the US policy and objectives whereas, of fourse, David Miliband and the British government follow loyally behind their US masters. He asked the meeting to consider where we would all be if Georgia was already a member of NATO; a pact that must come to the armed defence of member states! He concluded that the war in Georgia marks an escalation of the new imperialism from conflicts between major powers and smaller states to a wholly more dangerous phase of confrontation between major powers.

Audio recording to follow

In addition the Stop the War Calition has issued a statement, that i will put up later when the amendements have been incorporated into the text.

This month, our socialist film club showed “The Lion of the Desert”, a 1981 Hollywood film produced and directed by Moustapha Akkad – better known for the “Halloween” horror movies. In the Arab world, “Lion of the DeserT” and Akkad’s film of the life of the prophet, “The Message” are extremely well loved.

“Lion of the Desert” tells the true story of Mukhtar Omar, who led the resistance to the Italian occupation of Libya. Indeed the historical parallels with the current American occupation of Iraq are quite striking.

In terms of form and style the film is conventional, but the content is not.

The fact that the occupiers are Italian (with the fascist General Rodolfo Graziani played by Oliver Read at the very top of his game) provides sufficient similarity with British and American imperialism to be obvious, while at the same time giving enough alienation to allow the audience to more easily see them as foriegn and unwelcome.

Akkad’s portrayal of Italian fascism, with its combination of Ruritanian absurdity, and bestial and unrestrained brutality is very convincing. Historians estimate that between 30,000 and 70,000 Sunusi Libyans were killed by the occupiers, from a population numbering about 185,000 in 1923.

Mukhtar Omar is himself played by Anthony Quinn. Quinn was of course Mexican, and his mother was indigenous, so this is not quite the same as casting a white Anglo-Saxon actor. (Quinn’s father fought in Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army). But having a recognizable Hollywood actor in the main part does help to create immediate empathy with Mukhtar Omar, who is first introduced to us as a mild, elderly teacher instructing boys in the Quran.

Casting John Geilgud as a rich Arab collaborator with the Italians is a stroke of genius, as his patrician Englishness gives all the right messages about class and privilege. Generally, as you would expect with an Arab producer/director, the film is very sympathetic about Arab culture, and as authentic as any film hoping for a mainstream American audience will ever be.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This short video shows clips of Fidel explaining why Cuba went to the aid of Angola, and also shows interesting film of both Castro himself and the Cuban army in Africa.

It was December 1987, twenty years ago, when the Cuban army decisively defeated the South African Defence Force (SADF) at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola which was the tipping point that brought down Apartheid. The story is told here.

The role of Cuba in Africa has been largely underestimated by Western commentators. But Nelson Mandela said, speaking as South African president in 1991: “The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today! Cuito Cuanavale was a milestone in the history of the struggle for southern African liberation!”

The defeat was ideologically crippling and demoralising for the South Africans, as they were not only outfought by a black army, but also outwitted, having lost air superiority to the Cuban MIGs. The Cuban pilots tricked the SADF air defences by playing back recorded responses to the SADF “Friend or Foe” signalling, thus being able to fly over the South African positions unchallenged. The break down of operational command within the SADF forced President P W Botha to fly to Northern Namibia to deal with the crisis personally. The personal tragedies of the defeat were terrible and as well as the many SADF troops captured or killed in battle, many others fleeing in disarray were killed by wild beasts and crocodiles, or lost in the bush. The proud defenders of white rule were humiliated.

Funnily enough there is now a small industry of historical revisionists who “prove” that South Africa won the battle by arguing they sustained lower casualties than the MPLA and Cubans. Presumably, in the same way America won the Vietnam war, and the Confederate States of America won their pro-Slavery rebellion.

In truth the South Africans failed to win their strategic objectives, and were forced to withdraw in disarray, causing a political crisis at home, the end of South African involvement in Angola, and almost immediate withdrawal from Namibia.

On Monday our Socialist Film club in Swindon showed the award winning Argentinan film “Iluminados Por el Fuego”, there were thirteen people there. This is the review I wrote of the film after its British premiere last year

Iluminados Por el Fuego (Enlightened by Fire) held its UK premiere  in Manchester, attended by Director, Tristán Bauer, who himself is a veteran of the Malvinas War (sometimes known as the 1982 Falklands Conflict).

This first fictional film about the war from Argentina has been showered with awards in the Spanish speaking world, and has hit Argentina like a meteor, with over 400000 seeing it in cinemas, as well as being the most popular rental DVD by a country mile, and is now being shown in schools, and even by the military themselves.

The core of the film is a truly remarkable depiction of the war itself. Poorly trained and brutalised young conscripts, abused, freezing and malnourished, defending a wind blasted, rain lashed wilderness. Just enough time is allotted to the tedious waiting, discomfort, gross military bullying and developing friendships between the young soldiers, before Hell bursts upon them on Mount Tumbledown.

I have heard from British veterans their utter chilled shock when they were told they were going to take the hill in the dark with a surprise bayonet charge.

The carnage and terror is portrayed brilliantly as the Argentinean soldiers are overwhelmed, and despite individual bravery and solidarity from the boy conscripts their line breaks and their army becomes a fleeing rabble. We are shown brutal atrocities, and glimpses of broken corpses suddenly snatched from the darkness by the flash bursts of fire and explosion, while cacophony and broken continuity prevents us making any narrative sense of the events. This is all the more surreal on a cold pointless rock grazed by sheep, with the haunting calls of seagulls heard among the rumbling artillery.

The later regroupment and retreat to Port Stanley (Puerta Argentina) where the army ultimately surrenders further shows the chasm between the self-deluded, puffed up officers and the shockingly young and ill prepared conscripts. The point is brilliantly made that the war was inevitably lost by the incompetence and moral corruption of the officers who at that time had ruled Argentina for 6 years of bloody, inhuman terror. Despite the heroism and technical brilliance of the Argentinean Air Force, the army had no self belief, and no cause worth fighting for. In a back yard of a Port Stanley house a small group of defeated soldiers rebuild some shared humanity with a game of football.

Fictional portrayals of the chaos and trauma of defeat are surprisingly rare. Ian McEwan’s recent novel “Atonement” is an only partially successful recent example, but Evelyn Waugh’s brilliant dark comedy of the British defeat in Crete in the “Sword of Honour” trilogy, has closer echoes with this film. Though Waugh, in a typically English way, prefers to play it for humour.

In Iluminados Por el Fuego, the narrative of the war is framed as flashback from the central character, Estaban, who has been called to the bedside of a former comrade who has attempted suicide. This allows the film to have a much stronger contemporary resonance as suicides by the ignored veterans of the war have now overtaken the numbers killed in the three month long conflict. At the end of the film Estaban returns to the Islands: an autobiographical episode from the life of the Director Tristán Bauer, in an attempt to bury his own ghosts. How bizarre it seems to encounter the anachronistic normality of Port Stanley and its surrounding hills, for all the world like a small village in Cumbria, as the canvas that his nightmares were painted on.

Although this was a stylistically conventional ending, further emphasised by an unnecessarily sentimental song, the contextualising of the war from the viewpoint of the veterans now in their forties increases the emotional power. Not because of the suicides, or the more dramatically failed lives, but because Estaban himself is shown as having held himself together, and become a successful TV journalist with a stable family, but the demons are just quiet in him, not still or gone. It reminded me very strongly of the subtle, hard to describe, but oh so obvious, damage of my father and so many of his generation who left the bodies of their young friends behind them at El Alamein, and Monte Casino, or in the jungles of Burma, the deserts of Iraq or the forests of the Ardennes, but have carried with them the memories of those dead boys ever since.

The film is a moving testament, not just for the dead, but for Estaban who survived and for my those like my father. who survived other wars.

The following article by Mukoma Wa Ngugi appeared on the Pambazuka website, under the title “Justice for Mau Mau War Veterans”.

As the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) prepares to sue the British Government for personal injuries sustained by survivors of the Mau Mau war for independence whilst in British detention camps in Kenya, Mukoma Wa Ngugi unravels the Colonial myths of Christianisation and civilization and exposes the reality of torture, murder, slavery, landlessness, dehumanization and internment.

In February 2008, the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) will file a representative law-suit against Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) in the British High Court on behalf of the survivors of the Mau Mau war for independence.

The KHRC is suing HMG for “personal injuries sustained [by the survivors] while in detention camps of the Kenya Colonial Government which operated” under the direct authority of HMG during the State of Emergency (1952-60).

But to understand the law-suit in all its implications, we have to look at Africa’s historical relationship to the West and separate the image from the reality. The Enlightenment of the 1600’s sought to civilize Africans, introduce reason and logic to them, and equip them with the key to heaven through Christianization. The reality masked underneath this image was one of torture, murder and slavery.

Later, colonialism used the image of a gentle stewardship to guide Africans along until they were civilized. The reality, as the KHRC suit shows, was landlessness, torture and dehumanization, whole population internment, outright murder and mass killings.

For the Westerners and Africans alike who have sought comfort in the images, the reality difficult to take. But the reality has been well documented. Adam Hochschild, writing in King Leopold’s Ghost, estimates that 5 to 10 million Africans died as a direct result of Belgian colonization in the Congo in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. And chopping off hands, quite literally, was a form of public control.

And between 1904 and 1907, 65,000 Herero (80 percent of the total Herero population) were systematically eliminated by the Germans in Namibia. In Algeria, during the war of independence (1954 to 1962), the French routinely tortured and ‘disappeared’ FLN freedom fighters.

These random examples illustrate an alarmingly simple principle: One nation cannot occupy another and seek to control its resources without detaining, torturing, assassinating and terrorizing the occupied. A modern day example of this principle at work is Iraq today where torture and killings under the occupation of the United States are rampant, even though the U.S. wants to sell an image of spreading democracy.

Colonialism, Legacy and the Mau Mau

In Kenya, British colonialism followed this same principle. Caroline Elkins’ Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag and David Anderson’s Histories Of The Hanged: The Dirty War In Kenya document tortures, hangings rushed through kangaroo courts, detention camps, internments, and assassinations, not to mention psychological warfare through fear and intimidation.

Independence however did not bring justice for Kenyans - certainly not for the Mau Mau veterans. Kenyatta, even before being sworn as president in1963, had denounced the Mau Mau as terrorists. Contrary to British propaganda, Kenyatta was never a member of the Mau Mau. In an interview, Muthoni Wanyeki, Executive Director of the KHRC, said that:

“On coming to power, [Kenyatta] proceeded, through the land ownership policies(and practices) of his government (and himself), to betray everything that the Mau Mau had stood for and to entrench the landholding patterns established under the colony”[1]

It is not a surprise that Kenyatta by the early 1970’s had a few detentions and assassinations under his belt. In the words of politician J.M. Kariuki (assassinated in 1975), Kenyatta created a nation of ten millionaires and ten million beggars. He wanted the Mau Mau platform of Land and Freedom erased from Kenyan memory.

In 1978 President Moi took over when Kenyatta died and continued with the same dictatorial policies. Irony is such that in 1982, Mau Mau historian Maina Wa Kinyatti was imprisoned by the Moi government in the same Kamiti Prison where the British in 1957 hanged and buried the leader of the Mau Mau, Dedan Kimathi, in an unmarked grave.

It was not until the Kibaki government took over in 2002 that the colonial ban on the Mau Mau was removed. Finally in 2007 a statue of Kimathi stands on Kimathi Street, something unimaginable under the Kenyatta and Moi regimes.

But more important than a hero’s acre or a monument is a reckoning with the colonial legacy of torture, dehumanization and pauperization. Mau Mau veterans that are still alive, along with their children and grandchildren, live in abject poverty, landless and without formal education.

The past and current Kenyan governments have as yet to ask the British government to at the very least issue an apology for the atrocities committed against the Kenyan people. The Moi and Kenyatta governments, dependent on Western aid and while maintaining a vicious elite system, were not in a position to pressure Britain for an apology. Or even to pressure HMG to reveal the exact location of Kimathi’s grave so that his widow, Mukami Kimathi, can bury him.

This dependent relationship has allowed the British to commit crimes against Kenyans with near impunity. Forty plus years since Kenya’s independence, the British Army still uses Northern Kenya for military exercises. As a result of leaving unexploded munitions behind, “hundreds of Maasai and Samburu tribes people - many of them children - are said to have been killed or maimed by unexploded bombs left by the British army at practice ranges in central Kenya over the past 50 years” the BBC reported [2] With the legal aid of Leigh Day and Co Advocates, 228 survivors took the UK government to the British High Court. In 2002, a settlement was reached in which the UK government agreed to pay 7 million dollars plus legal fees.

Economic Justice and Forgiveness

Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery[3] shows how Western economies grew at the expense of African slave labor. Walter Rodney in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa [4] updates the argument to include colonialism –Europe developed at the direct expense of Africa. Today we find that economic giants, Barclays Bank [5], J.P. Morgan and Chase Manhattan Bank [6] are direct beneficiaries of the slave trade.

Muthoni Wanyeki argues that “it has to be recognized that the UK (and all ex-colonisers) grew at great human expense and political-economic disruption and exploitation within the ex-colonies. It is on that recognition alone that current debates on ‘aid’/'development financing’, trade and investment can shift as they need to.” The call for forgiveness and reconciliation then has to rest on the realization that colonialism was first and foremost an exploitative economic relationship.

Because the former colonizers continue to benefit from colonialism, while the victims of colonization continue to live in poverty, the governments of former colonizers have a moral duty to rectify the historical wrong in the present time. On the basis that colonialism as an investment is still paying off, the British cannot argue that they are not personally responsible for atrocities committed by their parents – they have inherited the economic well-being of a colonial system. They need to do right by this history because it is living.

The British government has as yet to issue a formal apology for the atrocities it committed. In the same way that Clinton expressed shame and sorrow for slavery without offering a formal apology, so did Blair for colonialism. One can express sorrow, regret and shame for causing an accidental death, but surely this is not enough for a systematic exploitation that causes millions to suffer and die.

It should be stated clearly that the authoritarian governments of Kenyatta and Moi are guilty of suppressing Mau Mau memory. And that there were thousands of Kenyans who collaborated with the British. But it should also be said that collaborators did not create colonialism, it is colonialism that created its functionaries. The real crime is colonialism.

And because colonialism if we are to be honest with history is a crime against humanity, the British parliament should at the very least pass a bill offering a formal apology to its victims in Africa. And the apology should also make provision for restitution.

Truth, Restitution, Reconciliation and Justice

While revolutionary in attempting to heal a wounded nation, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission undermined the very concept of forgiveness and justice it espoused because it did not demand that the perpetrators address in word and deed the question of restitution. Muthoni Wanyeki on the TRC says that:

Within the human rights movement in Kenya (and in Africa more broadly), the TRC process in SA while hailed for its reconciliation potential has always been critiqued for its enabling of impunity and its lack of direct recognition of, compensation for survivors.

Even though a desired by-product, the struggle against apartheid was not waged solely for blacks to forgive whites, or for whites to ask forgiveness, but to bring economic, social and political equality for all South Africans. So then here is the irony of the TRC – the perpetrators go home to their mansions, the victims back to the township.

To put it differently, after the TRC hearings the victims go back to a life of poverty, they remain without the means to feed, cloth or educate their children. Freedom comes without the content – it’s just a name – it has no meaning. Under these circumstances, forgiveness, healing and justice cannot exist without restitution.

The British government, which had the largest empire in the world, has cause to fear losing the Mau Mau law-suit. Once it begins where it will end? In neighboring Uganda? India? Malaysia? Or Jamaica? And if the British lose, will this set precedence for the victims of French, Belgian or Portuguese colonialism? The British government knows that losing one law-suit will open closed colonial closets all over the world.

It is precisely because this lawsuit has huge implications for the victims of colonialism all over the world that it deserves the support of all those who understand that history is still acting on us and that justice cannot exist without some form of restitution even if it comes in the form of the whole truth.

Identifying the graves of the disappeared, so that their relatives can rest; the numbers of how many killed, so that nations account for their dead; the names of the guilty, so that they may be brought to justice or forgiven; initiating the return of what was stolen: all these issues resonate with formerly colonized peoples.

For Muthoni Wanyeki says that “We see this case as being part of the process of understanding and coming to terms with our past…particularly given that our past impacts so clearly and evidently on our present.” African people in the continent and Diaspora should support the Kenya Human Rights Committee by calling on the British government to account for its torture of Mau Mau detainees.

We have to become each other’s keeper of memory and see each atrocity perpetrated on the other as part our collective memory – whether we identify as Afro-Latino, African American, or African.

We have to make common cause because ultimately the struggle for the truth will not be won because the British High Court finds it just, or because the British Government decides to come to terms with its past, it will be won because victims across Africa, the Diaspora and other survivors of colonial atrocities will make common cause with the Mau Mau struggle and vice versa. Truth will come to light because we will have demanded justice and restitution before offering forgiveness.

It is only when an apology and restitution are offered, and the victim in turn forgives that for both the perpetrator and victim true healing can take place. For me, that is the truth of justice.

Notes

1. Wanyeki, Muthoni (Kenya Human Rights Commission Executive Director). Interview by Author via e-mail. October 15th, 2007.
2. UK pay-out for Kenya bomb victims. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2139366.stm July 19th, 2002
3. Williams, Eric. Slavery and Capitalism. New York, Russell & Russell, 1961
4. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C. Howard University Press, 1981
5. Barclays admits possible link to slavery after reparation call. observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2047237,00.html April 1, 2007
6. Corporations challenged by reparations activists www.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/02/21/slave-reparations.htm February 21, 2002

* Kenyan writer Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Hurling Words at Consciousness (Africa World Press, 2006) and the forthcoming New Kenyan Fiction (Ishmael Reed Publications, 2008). He is a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine.