Narco News and The Field: No Longer Open for Debate

I present this post today with some sadness. There are few people who have taken advantage of the Internet to bring attention to marginalized people and social movements as Al Giordano. Through the creation of Narco News, he has extensively covered the political turbulence of Central and South America. Later, through The Field, he provided innovative coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, and continues to post on US politics, from an avowedly pro-Obama stance.

Despite being raucous, and sometimes personally insulting, Giordano posts articles that reveal what the commercial media conceals. For example, his articles about Mexico over the years have provided us with a priceless alternative perspective about the social turmoil there. Unfortunately, his recourse to villification has escalated in the aftermath of the Honduran coup on June 29th. Even worse, he no longer permits the targets of his abusive posts the courtesy of responding to them. Nor does he permit anyone else to come to their defense or merely object to his obnoxious, holier than thou, character attacks.

In other words, Giordano has become a bully, one who manipulates the moderation of comments on his sites to manufacture an adoring audience. He is now mirroring the behavior of the right that he finds so contemptuous. Perhaps, it has been this way for quite awhile, and I was unaware. I had the misfortune to discover it this week, when I had the temerity to post a comment at Narco News that George Cicarriello-Maher had correctly characterized the public pronouncements of the Obama administration in response to the coup as evasive, displaying an unwillingness to take any concrete action to reverse it. I posted an excerpt from that article here last Friday. By doing so, I was challenging the Giordano narrative that Obama has been against the coup, and will, eventually, take the necessary measures to drive the perpetrators from power. I was sticking my hand into a hornet's nest.

Giordano hates the Ciccariello-Maher article because it also criticizes him for dismissing the possibility that the US was actively involved in the coup, as asserted by Eva Golinger, and calls him to task for an implicitly misogynistic attack upon her screeching about such a prospect. Both Ciccariello-Maher and Golinger are cautioning us, quite rightly in my view, that it is far too early to make such a determination, even if we can conclude that the US is only willing to support the return of Zelaya to Honduras upon condition that he become a figure head serving out the remaining days of his term.

As noted by Ciccariello-Maher, Giordano dispatches Golinger with characteristic drama: In this hour, those that adhere strictly to the documented facts are those that are showing character worth trusting, today and into the future. It is a rather odd statement for many reasons, such as, for example, our knowledge that the documented facts are manufactured by those in the positions of power to do so, as cinematically explained to compelling effect in Kobayashi's samurai masterpiece, Harakiri, among other places. It is also odd, because, Giordano has made a name for himself, and justifiably so, by going beyond the documented facts to get the real story, over and over again. And, of course, it is very odd, because Giordano doesn't believe that our appreciation for the facts is enhanced by permitting people to comment openly, without censorship, on his sites. Because, you see, Giordano, and only Giordano, decides who has character and who does not.

As you might have guessed, Giordano only gave me one bite of the apple. He responded to my comment by saying that Cicarriello-Maher's article was an exercise in political masturbation. The moderator blocked my response that he should engage Ciccariello-Maher more substantively, although Giordano did publish a post that does so today over at The Field, one with a tiresome introduction rife with more personal insults. His primary complaint appears to be that Ciccariello-Maher failed to acknowledge the hard work of Giordano and Narco News in exposing the association of the US with the 2002 coup in Venezuela by (oh, the horror!) giving all the credit to Golinger. Apparently, Cicarriello-Maher, or one of his defenders, tried to post a reply in the comments section, but it was either removed or never cleared. If the posted comments are any indication, his audience of DailyKos liberals cheered Giordano's character attacks upon Ciccariello-Maher and his refusal to allow Cicarriello-Maher a chance to defend himself. I submitted a comment to the effect that I found the entire episode very sad because of what it reveals about Giordano and Narco News. Of course, it never got past the moderator.

Apparently, the sites are now ploughing new ground in parody as well, because, after several people posted how great it was that Giordano won't permit Ciccariello-Maher to respond, Anthony Schofield, a reporter associated with The Narcosphere, sounded the alarm about an anti-Al piece on Z-Net, and gave a short rebuttal there, not recognizing the obvious, embarrassing contradiction between a site like Z-Net that permits engaged debate and Narco News which does not. If I find the time, I may return and engage the substance of their dispute in more detail, but, for now, today's post is an exercise in consumer protection. The Field and Narco News are sites that you should visit at your own risk, with the recognition that the purported discourse in the comments section is strictly controlled. You should read any content there with the understanding that Giordano permits limited critical engagement with it. Narco News remains an essential portal for information about events in Central and South America, but, unfortunately, we must exercise caution in how we utilize it. And, of course, here, unlike at Narco News and The Field, Giordano is free to comment and say whatever he wants.

UPDATE: If you find that you have wandered into the comment section of either The Field or Narco News, click on the links under the names of those who have posted comments. You may be surprised at how many of them have been posted by reporters associated with The Narcosphere. It seems to be rather difficult for anyone outside the scene to actually post comments there. As a consequence, the comment sections take on the tone of an echo chamber.

Bisi Silver's Centre for Contemporary Art

In 234Next Obidike Okafor reports on Bisi Silva's Art PlaceIn trying to break uncharted areas in the art world, the curator felt that there were few avenues for critical discourse. So, like a scientist experiments, discovers and develops, Silva set out to create a space that like a laboratory will allow artists to develop themselves, experiment on new ideas and interact with colleagues from

Quick Hits

Nigerians are a conquered people.-Sahara Reporters'They Came in the Name of Helping'A canny chameleon-Blaise CompaoréThe Longevity Project,Ghana.Black Economic Empowerment failed-Moeletsi MbekiCarnegie's gospel of wealth

Makaechi “because of tomorrow”

Makaechi's ...mission is to offer solutions to the social and economic hardship that affect our global community. We pledge to introduce innovative platforms that will inspire a call to action for the greater good. We believe that we can improve the quality of countless lives through the implementation of simple technologies, self-help initiatives, and public awareness. Watch a video from their

The Ostriches

Yesterday, I got this e-mail from someone:

From: xxxxxxxxxx
To: xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 3:45 PM
Subject: FW: Iran: Are you ready for a war with demonized Iran?

Cindy's on to the sham.

-----Original Message-----
From: Cindy Sheehan [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 2:25 PM
Subject: Iran: Are you ready for a war with demonized Iran?


I was speaking in Princeton yesterday and an Indian man asked me about what I thought about what is happening in Iran.
I really couldn't comment because I am not sure about what's going on.

An Iranian man came up to me after and said that was a good answer, because he has a lot of family back there and they are not sure what is going on.

If CNN, MSNBC and Fox have their way, we will have a war with Iran.

This is a good article by someone that I respect a lot: Paul Craig Roberts.

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=93542911540&h=w5b56&u=hc4v1&ref=mf

And one from Politico

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23745.html

Cindy

Here, in a nutshell, we have the perspective of many in the US who purport to be either leftist and/or anti-imperialist. I don't know what is happening in Iran, and I don't want to know. Neither of the links provided by Sheehan provide any meaningful information about the Iranians themselves or ongoing events inside Iran. Instead, they evaluate events through their own preoccupations, the mendacity of the US media, and their belief that governments opposed to the US invariably fall from power because of the machinations of the US and Israel. The possibility that there might be indigenous reasons for Iranians to reject theocratic rule doesn't seem to have occurred to them.

It is rather sad, because while Sheehan deserves great respect for recognizing that the Iraqis have been the primary victims of the invasion of Iraq, despite the loss of her son, she renders the people of Iran invisible, stripping them of any historical agency when it comes to the transformation of their society. A closer examination of the links in her message make this all too clear. One is an article from Paul Craig Roberts, saying that the protests are part of a covert US/Israeli destabilization effort, while the other one, one that states Ahmanijedad won the election, is authored by a couple of neoconservative pollsters. Again, the possibility that the protests have merit, because they challenge the infrastructure of theocratic control over most aspects of daily life in Iran, regardless of the objective outcome of the election, isn't considered.

Of course, there is also the obvious fact that the people who have most effectively discredited the election results are Ayatollah Khamenei and the other people who govern the country. Shooting, beating, killing and arresting people who protest is not consistent with an election result that has integrity. Nor is calling upon government created parmilitaries like the basiji to participate in their suppression. In Central and South American countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia, we call armed groups like this death squads, but, in Iran, their activities are apparently considered sufficiently innocuous so as to pass without any expression of concern. Despite all this, Sheehan, and others who perceive the explosion of protest in Iran like her, would have us believe that our failure to recognize that Ahmanijedad may well have won the election is because of a commonality of interest between US media, the US government and Zionists, within and without Israel.

The response of the person who forwarded Sheehan's message is even more disheartening: Cindy is on to the sham. For this person, the Iranians are merely a crowd of extras participating in a sham co-produced by the US and Israel. I feel compelled to explain all this, even though, as I implied earlier, the election result is now increasingly irrelevant, because the protests would be legitimate even if Ahmanijedad did, in fact, prevail. Iranians have every right to protest a government that imposes oppressive social controls upon women and young people, while criminalizing homosexuality, subjecting gays and lesbians to brutal punishments, if not death, and prohibiting the emergence of independent trade unions. I intend to address this particular aspect of the protests in more depth in a future post, but, for now, I will just observe that the left historically, as personified by its anarchist, communist and social democratic manifestations, has always been a secularizing force, hostile to the imposition of religious constraints upon personal conduct.

Sheehan is not the only person sticking her head in the sand on this. I have engaged in an ongoing e-mail exchange with someone who sends me, and a number of others on his list, articles related to anti-Zionism, anti-imperialism, South American social movements and the predations of the American empire. He has sent me a number of articles purporting to defend the Iranian election result, while maligning US media coverage and the pronouncements of Obama. I encouraged him to expand the scope of his submissions by sending out links to the ongoing debate between lenin and Yoshie over at Lenin's Tomb, as I did here earlier today. In other words, I didn't insist that he send out articles and links in support of the protests, but that he merely send out ones that set forth both sides of an engaged, passionate left debate. He was polite, but evasively firm. Forget about it.

It is a marked contrast to lenin, Richard Seymour, who has allowed Yoshie to post several articles and numerous comments that defend the regime on his site. He recognizes that it is essential for people on the left to participate in an open, vigourous discussion. Eli, over at Left I on the News, has also been silent, while posting articles complaining about the hypocrisy of US media and the President in regard to their responses to the Iranian protests. He quite properly pilliories them for their refusal to apply the same standards to the brutalities of US and Israeli actions nearby. He does not, however, take it one step further, as As'ad Abukhalil, the Angry Arab, has done, and address what is happening inside Iran as well. Abukhalil combines a curiosity about the protests from a Middle Eastern perspective with a sharpness of political interpretation that puts the rest of us to shame. Unlike others here in the US, he is aware that waiting for the Iranian protesters to just go away is no substitute for urgently required sociological and political analysis.

Iran: lenin nails it

An excerpt:

The key here is universality: these protesters are no different from those who have been beaten or killed in Genoa, in London, in LA, in Athens, and everywhere that the state is challenged by a democratic movement and responds in this way.

Lenin's Tomb has been an excellent site for left debate about ongoing events in Iran, with numerous posts over the last week. By and large, the dialogue has been passionate and informative. To get the full flavor of the discussion, it is essential to read through the comments.

How to Help Iran

An insightful post that challenges us to respect the Iranians as people with independent, subjective voices even as we interpret events through our own ideological lens.

'Democracy in Dakar'

Democracy in Dakar a film by Nomadic Wax bridges the gap between hip-hop activism, video journalism and documentary film and explores the role of youth and musical activism on the political process.African Underground: Democracy in Dakar - Episode # 1 from Nomadic Wax on Vimeo.via Society Hae

Ride the Tiger

I will be the first to admit that I'm not especially knowledgeable about Iran. Outside media coverage of the country has been limited since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Combine that with the demonization of the country's political leadership within the US since the hostage crisis, and the impediments to reliable information become even more severe. Even otherwise responsible journalists like Robert Dreyfuss find themselves recycling tired, embarrassing stereotypes about the populace when they are impertinent enough to support Ahmanijedad. Anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism become evidence of a virtual fascist movement.

My political perspective has been shaped by two touchstones. First, Tariq Ali published one of the most incisive critiques of the Islamic regime in his chapters related to Iran in The Clash of Fundamentalisms. Based upon his encounters with exiles, he describes life within Iran as one of a stifling conformity, with women and young people especially estranged from the remorseless constraints of fundamentalist life. But, as with any inflexible social system, it is not uniformly enforced, as the powerful were able to buy their way out of marriages, morals charges and military service (a matter of urgency during the Iran-Iraq War). If this society could be summarized in one sentence, it would be this: Do as we say, not as we do.

Second, as someone who came of age in the period leading to the 1979 revolution, and encountered the history of US involvement in Iran, I have always been insistent that the Iranians should decide their destiny in the absence of American intervention. As readers of this blog know, I am generally negative about the policies of the Obama administration, but, on this one, Obama has gotten it right. Through past actions, and present day threats, the US government has figuratively cut out its tongue when it comes to making statements about Iran. A country that refuses to disavow the possibility of launching airstrikes against an imaginary nuclear weapons program, airstrikes that could even involve nuclear weapons, while imposing economic sanctions, has nothing to say about what is transpiring there. At most, it can say this: the future of Iran is something to be decided by Iranians, hopefully in the most non-violent way possible.

On the left, there is a vibrant, creative debate about how to respond to the protests. Some believe that Ahmanijedad did win the election, and that Mousavi and his patron, Rafsanjani, represent a neoliberal alternative that will retain the oppressive state apparatus while impoverishing workers even more:

In the history of social revolutions, it often happened that leftists helped to bring about social revolution (socialist or nationalist), and then, after the overthrow of the ancient regime, a faction of revolutionaries (usually centrists) liquidated left-wing and right-wing revolutionaries as well as defenders of the ancient regime.

That's what happened in Iran, too. The revolution did in its leftists, as well as rightists. But, over all, the Iranian Revolution has done more good than bad for a majority of Iranians, making Iran the best country -- the most democratic! -- in the Middle East today.

Others believe that the protests can create an opportunity for the Iranian working class to rediscover its voice and obtain the right to independently organize:

. . . Reza Fiyouzat makes what seems to be to be a far more compelling point, though: "The most class-conscious, the most politically active of the Iranian working classes, are by far the most anti-government. How do we know this? We know this because they invariably end up in jail." Well, quite.

The issue of class is important here, not because the workers are angels with whom we may not ever differ, but because their organised power is necessary to make even these democratic demands effective. Even if the protesters were all middle class, I would want them to win. Truth be told, I would want them to win even more than they bargained for - to win so comprehensively that they gave a shot in the arm to the working class and facilitated their rapid self-organisation outside of the Islamic Labour Council approved unions. Never mind a general strike: what is urgently needed is the reappearance of the shoras. And we have seen the riots spread chaotically to working class areas of Isfahan (see also), where the protesters drove out the police, and the southern city of Yazd. The protests have spread to workers districts in southern Tehran. Reports of working class turnout are appearing, albeit infrequently, in some of the English-language press.

As you might have guessed, I find this latter perspective more compelling, but the first one is not without credibility. For example, the protests that brought down the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the USSR resulted in nearly incomprehensible immiseration for most people, as the old apparat, with the willing help of foreign investors, spirited away the resources of many of these countries while interior ministries and intelligence services suppressed any dissent. Furthermore, ethnic violence exploded throughout the Caucasus, with the countries of this region ruled by gangsters. We should not blithely dismiss similar outcomes in Iran if the Mousavi/Rafsanjani faction prevails.

Even so, is it possible to avoid such traumas by holding fast to a repressive social system imposed by a discredited elite? To ask the question is, as the saying goes, to answer it. It is also important to note that the revolutions in Eastern Europe and the USSR occurred as neoliberalism was in the ascendancy, while it is now in decline, making it plausible to suggest that an Iranian revolution could carve out the path advocated by Ali, a rejection of the fundamentalisms of both American neoliberalism and extremist Islam. Indeed, American policymakers and journalists seem to vaguely sense this troubling possibility. Unlike with the anti-communist revolutions of the late 1980s and early 1990s, support for the protesters is not uniform and unequivocal. And, then, there are the geopolitical fears, what if the people of Saudi Arabia and Egypt get the same idea?

Finally, as an anarchist, it is hard for me to oppose a movement directed against religious forms of social control. One of the central tenets of anarchism is a condemnation of the feudal powers assumed by religion over everyday life. As someone told the Angry Arab:

. . . I am glad that you are defending neither Ahmadinejad nor Mousavi. It is frustrating that everyone I talk to from Pakistan to Egypt loves Ahmadinejad and is shocked to hear that many Iranians think he is ineffective and embarrassing. Meanwhile every Westerner seems to think that Mousavi is a great reformist or revolutionary, and some kind of saintly figure beloved by all. He's an opportunist crook. That being said, I support the students and protesters in Iran, even the ones chanting Mousavi's name. I believe they are putting their lives on the line to fight for greater freedom, accountability, and democracy within the Islamic Republic, and they have to couch that in the language of Islam and presidential politics in order to avoid even greater repression than that which they already face. A friend who is in Iran right now confirms: "half the kids throwing rocks at the police didn't even vote." To me, that means that they are not fighting for a Mousavi presidency, but for more freedom, which they must hide under a green Mousavi banner in order to have legitimacy in the eyes of the state."

Even in the absence of immediate economic concerns, workers can find this just as objectionable as purportedly more secular intellectuals. The challenge is, of course, for workers to participate with such effectiveness so as to economically empower themselves as well:

Strike in Iran Khodro:

We declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran.

Autoworker, Fellow Laborers (Laborer Friends): What we witness today, is an insult to the intelligence of the people, and disregard for their votes, the trampling of the principles of the Constitution by the government. It is our duty to join this people's movement.

We the workers of Iran Khodro, Thursday 28/3/88 in each working shift will stop working for half an hour to protest the suppression of students, workers, women, and the Constitution and declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran. The morning and afternoon shifts from 10 to 10:30. The night shift from 3 to 3:30.

Laborers of IranKhodor

If they can strike against the Ayatollah Khamanei, one hopes that they can also strike, if it becomes necessary, against those that replace him if the protests blossom into a successful revolutionary movement.