By Lucy Taylor

Read full article at Bulletin of Latin American Research

(…) Despite such critiques, many people in many ways are becoming more like citizens. They are more certain of their value as individuals in relation to others who are richer and more powerful, and they are better aware of their rights (because the struggle for democracy and the practice of democratisation has made them so) (Taylor, 2003). They are more likely to think in terms of rights, both because international organisations are promoting a discourse of rights, and because neo-liberalism sees the recourse to rights as being the chief protection mechanism for sovereign consumers. The biggest growth area in social organisation is consumer groups (closely followed by neighbourhood improvement schemes) and NGOs flourish in the privatised world of social policy (Jelin and Herschberg, 1996). Yet this trend towards a strengthening of citizenship has not resulted in the Latin American democracies, states and citizens becoming deeper, more coherent or more equal. Indeed, the key trend of the last 10 years has been the resurgence of populism and the return of the familiar political messiah. This seems to present a conundrum – how can people feel more like citizens but act more like clients?

Having considered the nature of the relationship between political leader and people, three key reasons why citizenship is failing strike me. Firstly, neo-liberalism has changed both abstract thinking and government policies regarding poverty. The concept of ‘privatisation’ is central to neo-liberal citizenship, whereby power (and indeed freedom) is equated with personal, individualised agency articulated through private, social and voluntary interactions (with friends, neighbours, charities for example) or through legal or economic transactions (exercising one’s civil rights or buying and selling in the market). Privatisation is a policy which seeks to shift tasks and power from the realm of the state into the ‘private’ realm of individual and market. Within this schema, both populist social justice and citizenship welfare rights are dismissed by the neo-liberal philosophy because their deliberate redistribution of wealth punishes those who (by dint of their talents) have accumulated wealth, as well as interfering with market forces. Social justice is misguided because it is determined by political considerations, not the market, and welfare rights are judged to be not rights at all because they require purposeful intervention, unlike negative rights (civil and political) which merely establish mechanisms. Of course, pure neo-liberalism has not been enacted in Latin America, but the consequences of freeing market forces and cutting public services have been impoverishment, unemployment, worse social indicators (malnutrition, infant deaths, disease) and insecurity. In tune with privatisation, NGOs – by definition private entities – have stepped into the social service breech but their assistance is based on specific projects which cover a certain time and place (Gideon, 1998). They do not contemplate universal coverage nor is their continuation guaranteed and so in no sense do they sustain social rights, despite their genuine commitment to improving people’s lives. Citizenship has changed dramatically, then, because it has lost welfare rights, a key component which sought to redress inequalities in the exercise of civil and political rights. With impoverishment and without welfare rights, people’s capacity to exercise their remaining rights has therefore been severely curbed.

Secondly, while it is undoubtedly preferable to operate under conditions of liberal democracy, the liberal historicist understanding of inequality, with its blindness to structures of discrimination and disdain, has been heightened by its more extreme characterisation as neo-liberalism. Public discourse sustains the myth of equal rights through recourse to privatisation which places responsiblity for social and class inequalities in the hands of the individual, in the private, social sphere and outside the realm of politics. Yet the ‘level playing field’ which exists on paper is distorted by the very uneven terrain of familiar assumptions about civilisation and degeneracy, about progress and backwardness, about rationality and perception, and about who should follow whom, who should adopt whose lifestyles, who is right and who must learn. The fact that this heightened inequality is part of lived experience also means that the sham of equal citizenship is similarly blatant and it makes a constant mockery of democratic ideals.

Thirdly, the primary vehicles of democratic political participation – parties – persist in maintaining intellectual hierarchies of disdain, whether they reflect biological or historicist explanations of inequality (Taylor, 2003). They continue to act as vanguards even though people have largely ceased to follow them and to take themselves, rather than citizens, very seriously. Parties generally discourage the kind of active participation which they achieved in the past by simultaneously misinterpreting, over-ruling and underestimating their potential supporters. There are some notable exceptions, including the Partido dos Trabalhadores in Brazil and the Partido por la Democracia in Chile, both of which have strong links to civil society and were formed during, not before, the transitions to democracy. Yet more generally, parties are no longer the sole means of political communication and action, and those people in society who wish to change the world or think new thoughts now join social organisations instead which often lead public debate and leave the parties to play catch-up behind. This leaves parties both outmoded and without the kind of internal dissent which challenges policy and holds dominant factions to account, which in turn undermines pluralism within these central
agencies of democratic life. The paradox is that despite their decreasing relevance to people’s lives and their lack of representativity, they continue to hold power in government and actually continue to wield immense power, despite globalisation. This presents a crisis of political citizenship because the official channels are both unresponsive and mistrusted, whilst the channels of civil society are ultimately very limited in their capacity to change macro-political projects such as structural adjustment or social policy.

One of the other reasons why conventional citizenship politics is in crisis is because such parties do not guarantee anything in return for the people’s vote – client-ship on the other hand, offers a great deal more and this perhaps explains why neo-populism has proved to be popular (for a time and in certain places). In particular, it proffers two comforts (familiarity and the hope of tangible improvement in one’s personal life) and one bonus (the possible pleasure of exercising a little power). Client-ship is one of the familiar pathways of Latin American political culture. It locks into a sense of belonging and identity which reaches deep into the struggles of daily life; it is about personalities and families, favours and favourites, admiration, emotion and a business deal (Auyero, 2001). As such, it treats people seriously and touches people’s emotional and material lives more closely and effectively than a more distanced, citizenship-style politics does. Secondly, support for a patronage-style party via its local representative increases the chance that some small improvement will occur in people’s lives – this, after all, is the nature of the political relationship which couples charisma with the votes-for-goods deal. Indeed, the poverty of structural adjustment and collapse of state services makes this mechanism even more vital as people seek protection in the ‘private’ world of NGOs, churches and political patronage (Gideon, 1998; Auyero, 2001). A party that does not operate patronage, in contrast, can more easily ignore its individual constituents because it gives no personal guarantees to citizens who have serious needs. Finally, just like citizenship, client-ship also appeals to people’s desire for agency because it encourages and even demands participation in the circus of mobilisations and fiestas that accompany elections. People recognise the limitations of the performance but they enjoy exercising their limited power and look forward to the possible rewards which this political ‘work’ might yield (Lazar, 2003). Political work in citizen-style politics is equally exciting, of course, but given that people are short on time and very short on money, only the most dedicated militantes will turn out to wave a flag in the plaza ‘for nothing’.

We should not rejoice in the flourishing of patronage politics and client-ship, though. Neo-populism is, of course, characterised by autocracy, corruption and violence. It cares little for the plight of the poor, merely throwing them scraps of hope – children’s milk, subsidised seeds, a clinic here, some school chairs there. It tramples over rights, ignores representation and makes arbitrary decisions, and it allows favoured cronies to become very rich by privatising and syphoning off what little the impoverished state has (O’Donnell, 1994). Neo-populism and its attendant client-ship is not a solution to problems of representation, participation and accountability, but for many people it appears to be a better short term strategy than voting for a ‘conventional’ politician who seems neither to understand nor to respect them but who performs a disingenuous pantomime six months before the election.

Unless and until citizenship can provide meaningful participation it will continue to be over-shadowed by client-ship, because the fact that inequality is built-into the patron/client relationship matters little in a social world where the equality of citizenship is a laughable myth. (…)

John D. Cameron
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

A better understanding of the differences between the ‘public performances’ and ‘backstage commentaries’ of poor and marginalized people in participatory budget schemes is important for both development practitioners and scholars. For practitioners, it is important to recognize that people may take part in participatory budget meetings to pursue goals that are very different from those of well-intended government officials and NGO staff. The divergence of popular goals and strategies from those of development professionals does not necessarily imply the ignorance or false-consciousness of poor and marginalized people, but rather may reflect a well-grounded skepticism of externally- driven development schemes and conceptions of development that vary from those of governments and donor agencies. I am not arguing that the strategies or knowledge of participants is either superior or inferior to that of outside development professionals, simply that it may be difficult to pursue some important long-term development goals – such as increased economic productivity and improved health – through participatory budget schemes in which local actors may prioritize more immediate short-term goals such as income earned through cement projects. At the same time, the widespread prioritization of small-scale cement projects in participatory budget meetings in the rural Andes should lead practitioners to reflect on the capacity of projects designed to serve long-term development goals to also serve the immediate priorities of local participants.

For scholars working from both mainstream institutionalist and more critical political economy and Foucauldian perspectives, it is important to recognize that the behaviour of participants in participatory budget meetings cannot be inferred from either the institutional design of participatory budgets or the intent of the donor and government agencies behind them. The involvement of poor and marginalized people in participatory budget schemes should not be confused with compliance with the goals of those schemes.

The subtle and hidden forms of agency that poor and marginalized people exercise within participatory budgets spaces should not be romanticized as resistance to ‘good governance’ initiatives intended to promote neoliberal globalization, but nor should it be overlooked. For practitioners and scholars alike, a greater understanding of the infrapolitics of participatory budgets requires more careful interpretation of what participants say and do not say in participatory budget meetings and a recognition that what they reveal quietly outside of those meetings may be more indicative of their priorities than what they say in public.

Read full article at allacademic

By Sam Binkley, Emerson College

Rich Dad Poor Dad is a best selling book on financial advice written by Robert T. Kiyosaki. Originally self-published in 1997 as supporting material for Kiyosaki’s financial advice lectures, and later picked up by Warner Business Books in 2000, the text relates a rich allegorical narrative about the mental hard wiring required for financial success, and the concealed “ways of thinking” practiced by the wealthy. Kiyosaki’s method is comparative: he tells of his childhood relationships with two fathers; one a biological parent, the other a friend’s father who undertook the task of young Robert’s financial education. Each father presented radically distinct outlooks on financial life. His own father, the poor dad, was a government man, head of the Department of Education for the state of Hawaii who, in spite of his impressive qualifications and career accomplishments, remained “poor” his whole life, snarled in a plodding, credentialist faith in institutional advancement as a slow climb up the ladder of bureaucratic hierarchy. The rich dad, on the other hand, was a self-made millionaire with an eighth grade education who held a deep distain for the naïve approach to wealth generation practiced by the majority of Americans—one that conceived of earned reward in terms of educational credentials and the patient advance to higher salaried positions within a single firm. Throughout the book, poor dad’s dour lectures on the virtues of patience, loyalty and circumspection were contrasted with rich dad’s exhortations to swashbuckling fiscal adventurism, self-interest and self-responsibility. Kiyosaki compares the advice offered by his two dads:

My two dads had opposing attitudes in thought…
One dad recommended, “study hard so you can find a good company to work for.”
The other recommended, “study hard so you can find a good company to buy.”
One dad said, “the reason I’m not rich is because I have you kids.”
The other said, “the reason I must be rich is because I have you kids.”
One said “when it comes to money, play it safe, don’t take risks.” The other said,
“learn to manage risk.”

At first blush, the case of Rich Dad Poor Dad might seem innocuous enough: another proselytizing tome in a long tradition of entrepreneurial boosterism extending from Horatio Alger through Norman Vincent Peale to Donald Trump—a discourse on fis-cal self-realization extolling the virtues of entrepreneurship and voluntarism as a personal ethic. Yet what distinguishes this example is not just its timeliness given the current zeal for anti-welfarist, anti-statist rhetoric, and its veneration for market cowboyism, (nor it’s stunning popularity, becoming a New York Times best selling title in 2002), but the specific way in which it dramatizes the dynamism within this space, what we might describe as the inner life of the neoliberal subject. This space is characterized by a specific tension between the inertia of social dependency and the exuberance and vitality of market agency—a tension that is, in Kiyosaki’s prose, barbed with exhortations to mobilize the latter against the former.

In what follows, the provocations posed by Kiyosaki’s tale of two dads will provide a backdrop for an inquiry into debates around what has come to be termed “neoliberal governmentality.” I take this term to indicate the ways in which subjects are governed as market agents, encouraged to cultivate themselves as autonomous, self-interested individuals, and to view their resources and aptitudes as human capital for investment and return. Neoliberal governmentality presumes a more or less continuous series that runs from those macro-technologies by which states govern populations, to the micro-technologies by which individuals govern themselves, allowing power to govern individuals “at a distance,” as individuals translate and in-corporate the rationalities of political rule into their own methods for conducting themselves. However, in much recent work on governmentality, the emphasis has fallen on the institutional logics, the assemblages, technologies and dispositifs, as Foucault called them, through which the rationalities of neoliberal governmentality invest populations, while less emphasis has been placed on the practical, ethical work individuals perform on themselves in their effort to become more agentive, decisionistic, voluntaristic and vital market agents. The tale of Rich Dad Poor Dad reminds us of the dynamic practices by which neoliberal governmentalities are incorporated. Moreover, it suggests that these practices are ethical, in the sense that Foucault used the term in his later work: they involve daily work performed upon specific objects or features of the self held to be problematic—“ethical substances,” as Foucault called them, which in this case implicates and acts upon the embodied, moribund collectivist dependencies and dispositions that are the legacy of poor dad’s mode of existence.

Read full article at Foucault Studies

By Javier Auyero, Pablo Lapegna and Fernanda Page Poma

“Since the early 1990s, much of Latin America has witnessed the simultaneous growth of both protest and clientelism (Svampa and Pereyra 2003; Giarracca 2001; Giraudy 2007; Levitsky 2003; Stokes 2005; Auyero 2007; Almeida and Johnston 2006; Shefner et al. 2006; López-Maya and Lander 2006), a twin process that most sociological and political science research deems unlikely. Patronage (its vertical networks, opportunities, resources, and ideological frames) tends to counteract the emergence of collective action (its horizontal networks, opportunities, resources, and ideological frames). The joint increase in clientelism and contentious politics is paradoxical only if we fail to pay attention to the zone of mutual influence between both political phenomena. Attention to the area of intersection and interaction uncovers a variety of ways that contentious politics articulate with patronage politics.”

Read full article at LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Vol. 51 Issue 3 – Fall 2009

By Pierre Beaudet (Alternatives)
Published at Rabble

Burqin is an old village. The story is that one day, Jesus stopped here on his way to Jerusalem. He met lepers and told to these wretched of the world that they would be healed and indeed they were, so says Luke in the New Testament . We visit a very antique church in the middle of the village where our Palestinian guide tells us this is precisely where the miracle occurred.

Today, Burqin is part of a densely-populated circle of villages living off what remains of their land. Most people identify themselves first and foremost as farmers even if, in real terms, their income now mostly comes from outside through, now declining, remittances from brothers and fathers that have migrated everywhere in the world.

Indeed, Burqin is in the middle of the storm. It’s been like that for quite some time. So is the whole Jenin district, a green and hilly region inhabited by over 250 000 Palestinians. The villagers revolted against British rule in the 1930s under the leadership of the famous Ezzedeen Al-Qassam. Later, they fought hard in subsequent wars against Israel. Finally in 1967, Jenin and the West Bank were occupied. In 1987 with the first Intifada, the whole district became a burning field of revolt. And despite the ‘interim agreement’ of 1993, it remains so even today. Technically speaking, Jenin is now ‘co-managed’, so to speak, by Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), as part of the ‘deal’ agreed under the Oslo agreement.

This evening, things are pretty quiet. Gathered to enjoy the usual narghile, people chat and share jokes. The weather is cool and pleasant. It seems so far away from any sort of conflict and tension. The ‘mukhtar’ (traditional village head) is happy because he has finished completing his house (after 25 years) where a large part of his extended family resides. When the night falls, we move to a marriage where hundreds of people have come to celebrate. In the center place of the village men gather to cheer the groom. In the surrounding houses, women are looking by as much as they can, but they also are enjoying their own ceremony. Marriage is really a way to assure redistribution. Before the end of the evening, the new family will have gathered enough money to start building their house, most probably over the top or beside the rest of the extended family (‘hamula’) which is at the heart of the Palestinian society.

Later, the loudspeakers call men to dabke, the Palestinian dance. They hold themselves by the shoulder and go around in ardent foot-trumping runs. There is no doubt about the substance of the matter, as songs, symbols and gestures are all about resistance, patriotism and ‘sumud’ (steadfastness). Toddlers run around with elders, with a majority of teens and very young men. It is taken seriously, you can see that in their faces. But it’s neither dramatic nor romantic. It has no other sense than expressing this combative identity which characterizes Palestinians. The party continues until late at night.

Most of the village has now gone to sleep. Arafat, Karim, Jihad, Refaat and many others are moving in and out to engage in the other favorite Palestinian art, politics. All of them, and indeed most of their age group have participated in resistance activities. ‘We are all graduates of the 1987 Intifada’ says Refaat. Most have gone to jail, many were tortured or maimed at one point or the other. This ‘generation’ came hard against the occupation. But it was also a challenge, although implicitly, to the original leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). After a while however, the PLO under Yasser Arafat was able to prevail. Nonetheless even today, the memory of the Intifada is very strong. ‘Israel was on the defensive when we pushed back their tanks with our bare hands’.

After the agreement between the PLO and Israel in 1993, there was hope that some sort of a deal would come true, even if not perfect. But rapidly, the house of cards came down. Successive Israeli administrations accelerated the locking-up of the occupied territories through the expansion of settlements and so-called «by-pass roads’, destroying the idea of a sovereign Palestinian state. Things got sour and very tough, especially when resistance pushed up again. When the second Intifada erupted in 2000, Jenin, as usual, became the epicenter. The whole Northern region became the nightmare for Israel because of the suicide bombers that came from it to blow themselves up in Tel-Aviv and other Israeli cities. In fact, many of these ‘shahid’ were from Burqin. ‘We were really surprised that so many of our neighbors became Martyrs. We understood later how many young men were so angry and determined to use their own body for what they saw as an act of resistance’ says Arafat. Later in 2002, Jenin became famous again when fierce Palestinian resistance caused scores of Israeli soldiers’ casualties. The army came in full force and literally bulldozed the refugee camp, killing 56 Palestinian civilians and fighters in a few hours.

Today apparently at least, Burqin and Jenin are ‘pacified’. The Palestinian authorities are working hand in hand with Israeli security under the guidance of US general Keith Dayton. It’s part of the latest deal which was approved by President Mahmood Abbas and implemented by his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. The fighters linked with Hamas or Fatah’s dissidents have been arrested or forced into hiding. Over 1000 Palestinians are detained by the PNA, without trial or accusation, just like over 10 000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israel. According to the human rights organizations, torture and maltreatment is abundant in the Palestinian jails.

However in terms of securing Israel, this not enough. Indeed, encirclement of Palestinian cities and lands remains tight. Even if some control points have been closed, there are literally hundreds of Israeli-controlled check-points in the West Bank. Otherwise, the ‘border’ remains closed except for a few dozen Palestinian workers who can work in Israel. Palestinians from inside the green line, who used to come shopping into the district, are not often seen, as they are discouraged by the roadblocks, therefore adding on the economic decline of the Palestinian areas. The destruction of Gaza is used as a terrorist threat: ‘do not dare to resist because we will do with you (in the West Bank) as we have done with them in Gaza’.

Around the table however, people are not here to lament about the occupation which they consider the ‘normality’. They have no illusion about the ‘peace process’ or on the economic benefits that were announced by the PNA and Israel in the last period. ‘The battle early in 2009 in Gaza destroyed any illusion that was left around’ says Refaat, a teacher currently managing a Palestinian NGO in Ramallah. ‘The idea that somehow, a political settlement is about to come is buried’. In the meantime, the economic and social situation remains dreadful, with unemployment rates of 50-80% and a very serious deterioration of living conditions. Before his illness, Ariel Sharon, the then Israeli PM had said it clearly, ‘we are going to put Palestinians on a diet’, meaning the kind of siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian society in the last seven years. Everything is done to weaken, humiliate, destroy the Palestinians except an all-out massacre which would remind the world of the situation. ‘Killing us slowly is more efficient from the official point of view in Israel’ says Refaat.

Ok, this is ‘normal’ from the point of view of people living under the occupation. But what next then? What can happen?

Everyone agrees that the Al-Aqsa Intifada triggered by Yasser Arafat in 2000 failed and in fact was used by the occupiers to strengthen their position. In the meantime, Fatah, the movement that led Palestinian resistance for the last 40 years, is agonizing as a credible and legitimate political force. Military resistance by Hamas also failed and even worst, the Islamist movement has fallen into the same pitfalls that were manifested by Fatah standing in as the ‘PNA’. This became evident with the events in 2007. After a brief fight, Hamas organized a ‘counter-coup’ to the move planned by the Israelis and the US through their Palestinian surrogate, Fatah’s boss in Gaza, Mohamed Dahlan. The problem however is that after this, Hamas became itself very authoritarian, using the ‘good old’ tactics of nepotism and control. ‘The ‘take over’ of the strip by Hamas in 2007, says Refaat, badly damaged the reputation of a movement that was initially seen by many as an alternative to the declining and corrupted post-Arafat Fatah’.

In the meantime under Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli regime seems to be determined to erase once and for all the possibility of ending the occupation. Is that the end of the story I asked my Burqin friends?

Our capacities are presently limited’ says Arafat, the local leader of the Democratic Front, one of the three left Palestinian parties [1]. He explains that the DF that used to have thousands of activists back in the late 1980s has now ‘only’ 100 members in Burqin. He is surprised when I say that very few villages in the world, even in countries with a strong activist tradition, can claim ‘only’ 100 local members (out of a population of 5000). Nonetheless for Arafat, the issue is rather qualitative. As for most of the people around the table, the fact is that currently, the Palestinians have ‘no leadership’. As DF activists, they do not really respect their own leadership although everyone agrees that Abd al-Karîm, otherwise known as Abu Laila (the current DF leader in the occupied territories), is brilliant and honest. ‘Our leaders have been transformed into the ‘loyal opposition’ and are not really opposing the capitulationism of the PNA’. Moreover, the leadership has accepted to play a minor role in the management of an unacceptable regime. ‘They criticized Fatah all the time, but the salaries of the officials is paid by Abu Mazen’ (nom de guerre of Mahmood Abbas).

In fact, even Abu Laila admits himself that his ‘hands are tied’: ‘We have now two police states, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank’. He believes that Abbas is cooking a deal with Hamas to perpetuate the impossible status quo, for ‘each one to have relative control over ‘his’ territory, leaving the occupation in command’. He is hoping to raise the issues of the social and economic dimensions of the present crisis so as to attract angry youth, but that is problematic. Traditionally, the DF as well as groups like the PFLP were perceived by the population as more ‘radical’ nationalists, all geared towards national liberation, rather than left-leaning socialist groups struggling for the social empowerment of the poor.

At another level, leftists factions like the DF are not well positioned to criticize the authoritarianism of the PNA and of Fatah, having themselves shaped by heavily-centralized decision-making. This democratic deficit is coming back to haunt the left. It is now discussed, and there are moves to implant another culture. But there is still a long way to go.

Mustapha Barghouti, now the head of the Palestinian National Initiative (al-Mubadara), was one of the few that saw this problem before others. He defected from the Communist party to promote another political culture, more open and inclusive, focusing on civil non-armed resistance against the occupation as an apartheid society contradicting all provisions of the international human rights convention. But now Mustapha is also pessimistic. Although a fervent supporter of the peace process, he cannot be but very somber: ‘ The Israelis have no incentive to compromise. They are not pressed in any fashion by the Palestinian authorities. They are comforted in their intransigence by the continuous support from the US, despite and beyond Obama’. Despite initial hopes and frequent encounters with the new administration in Washington, Mustapha sees no result to affect the sinister alliance condoning Israeli practices in the occupied territories as well as their aggressive behavior towards the Arab and Muslim countries.

So the spirit is a bit low tonight in Burqin. Nonetheless, I am informed that the activist core of ‘only’ 100 members remains active through social projects of different kinds. The ‘social safety net’ provided by a politicized civil society (closely linked with the left) is crucial for the people, apart from family support. My friends also animate a workers’ coalition against the local (municipal) authorities and UN agencies who, despite the fact that they employ many Palestinians, are not very respected because of inefficient and corrupted practices. The flame is kept alive and like nowhere in the struggling global south, activists remain connected with their people.

Is the solution through civil resistance initiatives like the well-publicized movement in Bil’in (near Ramallah)? It has been much promoted as the way to confront Israeli apartheid practices through peaceful demonstrations and well-planned media events. Around the room, there is a consensus that the tactics used in Bil’in are effective. Moreover, it was the most spectacular aspect of the first Intifada.‘We were able then to paralyze the occupation by confronting, without arms, the Israeli occupation. The non-military component of the struggle became the centerpiece of resistance.

However, it is ‘premature, says Arafat, to abandon altogether the military part of our struggle. This is not India here, and the Israeli occupiers are not like the British, who had no will to fight’. He concedes at the end that traditionally, the Palestinian struggle was ‘overmilitarized’ and did not, except during the first Intifada, build enough strength through mass mobilization. Political discussions carry on over the night. As people slowly retire, I am left with a contradictory impression. I am still struck with the statement about the ‘only’ 100 activists remaining. I keep thinking, ‘wow, if we could have this in my country!’

But the permanence of resistance goes beyond that. I understand that most of the people in Burqin are well aware of what is happening not only locally, but at a larger, even international level. On this of course the impact of Al-Jazeera, in addition to the wide use of the internet and mobile phones, cannot be neglected. ‘People now see and hear directly the voices of the opposition in Palestine and the Arab world’ says Refaat. ‘We have lost our naivety towards our self-proclaimed leaders. We are free thinkers now’.

In this village of 5000, there is no capitulation. ‘We are ready to rise up again, as we have no choice really’. Israeli occupation forces, even supplemented by PNA military and police, do not control the area. ‘This is not Egypt or Jordan, we do not bow down to the Sultan’ say my friends. Even if General Dayton is working hard to develop local repressive capacities, the occupation cannot rule by force only.

From the Palestinian side, resistance is not based on a ‘grand strategy’, therefore the inherent tendency within the movements to reproduce some of the same mistakes and impasses. But because it is a people’s struggle and not a movement of a minority, resistance remains basically uncompromising, so it is quasi impossible to crush it. Is this enough? Certainly not. But one day probably not far ahead, the facades of the occupation will crack again, resulting from the complex fractures that undermine the Israeli society and State (not talking about the declining evolution of the US Empire). Occupation will also crack from the imagination of Palestinians fighting endlessly, generation after generation. For sure, the people of Burqin will continue to be part of this invisible accumulation.

Notes:

[1] The DFLP originally came out of the Popular Front (PFLP), which remains numerically speaking the largest leftist force. There is also the People’s Party (former Communist Party).

From http://www.prwatch.org/node/8466

The negotiating team representing Honduras‘ coup government “rarely made a move without consulting … an American public relations specialist who has done work for former President Bill Clinton,” reports the New York Times. Roberto Micheletti heads the “de facto” government of Honduras, which took power after the military coup against elected president Manuel Zelaya. Micheletti “has embarked on a public relations offensive, with his supporters hiring high-profile lawyers with strong Washington connections” to lobby for recognition and against sanctions. Bennett Ratcliff of the California firm VA/R Partners is the PR advisor who guided Micheletti during negotiations. A “powerful Latin American business council” that supported the coup “hired Lanny J. Davis, who has served as President Clinton’s personal lawyer and who campaigned for Mrs. Clinton for president.” President Obama “said he wants Zelaya restored to office,” but the U.S. has kept its ambassador in Honduras, while all European Union ambassadors have been recalled, reports Bloomberg. While at the Patton Boggs law firm in 1999, Lanny Davis “worked for a Kazakh front group that was acting on behalf of President Nazarbayev … trying to convince the world that Nazarbayev was a democratic reformer,” Ken Silverstein said on Democracy Now! “Davis is working on behalf of some Honduran business groups,” including an “apparel trade group” that counts U.S.-based companies Fruit of the Loom and Hanes among its members.

By Francis Cody

“But for the women who had come to the office that day from Katrampatti, my sense is that they would only have been satisfied that they had performed the act of petitioning at grievance day if they had been able to see the collector and plead with him orally using generic conventions compelling superiors to act on behalf of the weak, not unlike those found in the praise language that had been erased from their petition. Their ambivalence is a product of having been denied the chance to make an affective claim through eye contact, ensuring that the collector would feel with their suffering. Karuppiah and I had tried to make it up to the petitioners by taking them all out to lunch after submitting the petition, but the bus ride home was certainly marked by disappointment and uncertainty about what had just taken place at the collector’s office. They all knew that it would be very difficult to collectively take yet another day off of work and come back to town.

Any governmental claims to rationalized and disenchanted Weberian bureaucracy remain particularly vexed in this context, because the collector does in fact sit in the erstwhile king’s seat, in his palace. In fact, he collects petitions in the old darbar hall where the king of Pudukkottai would have met with the court and those who had come to plead before royalty. Such a dense semiotic environment does not lend itself easily to a bureaucratic ideology of directness, or “reduced,” “logical” communication in the eyes of petitioners or even petition writers. The collector does appear to act like a king. It took so much pedagogical work just to get the group from Katrampatti to come to the collector’s office and it seemed somehow incomplete, in part because after such effort they simply turned in the sheet of paper at a small office without being able to see and talk to the collector at grievance day. The petitioners’ idea of seeing the collector directly (neratiyaka), a face-to-face encounter with a powerful patron, conflicts with the ideals of directness as the simple transmission of a communication in written form in which a petitioner has no face. Beyond this sense disappointment at not connecting visually or orally with their addressee, these petitioners have repeatedly been deceived or disappointed by the state, as by other higher powers. They know they are dealing with a realm of power that is in some sense beyond their control. This was, after all, an act of faith (oru nampikkaitan) as much as it was an exercise in citizenship.”

Read it at Cutural Anthropology

In Honduras, One-Sided News of Crisis

Critics Cite Slanted Local Coverage, Limits on Pro-Zelaya Outlets

By Juan Forero

“Several countries condemned the events of June 28 as a military coup. But in Honduras, some of the most popular and influential television stations and radio networks blacked out coverage or adhered to the de facto government’s line that Manuel Zelaya’s overthrow was not a coup but a legal “constitutional substitution,” press freedom advocates and Honduran journalists said.

Meanwhile, soldiers raided the offices of radio and TV stations loyal to Zelaya, shutting down their signals. Alejandro Villatoro, 52, the owner of Radio Globo, said soldiers broke down doors and dismantled video surveillance cameras.

“They grabbed me and put me face down and put six rifles on me, with a foot on my back holding me down,” he said. “It was like I was a common criminal.”

Such allegations underscore the one-sided nature of the news that has been served up to Hondurans during the crisis. According to results of a Gallup poll published here Thursday, 41 percent of Hondurans think the ouster was justified, with 28 opposed to it.

The de facto regime headed by Roberto Micheletti cited such support as he began talks Thursday in Costa Rica with that country’s president, Oscar Arias, who has agreed to mediate. Zelaya met separately with Arias, who said representatives of the two men will continue meeting in the days ahead.

In Honduras, though, the country’s new leaders, the security forces and the clergy argue that Zelaya’s removal had legal justification the rest of the world does not understand. Local media largely “slanted coverage” to favor that position, said Carlos Lauría of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

“The de facto government clearly used the security forces to restrict the news,” Lauría said. “Hondurans did not know what was going on. They clearly acted to create an information vacuum to keep people unaware of what was actually happening.”

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