2023/12/27

Mike Shedlock: Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Names Three Prerequisites for Peace

Mike Shedlock discusses Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Names Three Prerequisites for Peace

One thing I missed is “Gaza deradicalization”. Will that take months, years, or decades? How does that work? Is it even possible?

Assuming it is possible, Israel will have to prove itself. That will take investment in Gaza, more services, and more jobs. Mistrust is not one-sided.

Israel needs to build enough trust so that the ordinary Palestinian will be willing to hand over extremists and report extremist plans.

Emphasis Mine

Shedlock subscribes to the myth that the radicalization of Palestinians has nothing to do with the actions of the Israeli state over the past 75 years, nor to the genocidal ideology of Zionism. This myth posits that Palestinian radicalization originates solely with the anti-Semitism of the Palestinians, and therefore the solution to this radicalization is with education of Palestinians about the benevolence and good intentions of the Israeli state.

The reality of Palestinian radicalization lies in the daily oppression by the IDF in the West Bank and Gaza (aka "The Occupied Territories"). Palestinians are radicalised through daily humiliations by IDF and Israeli settlers. They are radicalised by the genocidial rhetoric of Zionism that is espoused explicitly by the Israeli far-right and condoned by the Israeli centre.


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2023/12/11

Paul Gregoire: Labor votes down Lidia Thorpe’s bill to uphold First Nation’s rights in law

Paul Gregoire discusses Labor votes down Lidia Thorpe’s bill to uphold First Nation’s rights in law.

Senator Lidia Thorpe had introduced the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Bill 2022. This was defeated in the Senate 27-10 despite the essence of the bill being just requiring the PM to report to parliament how well the Australian government is complying with the UNDRIP.

“Australia is especially violent when compared amongst the other English-speaking settler colonies,” Mununjali Yugambeh and South Sea Islander Professor Chelsea Watego, author of Another Day in the Colony, told the UNDRIP roundtable.

“We are familiar with terra nullius. We were deemed so subhuman that we lacked any Indigenous political sovereignty. And while we had the Mabo decision, that idea that our Indigenous political sovereignty not be recognised still remains firmly intact, as we saw today.”

The “violence is enacted” against First Peoples via all Australian institutions, she said. The UNDRIP held an opportunity for a way forward, and the current “needs-based approach” taken to First Nations affairs restricts self-determination.

This rights-denying system, Watego said, results in local First Peoples remaining the most incarcerated people on the planet. “The evidence base is clear here: the state is insisting on perpetrating violence on Indigenous peoples.”

Emphasis Mine

We, white Australians, have to accept that we are beneficiaries of a racist system. We are not the primary beneficiaries as these are the Capitalists and Rentiers. However, we are enough of beneficiary to be complicit in this racist violence.

With the failure of the Voice to Parliament referendum, the momentum towards greater recognition of Indigeneous rights has slipped back. We have to educate ourselves about the truth of Australian history and support movements for Indigineous rights.


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2023/11/27

Ted Rall: Cut Israel Loose

Ted Rall says that the USA should Cut Israel Loose

Israel has nearly exhausted the world’s patience. The amount of time that it can continue to wage war against Gaza without being isolated as a pariah state is measured in months, perhaps weeks. More embassy closings are coming. Sanctions will follow.

The United States should prepare itself for the next step: cutting Israel loose. This means cutting off military aid and logistical assistance, no more blank checks for its actions against Palestine. In just two months, American domestic public opinion has reversed, with a majority of young Americans now opposed to further assistance to Israel. Older voters are not far behind.

Getting back to the question raised at the beginning of this essay: if we were considering the question anew, free of the burden of history, would we embrace Israel as it looks and acts today? Would we supply them with weapons to bomb Gaza? Of course not.

We may or may not be able to stop Israel from its reckless and murderous carpet-bombing of Gaza. We certainly don’t have to be joined at the hip as they commit war crimes. Our alliance with Israel has outlived its usefulness.

Emphasis Mine

Rall is wrong. The USA has been defying world opinion since the 1960s. Witness the persistent Cuban blockade despite the UN General Assembly condemning it annually.

The global hegemon demonstrates its power by defying the protestrations of the less powerful as in The Melian Dialogue:

The Athenians offer the Melians an ultimatum: surrender and pay tribute to Athens, or be destroyed. The Athenians do not wish to waste time arguing over the morality of the situation, because in practice might makes right—or, in their own words, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".

The Melians argue that they are a neutral city and not an enemy, so Athens has no need to conquer them. The Athenians counter that if they accept Melos' neutrality and independence, they would look weak: Their subjects would think that they left Melos alone because they were not strong enough to conquer it.

The Melians argue that they will have the assistance of the gods because their position is morally just. The Athenians counter that the gods will not intervene because it is the natural order of things for the strong to dominate the weak.

Emphasis Mine

The USA has to continue to defy world opinion lest they thought to be weak and lose their hegemonic status.


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2023/11/20

Gutema Imana Keno: Some Notes on the Past of Oromo Society: The Story about Akkoo Manooyyee in Focus

Dr. Gutema Imana Keno (Haramaya University) discusses Some Notes on the Past of Oromo Society: The Story about Akkoo Manooyyee in Focus.

Summary

Imana (2023) firmly rejects Bamberger's (1974) hypothesis that the prevalence of the myths of matriarchy only justifies the existing patriarchy rather than recalling a historical transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. Imana relies on the consistency of the myths of the Oromo culture to that matriarchy was a historical fact in that culture.

While Imana (2023) is a valuable contribution for the study of matriarchical myths, the evidence presented does not convincely refute Bamberger (1974).

Historical Timeline

Imana (2023, p.4) writes:

Though the beginning and end of each of the categories of time indicated above cannot be known, the scanty but existing oral traditions of the Oromo seem to indicate the fact that for a long period before the emergence of patriarchy, Oromo society used to be matriarchal, or at least matrilineal. However, it should be underscored that the patriarchal system of the Oromo that came possibly with the gradual decline of the matriarchal system was not similar to the patriarchal system of the Westerners presented in different literature. Oromo society had never practised a hierarchical system of rule or governance, unlike western societies and the Abyssinians. Oromo society has been exposed to the Abyssinian's hierarchical political structure and alien cultures mainly since the beginning of the second half of the 19th century (Jalata and Schaffer, 2013).

The patriarchal system of the Oromo seems to have been started sometime before the beginning of the Gadaa system [>5,000 years ago] with the gradual rise of the system of private property and the development of marriage culture and the consequent men-headed families. Until then, it seems that women played unequivocal roles as mothers, leaders, and organizers of their society for thousands of years (Infs: Gabramlaak, Abduqaadir, and Ahmad Galatoo).

Emphasis Mine

Imana does not consider matriarchy and patriarchy to be hierarchical system of rule or governance. Imana is confused about these terms. Matriarchy and patriarchy are systems in which political power is vested primarily with a particular gender.

Imana follows Engels (1942, p.44) in that the patriarchy arose to take ownership of private property (herds in a pastorial society).

Against Bamberger

Imana (2023, p. ) writes:

Bamberger, in her 1974 work, specifically argued that stories and fables about female rule in ancient times do not reflect a previous history of matriarchy but instead were "social charters" created for male dominance. Considering the stories about the rule of women in Amazonian societies, she came to the conclusion that the stories themselves justify the rule of men by providing an alternative to an imagined society dominated by women. According to her, the stories justify the fact that women did not know how to handle power properly when in possession of it and, consequently, justify the inferiority of their present position. Therefore, according to her, stories about matriarchy are arguments for patriarchy. However, it is difficult to dismiss the stories about matriarchy as the orchestration of men to deny women political power. If women did not occupy any significant political power in the ancient past and if they were not threats to men’s power, what forced men to ideologically contest for power? It is also odd to discredit stories about matriarchy to functionally justify that men were in rule from the beginning and women were always subordinate to men in all aspects. The fact that stories about matriarchy exist in different parts of the world and in different societies seems to strongly suggest that there was a time when women had a certain political power, whether it was under a matriarchal system or under other socio-political arrangements. In this paper, therefore, the denial of the existence of the matriarchal period in human history is considered to be counterfeit and problematic.

Emphasis Mine

Imana does faithfully sumarise Bamberger (1974). Imana rejects Bamberger's arguments by saying the prevalence of the same structure to these myths indicates the historical reality of matriarchy.

Discussion

Both Bamberger (1974) and Imana (2023) agree on the same structure for the myths:

  1. Matriarchy existed since time eternal
  2. Men are eventually oppressed by the matriarchy
  3. Men overthrow the matriarchy
  4. There can be no return to matriarchy

There is a wide variance in the reasons and nature of the oppression of men by the matriarchy. For Bamberger, this variance indicates that these myths are ahistorical and only serve to justify the current status quo of a patriarchy.

Conclusion

The structure of the matriarchical myths from the Oromo culture matches that was articulated in Bamberger (1974). This similarity does not refute Bamberger's hypothesis, rather the similarity strengthens the hypothesis.

The existence of these matriarchical myths in both hunter-gathers and pastorialists refutes the acquisition of private property as the impetus for the rise and evolution of the patriarchy.

References

Bamberger, J. (1974). The myth of matriarchy: why men rule in primitive society. Women, culture and society, 263-80.

Engels, F. (1942). The origin of the family. Current Book Distributors.

Imana, G. (2023). Some Notes on the Past of Oromo Society: The Story about Akkoo Manooyyee in Focus. East African Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 8(1), 1-16.


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Ted Rall: Israel’s Real Goal in Gaza? To Kill the Buildings

Ted Rall discusses Israel’s Real Goal in Gaza? To Kill the Buildings

Forcing the population of Gaza to flee by destroying the territory’s infrastructure is the war crime of ethnic cleansing, defined in a UN report on the collapse of Yugoslavia as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.”

An indigenous resistance organization embedded into a civilian population like Hamas cannot be bombed into oblivion; the U.S. experience against the Taliban demonstrates that indiscriminate military action only increases support for your enemy. The IDF is aware of this; their U.S. allies keep reminding them of America’s failed counterterrorism operations after 9/11. Israel is far too aware of its dependence on U.S. political and financial support to think about killing all 2.3 million Gazan Palestinians—which, besides, would also disgust and alienate most Israeli citizens, no matter how enraged they are at Hamas.

Ethnic cleansing with the goal of annexing Gaza is the only plausible explanation for Israel’s behavior since October 7th.

Israel is willing to kill the people. But they’re really out to kill the buildings.

Emphasis Mine

Rall is correct to that the State of Israel is engaged in the war crime of Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza. This is the IDF playing the part of the Waffen-SS in the suppression of their version of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The IDF has now become their historical nemesis. And the Israeli state knows it can commit war crimes with impunity.

Hamas is also a symbol of successful resistance against IDF by forcing the evacuation of the illegal Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005. By expelling Hamas and all Palestinians from Gaza, the IDF will erase all memory of this humiliation.


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2023/11/17

Michelle Berkon: Australia has a problem with truth-telling

Michelle Berkon discusses Australia has a problem with truth-telling.

In colonial settler projects the world over, language and law are the tools of white supremacism, glorifying the colonial entity, erasing Indigenous ownership of coveted land and property, and criminalising resistance.

The inscription on Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s statue in Hyde Park is a perfect example.

This man arrived on these shores with child slaves — two young boys purchased in India. He authored the Appin Massacre, the murder of 14 Dharawal and Gundungurra men, women and children.

He strung up on trees the corpses of two of these men, Cannabaygal and Dunnell; and had the skull of one sent to Scotland as a trophy.

This man is described as “a perfect gentleman, a Christian and supreme legislator of the human heart”.

Emphasis Mine

As we are witnessing the genocide in Palestine, the Western media is promoting the colonial-settler project in Israel by:

  • downplaying the atrocities committed by the IDF;
  • portraying Palestinian resistance as terrorism;
  • downplaying the confiscation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers;
  • denying the existence of Palestine.

No wonder the ruling class wants to protect statues as the statues justify the current status quo of a white supremist culture.


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2023/11/15

Joan Bamberger: The Myth of Matriarchy

Joan Bamberger discusses The Myth of Matriarchy

Summary

Matriarchy does not exist today in any society. The historical existence of matriarchy remains disputed. There is no evidence from myths that the adoption of settled agriculture caused the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy. The myth of the matriarchy hampers the women's movement by diverting attention away from changing existing gender relations.

Origin of Matriarchical Studies

Bamberger (pp. 263-4) writes:

The earliest and most erudite study of matriarchy was published in Stuttgart in 1861 by the Swiss jurist and classical scholar Johann Jakob Bachofen. His Das Mutterrecht (Mother right: an investigation of the religious and juridical character of matriarchy in the ancient world) had an impact on nineteenth-century views on the evolution of early social institutions. Arguing from mainly poetic and frequently dubious historical sources (Hesiod, Pindar, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Herodotus, and Strabo), Bachofen tried to establish as moral and historical fact the primacy of “mother right,” which he thought sprang from the natural and biological association of mother and child. Matriarchy, or the dominion of the mother “over family and state,” according to Bachofen, was a later development generated by woman’s profound dissatisfaction with the “unregulated sexuality” that man had forced upon her. A gradual series of modifications in the matriarchal family led to the institution of individual marriage and “the matrilinear transmission of property and names.” This advanced stage of mother right was followed by a civil rule by women, which Bachofen called a “gynocracy.” The rule by women was overthrown eventually by the “divine father principle,” but not before mother right had clearly put its stamp on a state religion. Indeed, it was this sacred character of matriarchy, founded on the maternal generative mystery, that represented for Bachofen the bulk of his evidence in favor of ancient matriarchies. (Italics in original

Emphasis Mine

Bachofen started matriarchical studies by postulating that the generative power of females was the basis for the political system of matriarchy. His contributions also include:

  • Use of myths to reconstruct historical events
  • Postulate that patriarchy replaced matriarchy directly
  • Postulate that ideology initiated this replacement—this follows the Hegelian Dialects that was prevalent at the time (1860's)

Myths Used to Study History

Bamberger (pp.266-7) writes:

Since the publication of Das Mutterrecht this “virgin territory” has been explored by a horde of archaeologists and social anthropologists. Their diligent searches into the prehistory of Mediterranean cultures as well as into the present conditions of primitive societies around the world have not uncovered a single undisputed case of matriarchy. Even the Iroquois, once a stronghold for “matriarchists,” turn out to be matrilineal only, although Iroquois society still comes the closest to representing Bachofen’s ideal “gynocratic state,” since Iroquois women played a decisive role in lineage and village politics. Yet in spite of the substantial power wielded by women, men were chosen consistently as political leaders. At most, the Iroquois today are considered a “quasi-matriarchy ” (Wallace, 1971).

To have cast doubt, as I have just done, on the historical evidence for the Rule of Women is not the same thing as challenging the significance of the mythologies of matriarchy. The main issue would seem not to be whether women did or did not hold positions of political importance at some point in prehistory, or even whether they took up weapons and fought in battle as the Amazons allegedly did, but that there are myths claiming women did these things, which they now no longer do. This mythological status of primitive matriarchies poses as interesting a problem as any generated in the nineteenth century about the credibility or viability of matriarchy as a social system. Undoubtedly the false evolutionism and mistaken prehistory led to the obfuscation of any real contribution Bachofen might have made to the study of myth, since he did not consider that the “events ” related by myths need not have a basis in historical fact. (Italics in original

Emphasis Mine

At the time (1971), Bamberger could not find a case of matriarchy in existing primitive societies. This absences contradicts the hypothesis that settled agriculture allowed patriarchy to replace matriarchy.

The prevalence of myths of matriarchy and its replacement by patriarchy strengthens the hypothesis that this was a real historical event.

Bamberger (p.267) writes:

Rather than replicating a historical reality, myth more accurately recounts a fragment of collective experience that necessarily exists outside time and space. Composed of a vast and complex series of actions, myth may become through repeated recitation a moral history of action while not in itself a detailed chronology of recorded events. Myth may be part of culture history in providing justification for a present and perhaps permanent reality by giving an invented “historical” explanation of how this reality was created.

Emphasis Mine

This methodology permits myths to be interrogated in order to reconstruct the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy as an experience.

Matriarchy Myth as Tool of Oppression

Bamberger (p.280) concludes:

Myth and rituals have been misinterpreted as persistent reminders that women once had, and then lost, the seat of power. This loss accrued to them through inappropriate conduct. In Tierra del Fuego the women tricked the men into performing both male and female chores; and in the northwest Amazon they committed the crime of incest. The myths constantly reiterate that women did not know how to handle power when they had it. The loss is thereby justified so long as women choose to accept the myth. The Rule of Women, instead of heralding a promising future, harks back to a past darkened by repeated failures. If, in fact, women are ever going to rule, they must rid themselves of the myth that states they have been proved unworthy of leadership roles.

The final version of woman that emerges from these myths is that she represents chaos and misrule through trickery and unbridled sexuality. This is the inverse of Bachofen’s view of pre-Hellenic womanhood, which he symbolized as a mystical, pure, and uncorrupted Mother Goddess. The contrast between mid-Victorian notions of the ideal woman (they are not those of ancient Greece, as Bachofen supposed) and the primitive view, which places woman on the social and cultural level of children, is not as great as it appears. The elevation of woman to deity on the one hand, and the downgrading of her to child or chattel on the other, produce the same result. Such visions will not bring her any closer to attaining male socioeconomic and political status, for as long as she is content to remain either goddess or child, she cannot be expected to shoulder her share of community burdens as the coequal of man. The myth of matriarchy is but the tool used to keep woman bound to her place. To free her, we need to destroy the myth.

Emphasis Mine

Bamberger argues that since the myths of matriarchy posits an unrealistic view of women, the pursuit of a return to matriarchy (however imagined) precludes the inclusion of women into existing power structures.

References

Bachofen, J. J. (1967). Selections Myth, Religion, and Mother Right: Selected Writings. Princeton University Press.

Bamberger, J. (1974). The myth of matriarchy: why men rule in primitive society. Women, culture and society, 263-80.


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2023/11/14

Sam Williams: Palestine

Sam Williams discusses Palestine

This brings us to another reason: imperialism needs to keep anti-Semitism alive after the Holocaust. Israel claims to be the state of the entire Jewish people whether they live in Israel or not, enabling U.S. imperialism to direct the hatred Israel inevitably creates among the Palestinians, other Arabs, as well as peoples throughout the world toward Jews as a whole. This directs that hate away from U.S. imperialism, keeping anti-Semitism alive after the Holocaust. It is, therefore, impossible to fight against anti-Semitism without at the same time fighting against Zionism.

Israel claims to represent the entire Jewish people. If it’s allowed by Genocide Joe to carry out a full-scale genocide against the Palestinian people, all Jewish people will be blamed for it. This makes possible a full-scale revival of Nazi-style anti-Semitism that argues that Hitler was correct about the need to exterminate all Jews. Whether or not they realize it, every Jewish person has a vital stake in the fight to halt the current Palestinian Holocaust being carried out in the name of all Jewish people. It’s a matter of life and death today for the Palestinians but tomorrow for the Jews.

Emphasis Mine

The Israeli government and ruling class needs anti-Semitism to justify the existence of the State of Israel. If anti-Semitism were to be eliminated, then there is no justification for the State of Israel. However, the need for the State of Israel will still remain as an outpost of US imperialism to forestall Arab unity.

This is why the supporters of Israel are eagar to find anti-Semitism everywhere. They need that justification for the existence of Israel. Without that justification, the real aims of US imperialism would be exposed.

The State of Israel needs to subsumed into a free and secular State of Palestine. This state should be able to wlecome back all Palestinian refugees and their descendents.


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