Palestine: Turning the Jihad into a Class War

Yasser Arafat's shadow is still felt on the people of the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The former leader of Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization may have intended in creating a secular socialist republic out of the occupation of Israel, but he, along with the organizations that he led, went rotten. Graft and corruption were rampant, and while leaders of the resistance movements were gaining prominence in the third world anti-colonial stage, the people of the Palestinian territories were left in poverty and without an infrastructure that could deliver aid. Out of this rose new movements that capitalized on the discontentment with the secular movements: Hamas and the Islamic fundamentalist movements rose to prominence. Hamas actually delivered aid and some protection to Palestinians, and it helped their popularity enough to win them a majority vote in the Palestinian Authority. However, ever since 2006 it is clear that Hamas is just as ambitious and corrupt at the PLO, enacting religious laws and refusing to cooperate with Israel at all and deepening the poverty by provoking Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip. I am totally opposed to the actions that Israel took in late 2008/early 2009 in the Gaza Strip, for the military strike killed mainly innocent civilians who had nothing to do with Hamas. While Israel continues to bury its head in its paranoid neoliberal rectum, Hamas is continuing its theocratic takeover of Palestine. What needs to happen now, not only in Palestine but in all places of the Middle East where America sets its eyes upon and where Islamic fundamentalists prey on the poor peoples, is a new movement of secular Middle Easterners who wish to see new nations created not by religious authority or by nationalistic ideals, but nations that are formed with the concepts of economic equality, social justice, equal rights, and international cooperation. Too long has the Middle East been ruled by corrupt royal families (Saudis), religious demagogues (Iran), or kleptocratic dictators (Syria, Iraq, Libya). Democracy must be formed over there, but not by imported American neoliberal democracy, but radical socialist democracies where individuals and indigenous peoples retain rights while workers and farmers own their own means of production. And with leftist secularism embedded in the culture of Palestine, new movements can spring up which challenge the lies of neoliberalism and theocracy. Freedom must be won for Palestine, and the movement will be led not by despotic clerics, but by the people.

End of High School

Well it's come down to it: April of my senior year and all I have to worry about for school are the AP Tests, a few miscellaneous projects, and my senior project evaluation. Now I'm headed to the small liberal-arts college of Danville, Ky known as Centre. It's a fine institution, with only about 1,215 students or so, and it has a high reputation. Hopefully, I can engage some not-so-sure/open-minded liberal types to join with the Socialist Party, but one step at a time. My goal is to get a Kentucky chapter of the SPUSA started at some point, mainly with some people in Louisville I know who might be interested. Further, becaue Centre uses Sodexo as their food supplier, I could work with the Student/Farmworker Association during their college campus "Dine With Dignity" campaign. In short, I have a lot of options open.
Beyond the travails of political campaigns, the end of my high school career has had me thinking about my school career. I have been to three different high schools, and it has been a strange experience at times. I was a member of my Freshman high school's track team (a 2 mile distance runner, I sucked), and I was also involved in the mock-government Kentucky Youth Assembly sponsored by the KY YMCA from Freshman to Junior year and I loved it. I also wrote for my community's youth section of the newspaper some in junior year, I did the local county teen court, with other various activities here and there. Senior year has seen me do two play productions at my high school and work with a refugee family from Bhutan for my senior project.
In short, although I wasn't a huge fan of the high schools I attended freshman to junior year, my high school career has been pretty damn good overall: I made a lot of friends, I have explored from Ohio, New York, and Chicago to Rome, Florence, Cannes, and Paris, and I will miss it. But if this has been only a taste of life so far, I can't wait for the main course. I love my family and my friends, and will miss them all, but I am about to move past the threshold of youth and enter adulthood.

Thoughts on working with a family from Bhutan

I have been working since October (2009) with a family of refugees from Bhutan, who are part of an ethnic group known as the Lhotshampas (Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lhotshampa) . The group as a whole is tied culturally to Nepal, and generally they are Hindus, while the whole of Bhutan is much more culturally influenced by Tibet and the majority of the people are Tibetan Buddhists. Since the 1980s, a time when Bhutan was an absolute monarchy, the government of Bhutan has been carrying out ethnic cleansing of Lhotshampas in the country, not in the sense of mass killing but rather driving the Lhotsampas out of the country. Most of the Lhotshampas have ended up in refugee camps in Nepal for the past 20 years or so, and the Nepalese government won't take them as citizens. The act of ethnic cleansing, for one, has created a moral dilemma for myself, as I have attempted to follow the teachings of Buddhism for some time, but the knowledge that there are people who claim to be followers of Buddhism and still commit inexcusable atrocities is very disturbing. How can any person who claims to be a Buddhist-a philosophy which NEVER makes any reference of philosophical/spiritual supremacy over other ideologies- commit acts that are completely discriminatory and xenophobic?!
I look at my own family to see if there is anything wrong with them to the point where they in any way deserved this fate, and I have found nothing. They are a good family of five, a mother and father with a son in high school, a daughter in middle school, and a much younger daughter. The mother is expecting anther child soon, and the family is doing all they can to provide for her well being, even as she and the father are helping to keep their small apartment clean, with the father working late shifts at his job. They are some of the most kind and hospitable people I have known, and they never cease to be warm and open to me. I have only spoken to the children some about the situation in Nepal (I usually talk to the children in most matters as the parents are still struggling with English), and the children have told me about their lives in the Nepalese camps, as the children themselves were actually born in those camps. They spoke mainly of the political situation in Nepal, the clash between the old Hindu traditionalists and the Maoist supporters, but they did tell me some about how their family, along with other Lhotshampas, were essentially "run out of town" by the Buddhists years ago. For their age, the children seem to be some of the brightest people I know, due to their situation growing up, and I believe that it they will be successful in this country due to their realization of the world around them.

The American Left, it's ego, and why it must unite

Around two years ago, I met with a couple of men from a small Trotskyist organization called The International Bolshevik Tendency. Mainly based in the Northeast and California, this small group of orthodox Trotskyites has very radical goals for a group of their size. One of the men, a guy I was regularly in touch with for about a year, talked about their organization, explaining why they weren't a "party" persay, rather a propagandist group waiting for conditions to ripen here in the U.S. in order for a revolution to commence. Fair enough, however if you look on the group's website, you shall notice that they spend a great deal of their time bashing other Trotskyist and Socialist/Communist groups, mainly the International Communist League, formely known as the Spartcist League from Rosa Luxenburg's famous group, who they split with over 25 years ago after a member was expelled for alleged sexual misconduct, something of which the IBT disagrees with. Now my issue is, how do they expect to do anything about spreading propaganda among the working masses, much less foamenting revolution, when they spend so much energy fighting with people who essential say and believe the same thing?

This is the story of America's Left, warring factions of dogmatic socialists and communists over who's right or wrong, whether they should try to work within major parties (Democratic Socialists of America and to some degree the Communist Party USA) or sit around waiting for society to digress to the point where revolution occurs and then seize power (almost every existing Trotskyist), or form a separate party to contest elections (SPUSA and the Party for Socialism and Liberation). It is like Monty Python's "Life of Brian", where the anti-Roman imperialist groups fought over who were the most correct. Only the anarchists seem to have their act together. Although they are similar in numbers to those of the Socialist Party USA and DSA, they are essentially united because of their non-hierarchical ideology. However, they are not without fault as well, for they are just as unorganized over essential demands as much as socialists. I refer to the recent G-20 protests, where interviewed anarchists told reporters they are essentially protesting capitalism, along with their own personal political issues. Now I support actions against globalization, but we need to understand that as good as protesting may be, we need to do more.

What the left needs, more than ever, is a unite front. And I understand that group like the Communist Party will argue "there's no point, united fronts only lead to more harm than good", but unfortunately, with the current situation of the Left, we are going NOWHERE unless we organize, put aside our egotistical and dogmatic ideological differences, and realize that we are all unite by common themes: anti-globalization, anti-capitalism, international solidarity, LGBT rights, immigrant rights, and labor rights. We are all socialists in some form, whether we follow Debs, Berstein, Marx, Lenin, Kropotkin, we all strive to improve society by going against the rampant free market. Not only that, but we need to campaign in the most conservative places of the country, in order to educate the youth about the dangers of globalization and the necessity for a socialist society. Unless we recognize that we are different and accept those differences to unite, the Left will never make a significant dent in American politics or society, and we can expect the elite of this nation to continue to rise at the expense of common Americans and the poor of the world.

On The Current Tea Party Movement

At the risk of sounding like an Obama supporter, I would like to mention that I do feel that his handling of the economic crisis by putting taxpayer money into the hands of private enterprise is unacceptable. We must let the free market get a taste of its own medicine by letting it collapse, thus making people around the world realize the dangers of unregulated free-market globalization.

However, the new right-wing backlash against the current economic crisis is not unexpected in itself, but its far-right rhetoric is very telling of the movement. The tea-party protesters are primarily poor white Americans who did not support Obama in the election, and feel that he is dangerous to the U.S. because of his "socialist" policies. NOTHING could be further from the truth. For one, Obama has completely dropped the single-payer option from the healthcare debate, and has created this trumped-up concept of a "public option" while letting private insurance still exist. Secondly, Obama may have put tax money into private enterprises like banks and the auto-industry (and thus some ignorant conservatives have cried "socializiation"), but this also is false. If Obama were a socialist, he would not only put tax-payer money into industries, he would have the government run them or have the government own the means of production, neither of which he has done, he has simply given them a bailout.

It is obvious, from the rhetoric of their protests to the propaganda of Fox News, that the Tea Party protesters are ignorant of their concept of "socialism" and continue to portray Obama as a demagogue. Even when he is attempting to give them some sort of healthcare plan, they complain, although the majority of them are uninsured. It is my personal opinion, from witnessing the recent school speech controversy and the recent Capital Hill protests against healthcare reform, that although they may truly be fiscal conservatives, the stench of Jim Crow reaks from the Tea Party movement, due to the fact that many of these insecure poor whites may feel bitter that an African American has risen to the highest position in American politics. They may try to hide behind the "socialist" argument, but when Obama tries to address schoolchildren and encourage them to succeed and the Tea Party reaction is "he's trying to politically indoctrinate our children", I can't help but wonder, when Presidents Reagan and Bush senior also addressed children, if there is some hidden motive behind the zealotry of the Tea Party.

On Obama's Victory

It has been almost been five days since Obama won the presidential election here in the United States, and for Democrats, the honeymoon has begun. Many people in the U.S. and around the world see the victory of an African-American as a truly progressive step this nation, and to some extent, it is progressive considering African-Americans were the victims of deeply-rooted Jim Crow laws of the South as recent as 40 years ago. Also, many Americans really believe Obama will bring about multiple changes to the U.S., which will strengthen the economy and makes us more open to foreign countries. However, I personally see Obama as a new face to an old system. True, I do think his ideas of government are more realistic than John McCain's, and I am happier to see Obama win over McCain, but I doubt the system of the United States will change that much in the next four years (or eight years, depending on his performance now). Not to mention, Obama is now the head of the other monopolizing party of the U.S., which supports the same big-business and capitalist initiatives that the Republicans do (the only difference is the type of business Democrats support). So will Obama bring a lot of change to Washington? Well, it depends on your opinion of "a lot".

Introduction

Well, I've done it, I've delved into the world of the blog, and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. Seeing as how I really have nothing more to do than to take care of an 11-year-old Jack Russell Terrier who stills acts like she's a puppy while my parents are away, I figure: what the hell?

My purpose for this blog, you ask? Well, my ultimate goal is to improve my writing skills, but the reader may be subjected to some teenaged rants of politics, current affairs, movies, music, or life in general. But topic ideas are fine, I don't want this to turn into the internet diary of a whiny high-schooler.

So, thank you for taking time out of your already hectic 21st Century life to look at my blog, and feedback is always appreciated.