Resistance in striated space

Christopher Kullenberg July 25th, 2008

Chinese authorities have set up special zones for protests during the olympics, which may take place two weeks before the inauguration of the games.

This, however, is not a typically Chinese strategy. During the olympic games in Athens and Salt Lake City, protests were limited.

With more than 253 million Internet users, and only 50 being imprisonated (which of course is 50 too many), there is a fundamental opposition between controlled surfaces, and the possibility of coordinated action. This tension is of course highly relevant to resistance studies.

The next number of the Resistance Studies Magazine will be a special issue on Chinese resistance and the Olympics. Watch out for a CFP in the near future!

Politics in everyday life

Safaa July 18th, 2008

I am now writing on a thesis about everyday politics and would like to continue on a thread written by Stellan Vinthagen in this blog the 5th of June.

The aim of the thesis is to outline different forms of everyday political acts. In studying organisations that deal with politics in everyday life I will try to see what, how and when individualised politics occur in Sweden. I can already now see that some organisations are dealing with hidden resistance, as the one Stellan wrote about, and others with more open acts that not necessarily could be called resistance.

In order to continue the categorisation I need to define what resistance is and what is not when comparing stealing from workplace, or foot-dragging, with buying fair trade or organic products. There are differences between the acts that need to be taken into consideration. They are close to categorisations such as “closer within system” or “more outside the system” (or the fields “encouraging” or “delaying” the system) or “within” or “outside norm”.

I agree with Stellan that it is highly interesting whether these informal, individual acts could be the start for uprisings. However, I was initially interested in this subject when thinking whether these individual acts could in themselves form a collective act, or even mobilisation. Though they seem to occur separately and unorganised I think that they could be collective as well. If anything, the individual acts are, according to me, organised within a discourse, especially the one of sustainable development. It dictates the time and place, and how to act.

And the question of mobilisation; could it be, that through politicising the everyday life, there is a stronger probability that people mobilise easily? If organisations give the space and forum for it, could they create another form of mobilisation of an “underground” or “quiet” uprising performed by individuals separately and anonymously? Examples of organisations are Planka.nu that encourages people to fair-dodge on public transport in protest of the capitalisation of public transport and Maska.nu that encourages, for example, foot-dragging to slow down production. They seem to organise and mobilise people, even though it is anonymously.

Also, what role could political acts performed in the everyday mean for the bigger picture? Even though the quantity of consumers boycott may not be enough to, for example, change a multi-national corporation like McDonalds, I believe that politicising food consumption at least gives a preparation for the time when the company simply can no longer continue as it does today (as the question is not if we have to change our consumption and production, rather when and how). So for example, if there is a common agreement, or discourse, that the meat industry is lethal for our planet and survival, then it could be easier to put governmental restrictions on that industry, as people will be prepared to live (nearly) without it, even though they used to consume from it. Vegetarians and vegans could be examples of individuals that are prepared for a food culture that probably most people have to live in, in the near future.

Reminder - Five days until CFP dead line

Christopher Kullenberg July 5th, 2008

There are still five more days to submit articles to the summer issue of the Resistance Studies Magazine (2008#3). Remember that we also, accept shorter reviews of books, articles and films, along our main focus on journal articles.

The fourth issue will be a special issue on resistance in China in the context of the Olympic games. Thus, this is the last opportunity for general topics during 2008.

For submissions, check out the guidelines, or if you wish to discuss your piece in beforehand, do not hesitate to contact the editors via e-mail.

Good luck with your manuscripts!

/Christopher Kulleberg

Google encouraged to resist Court order

jj July 4th, 2008

A federal judge in New York has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom a database linking users of YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far, with every clip they have watched there.

Eric Schonfeld writes on TechCrunch that if Google doesn’t appeal or refuse the order to hand over data on YouTube users to Viacom they should apply in such a way that the receivers may regret: Print out the 12 Terrabytes they asked for. The court did not specify in what FORM the data should be delivered. That would be an amount of paper that is equal to some of the world largest libraries.

Does any of you have other examples where orders have been obeyed in similar ways; that is to make the fulfilment a nightmare for those who gave the order?

I would be interested in other examples for a coming article.

Shooting Back

klang July 2nd, 2008

Providing cameras and video cameras to different groups is not an uncommon method which allows the subjects to bring their own lives into focus without the direct mediation of the “outsider” camera/filmmaker. Naturally all uses of technology contain risks of bias and slanted views - nobody still believes that the camera never lies? Even if many still believe that fashion images are “real”.

In January 2007, B’Tselem launched Shooting Back, a video advocacy project focusing on the Occupied Territories. We provide Palestinians living in high-conflict areas with video cameras, with the goal of bringing the reality of their lives under occupation to the attention of the Israeli and international public, exposing and seeking redress for violations of human rights.

In projects such as these technology in the form of the cameras and Internet as a distribution medium can be used to empower those involved in a conflict while still providing a preaceful alternative way of coping with everyday violence.

NAFTA- resistance

jj June 23rd, 2008

An excellent presentation of NAFTA and the resistance to it by Janet M Eaton, PhD, academic, researcher, activist and free trade critic:

http://www.stopthehogs.com/pdf/nafta-resistance.pdf

Full text and more info on the agreement: http://www.sice.oas.org/trade/nafta/naftatce.asp

Call for papers - Resistance Studies Magazine 2008 03

Christopher Kullenberg June 11th, 2008

[please re-publish this message widely]

The Resistance Studies Magazine is calling for papers to the next general issue, expected to be published in mid August.

We will consider:

- Theoretical and empirical articles on power, resistance and social change.

- Reviews of scholarly articles and books.

On publication of the third issue, we will also officially launch our new website rsmag.org. This way we will be able to further develop the interactivity as well as the impact of the magazine.

Deadline for manuscripts: July 10. 

For further information, please see our Submission guidelines.

RSM added to the directory of Swedish journals for culture and arts

Christopher Kullenberg June 8th, 2008

We are happy to be added to the Swedish directory of journals for culture and arts (see our page here). Even though we publish in English only, we managed to get on the directory.

We encourage all readers to look for other directories and sites to spread the word of the magazine. It is totally open access, so the potential is unlimited when it comes to readership. If anybody knows of a place where we should be, please send an e-mail to christopher.kullenberg@theorysc.gu.se.

Soon the RSM will also launch a site of its own in order to provide possibilities for feedback and better publication formats. After an excellent editorial meeting in London, we are convinced that articles in resistance studies have a great potential within and outside academia.

Foucault & resistance

Per Herngren June 7th, 2008

“Foucault denied two crucial commonplaces of political thought: one, that there was a singular locus of power that could be contested and countered by those who were subject to specific rules of power, and two, that there were specific singular principles that organize such resistance. In his view, acts of resistance generally were not singular instances of binary oppositions or antinomies, but rather were multiple, mobile and transitory.”

“Thus, for Foucault, ‘when one defines the exercise of power as a mode of action upon the actions of others’ (i.e. as government in the broadest sense) then one must of necessity include resistance as an exercise of freedom (Foucault, 1982: 790; 000d: 292). Thus . . . power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individuals or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments, may be realized.

. . . [A]t the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly rovoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. (Foucault, 1982: 790)”

“While power relations are determined within the diagram, understood as a non-unifying immanent cause, resistance arises from the fold in the outside of thought. Here the resonance with Spinoza is too strong to ignore. In rejecting transcendental concepts of reason, sovereign power and transitive causality in favour of constitutive power and immanent causality Spinoza foreshadowed a mode of political engagement that was brought to fruition by Deleuze and Foucault.”

Source

James Juniper and Jim Jose, “Foucault and Spinoza: philosophies of immanence and the decentred political subject”, History of the Human Sciences 2008, 21, 1.

Foucauldian Reflections

Protect Academic Freedom: Download Al Qaida Training Manual

Stellan Vinthagen May 31st, 2008

Dear network members and all interested in academic freedom: Last week one researcher and one student were arrested at Nottingham University and kept for six days while their families, colleges and friends were interrogated. Their crime? They downloaded Al Qaida information, e.g. the Training Manual, from public websites, and, yes, as part of their studies of terrorism. After being reported they got arrested and now one of them are facing the risk of deportation, despite none of them are being charged…

This is one among several major threats to academic freedom, especially for us who are interested to study resistance. In solidarity with our fellow academics we need to act. One idea that is being spread through various academic networks, e.g. the British based Critical Terrorism Studies, is to make a massive download of, yes you guessed it: the Al Qaida Training Manual, and, guess from where it is downloadable? The US Department of Justice….:

You find it here: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/terrorism/alqaida_manual/

Academics at University of Nottingham did a protest gathering in which they read out the content of the downloaded material earlier this week.

For more information on this attack on academic freedom, see http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2282045,00.html

When do Individual Everyday Resistance Turn into Public Organized Resistance?

Stellan Vinthagen May 29th, 2008

During the International Studies Association (ISA) conference in New York City, February 2009, there will be two panels organized by the Resistance Studies Network: one on individual everyday resistance, one on organized collective resistance (with social movements, etc). These two panels represents the current division within resistance studies, one is focusing on discourses, the micro-physics of power relations, non-articulated resistance which goes on, sometimes unnoticed in the ordinary life of people. The other direction is focusing on resistance organizations, revolutions, social movements, and dramatic resistance actions. This division has historical roots. Early resistance research did only see the public, collective and organized (and violent) forms of resistance. Not until the ground breaking work of James Scott (1985, Weapons of the Weak) did resistance researchers observe the importance of hidden, everyday and individualized forms of resistance.

I think one of the key research areas today is to investigate the dynamics, mechanisms, techniques and contexts in which everyday forms of resistance transforms into collective organized resistance. Sometimes open rebellion erupts, revolutions develop in contexts where no signs did exist. In subaltern groups living under similar conditions you find that some groups do public resistance, others not.

So, when do the one turn into the other? What are the necessary conditions? What do resisters need to do in order to turn everyday resistance into open rebellion?

One possibility is that what you need is a strong resistance culture, a well developed culture of symbols and stories, a “fertile ground” in which more public forms could grow. But I am sure the answer is a lot more complicated than that. Hopefully we will see more students in the future focusing on this key problem.

People’s Tribunals as Constructive Resistance

Stellan Vinthagen May 23rd, 2008

At the last Gothenburg Resistance Seminar yesterday we discussed the law as expression of power and of resistance. Based on a (Swedish) paper from Dr Mikael Baaz (senior lecturer in international relations and legal studies) we tried to look on possibilities for law strategies for social movements, based on an understanding of the law as a social construction. One of the key conclusions were the need for alliances between legal experts/lawyers and activists. Another conclusion was that different societies/communities could compete over legal principles/systems. The sovereign nation state and its legal system is always challenged and not as sovereign as it claims.

I have since some time been thinking that the interesting phenonmenon of “People’s Tribunals” are under-researched as a form of resistance. It represents a broad alliance of law-experts/lawyers/judges, activists and communities affected by oppression. And, it is an attempt of undermining the monopoloy of law by states.

During September 2007 a critical movement organized People’s Tribunal against the World Bank was conducted at a university in New Delhi (JNU); the Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank in India. Various organisations, experts, intellectuals, researchers and victims presented their witness and evidence in which the bank was accused of conducting crimes against people with its anti-human and anti-development policies and projects. The jury found in their judgement the World Bank and Indian government guilty on several accounts.

The first such political but evidence-oriented movement organised tribunal I know of was the Russell Tribunal 1966-1967 against the US war in Vietnam in which among others the peace activist and philospher Bertrand Russel and intellectual Jean Paul Sartre took part. Recently we have also seen such tribunals against the US occupation of Iraq.

The problem with such tribunals are of course that they easily tend to be ignored, especially if their demands of evidence are low and if they tend to become mere political theater.

Still, in some cases they serve as the pre-hearing within civil society in preparation for making conventional law-suites, as with the recent “ethical tribunal” against 20 European corporations in Peru within the People’s Summit. The tribunal has over its 30 years of existence conducted 36 sessions.

Is these kind of people and movement organised tribunals possible to understand as resistance? When the state authorities (prosecutors, judges, etc.) are not taking accusations from affected people serious, these peoples are conducting the trials themselves. By refusing to accept a monopoloy of initiative and authority to judge right from wrong, to make normative statements based on thorough investigation - these groups could be said to do “resistance”.

We have earlier seen how movements protest against the laws which parliaments make, or the judgements courts give, and even movements trying to, sometimes succeeding to, create new laws in collaboration with willing law-makers/states when proper laws are lacking (e.g. the successful campaign for an international law against anti-personal mines), and most commonly, movements breaking the laws they don’t find legitimate (e.g. the Civil Rights Movement with M L King in the US). All these forms of resistance is much discussed, but , as far as I can see, not so much the people tribunals. With the tribunals we have a case of movements making the judgements themselves, challening the silence and (status que supportive) passivity of contemporary courts. As resistance it can be understood as pro-active and constructive; creating the better system while undermining the domination by existing systems.

Since the new International Criminal Court is a result from temporary ad-hoc tribunals (most famously the Nürnberg Trials but also the special tribunals in ex-Jugoslavia, Rwanda, etc.) it might not be impossible that also civil society organised “tribunals” result in new judicial praxis.

But such progressive effects of people’s tribunals are only possible, I think, if we talk about tribunals made in opposition to a dominant judicial system, not if it is made into a part of that dominant system, as in China during the Cultural Revolution…Then, the tribunals are not articulations of emerging new law and principles of justice but articulations of harrasment, oppression and violence.

If anyone has recommendations, thoughts or references to share on this topic I would be thankful.

Cathedrals and Bazaars

Christopher Kullenberg May 16th, 2008

Karl Palmås has released a short video on two modes of social organisation called A Robot Historian Ponders the Cathedral and the Bazaar, which is currently being displayed on the Museum of World Cultures in Gothenburg.

Accordingly, the cathedral mode of organisation is hierarchical and is inspired by military chains of command, whereas the bazaar follows a decentralised and autonomous mode of social production. The cathedral model has been dominant within western capitalism, and permeats corporations, States as well as some forms of resistance. The bazaar model, however, is according to Palmås, more democratic and productive, and he also argues in the first issue of the Resistance Studies Magazine, that the conceptual model of the computer has inspired and actualised this mode in contemporary activism.

The different modes of social organisation is crucial to Resistance Studies, and I personally hope to see more articles in coming issues of the RSM dealing with this question.

RSM qualified for the Directory of Open Access Journals

Christopher Kullenberg May 12th, 2008

The Resistance Studies Magazine has qualified for becoming a member of the Directory of Open Access Journals. (Click here to go to our entry).

To be included there are both epistemic criteria as well as demands on openness. The journal must be peer-reviewed and needs to have an active editorial function, and the articles must always be downloadable free of charge, allowing readers to redistribute, copy and print all content.

To me, stressing opennes (read the editorial in the second issue) is also related to making better studies and proper science. Our knowledge on resistance must always be available for people to object to, and to further develop, both in theory and practice.

I call out to academics worldwide, to consider the possibility of actively choosing open access journals, when possible, to support this effort in making knowledge accessible to as many as possible - in order to use it, resist it, and to challenge old models with new ones!

Hizbollah change strategy in Lebanon

jj May 11th, 2008

Hizbollah withdraws from Beirut easing crisis, but promise to continue with civil disobedience.

Hizbollah is withdrawing from Beirut after the army overturned government measures that sparked a revolt by the Syrian-backed Shi’ite movement. The group had been in control of Muslim west Beirut after driving out pro-government militias in a battle lasting several days. It was the worst internal fighting in the capital since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The pullout came after the army said the head of security at Beirut airport could keep his job and that military commanders would handle Hizbollah’s communications network. These were the two issues underlying the violence. Hizbollah has their own communication Network and camera surveillence in part of the city. One reason for the government to shut down the net was that Hizbollah had cameras on the road to the airport and could hence see and identify people arriving to and leaving from the airport.

The crisis has highlighted the weakness of of Prime Minister Fouad Sinioura anti-Syria cabinet. Before allowing the army to broker an end to the stand-off he had accused Hizbollah of staging a coup and trying to re-assert Damascus’s influence over the country. In his first response to Hezbollah’s de facto takeover of the west of the capital, Mr Siniora said his government would never declare war against the Shia group.

The fighting that claimed at least 27 lives spread beyond Beirut, reigniting sectarian tensions in several areas. The street battles may have ended but Hizbollah has promised to continue a campaign of civil disobedience against the government until all its political demands are met.

Sources: BBC, EuroNews and Chinaview

US labor movement against the war in Iraq

Christopher Kullenberg May 3rd, 2008

Strikes. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) announced that it would shut down West Coast ports on May 1, demanding complete withdrawal from Iraq. This is, according to the ILWU, the first time an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war, and they call for other unions to join their protest.

On May 1, some 25 000 dockworkers stayed home and all 29 ports up and down the coast were closed until the evening shift. However, no corporate media covered this event, except a local San Francisco TV-station (click to go to Youtube).

See also

Indybay

US Labor against the War in Iraq

Congratulation with 75 years of Resistance.

jj May 3rd, 2008

Catholic Worker
Founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin on May Day 1933, during the height of the Great Depression, the Catholic Worker began as a radical newspaper and grew into a wider movement of hospitality and social activism. It now includes nearly 200 communities in the United States and eight other countries. The Catholic Worker movement have continued to resist consumerism, violence of all sorts, injustices, and discrimination. They have even resisted to go online with their magazine the Catholic Worker.

It remains committed to a “firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person” and to the ideals of “nonviolence, voluntary poverty (and) prayer,” protesting “injustice, war, racism and violence of all forms.”

Day was a one-time radical Greenwich Village bohemian who underwent a conversion experience and became renowned as a Catholic writer and social activist.

Another constant for those involved in the Catholic Worker Movement is its cornerstone newspaper, the Catholic Worker, which still remains a penny a copy (excluding mailing costs).

If you want to study the movement and their activities you will find archives here and more information on the ongoing activities here.

Resistance Studies Magazine issue 2008#2 is here!

Christopher Kullenberg May 1st, 2008

*** This message may be republished anywhere ***

The second issue of the Resistance Studies Magazine is out now (Direct link to pdf). It contains five highly relevant articles discussing and defining what Resistance Studies is all about and one review contributing to the critical debate on the concept of resistance. The magazine has doubled in length since the first issue came out in January, and through online publication this of course renders no problems.
The titles and authors are:

  • Claims to Globalization: Thailand’s Assembly of the Poor and the Multilevel Resistance o Capitalist Development, by Pei Palmgren, New York University
  • Becoming Power Through Dance, by Duygun Erim, The Open University
  • Changing the system from the outside – an evaluative analysis of social movements opposing the 2007 G8 summit, by Patrick T. Hiller, Nova Southeastern University
  • Multinational Corporations and Human Rights Abuses: A case study of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People and Ijaw Youth Council of Nigeria, by Victor Ojakorotu (Monash University) and Ayo Whetho ( University of KwaZulu-Natal)
  • School’s Out: strategies of resistance in colonial Sierra Leone, by Christine H. Whyte, London School of Economics
  • Review; “Conceptualizing Resistance”, by Jocelyn A. Hollander and Rachel L. Einwohner, by Johan Johansson, University of Gothenburg, Museion

Please spread the word, and if you run a website or a blog, you are welcome to link to the magazine page!

Also the second issue has been produced with a zero budget, relying solely on the work of dedicated researchers and intellectuals. All of you who have contributed, even with the smallest things; Thank you so much!

Christopher Kullenberg (editor and publisher)

Jakob Lehne (assistant editor)

Ploughshares disarmament in New Zealand

Per Herngren April 30th, 2008

WAIHOPAI ANZAC PLOUGHSHARES

Waihopai Spy Base Penetrated

“The morning, 30 April 2008, we entered the Waihopai Spy Base near Blenheim.

Our group, including a Dominican Priest, temporarily closed the base by padlocking the gates and proceeded to deflate one of the large domes covering two satellite dishes.

At 6am we cut through three security fences surrounding the domes - these are armed with razor wire, infrared motion sensors and a high voltage electrified fence. Once inside we used sickles to cut one of the two 30-metre white domes, built a shrine and knelt in prayer to remember the people killed by United States military activity.

We have financed our disarmament through personal savings, additional part-time employment and a small interest-free loan from one of our supporters.

Sam, Peter and Adi have been denied bail and will remain in custody. The next hearing at Blenheim District Court.

There have been over 100 Ploughshares actions over the last twenty years around the world. Ploughshares direct actions are linked through the common factors of: entry to locations connected to military activity, and involve some form of property destruction, which is called disarming weapons or dismantling weapon systems.

 

Read more:

http://ploughshares.org.nz/

See the video:

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1320238/1755601

A Resistance Wiki (The relaunch)

Stellan Vinthagen April 21st, 2008

Your help is needed! Resistance Studies Network is trying to collect the collective intelligence and collaboration around information, thoughts and resources on “resistance” through our own Wiki. A wiki is a collective platform for editing texts which makes everyone who has logged in able to change, add and start new texts.

The purpose of the Resistance Studies Wiki (click on the link above: “Wiki”, or directly here) is to collect views, theories and references concerning “resistance” and its different sub-headings; like e.g. Definitions of resistance, types of resistance, terrorism, revolution or collecting information on resistance novels, films, websites, etc.

You are all welcome to add to the Resistance Wiki. Please help out making it to THE resource for resistance studies.

PS: The Wiki was launched more than a year ago at the same time as this webpage went online but we had problems with so much spam that we had to close it. This time you need to create your own login in order to edit, but it is easy and you do it yourself.

Olympic Games - The next arena for global protests?

jj April 20th, 2008

In the nineties we saw an interesting move from parts of global civil society; they used the Top Level Summits to empower themselves, protest, and reach the media headlines. This year we have seen a number of actors within civil society using the opportunity of the visits of the Olympic Torch to make their voice heard. Tibet is only one of the issues we have seen on these occasions and much more is expected until and during the games begin on August 8th. While Joseph Goebbels used the 1936 Games for promoting Nazism and Black Panther made the 1968 games in Mexico worth remembering we now see huge masses of people taking to the streets with a wide range of agendas.
Torch Protest in Dharamsala
Torch Protest in Dharamsala
Tens of thousands of police and military troops to guard the “symbol of peace and cooperation” is difficult to explain without trying to understand why these people are on the streets. When the actual Games begin we can expect even more demonstrations; and probably not only in Beijing. With other words: En excellent time and arena for anyone who wants be visible in international media.

Interesting enough we have in recent days seen demonstrations from supporters of the Chinese politics protesting against the demonstrations in Paris, Buenos Aires, London, Delhi and elsewhere. These dynamics of en emerging Chinese nationalism, maybe due to protests against the regime would be a fascinating filed to research. As China grows economically and militarily and open up to the rest of the world the role of an emerging civil society within China should be followed by people interested in Resistance studies and Civil Societies.

The future Olympics Games will have several opportunities for a number of groups to take the opportunity. In 2010 the Olympic Games will take place in Canada. And already have aboriginal leaders in Canada´s First Nation started planning to disrupt the Games over poverty and land claims. Several North American Indian bands in westernmost British Columbia province are threatening bridge blockades, airport disruptions and other protests if no progress is made to curb extreme poverty in native communities and to resolve their outstanding land claims. “I wouldn’t rule out blockades, I wouldn’t rule out demonstrations,” David Dennis, vice president of the United Native Nations, told the daily Globe and Mail.

He said the protests could kick off as early as next February, one year before the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver on Canada’s Pacific Coast.

“The situation here is compelling enough to convince Canadians that while it is okay and right for them to express outrage with the Chinese government’s position against Tibet and the Tibetans, they should be just as outraged, if not more so, about our situation here,” Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said Thursday at a press conference.

For the Olympic Games in London in 2012 we can expect protests from a number of former and present colonies. The British war on Argentine in the Falklands war, engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan etc can easily be focus for protests. Olympic Games in 2014 takes place in Sochi in Russia. With the autonomous Abkhazia as closest territory and South Ossetia who both struggles for independence from Georgia there will for sure be demonstrations and protests. Not far away is Chechnya, Dagestan, and other areas with people who want to cut their links to Moscow. The Russian empire have a long history of atrocities and the growing authoritarian tendencies with censorship and surveillance creates new conflicts regularly.

It is not a spectacular prophecy that the Olympic Games for some decades to come will be a platform for resistance. A lot of documentation and case studies to be done by researchers!

A work made by resistance-students

Zofia April 17th, 2008

subversive-cross-stitching.jpg

This photo is from the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, who has a cooperation with the University of Gothenburg. At the University there is a course called “Power, resistance and change”, linked to an exhibition at the museum called “Take action! 83 ways to change the world”. On the little note placed beside the students it says:

Craftivism:

Here you can see some of the students taking the course
“Power, resistance and change” here at Museion. They
started a craftivism-group after a very interesting lecture
on the subject. The group meets once a week stitching,
sewing, cross-stitching or doing other traditional craftwork.
Today they made themselves part of the exhibition.

Egyptian forces on alert as cyber-activists incite to strike

jj April 10th, 2008

In recent time several social movements have successfully used electronic communication as their main means for organizing campaigns. May be the first time was the so called “sms-revolution” in the Philippines 2001. In February this year in Colombia a huge demonstration against violence was organized via Facebook.

I wonder if anyone have collected info on such cases? I would be very interested in cooperating with others for a coming article on the topic of “Organizing Movements via www”.

jj

Here is a case from Egypt calling for civil disobedience on Sunday:

From: http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=local&newsid=73656
Cairo, April 7 (DPA)
Thousands of security forces were deployed around Egypt Sunday for fear of an outbreak of unrest after opposition activists launched a week-long cyber-campaign calling for civil disobedience and strikes in protest of rising food prices and poor wages.

Egyptian opposition activists have launched a civil disobedience campaign they termed “Stay Home” using information technologies, such as the internet networking site FaceBook, blogs, mobile phones and emails.

Egyptians have been urged to take part in a general strike and protests Sunday to demand wage increases and a curb to food price rises.

Over 200 activists from the Kifaya opposition movement and other groups, including the leader of the opposition Labour party, Madgi Hussein, have been arrested on their way to stage demonstrations in Cairo and other cities, security and opposition sources said.

Seven activists who launched the campaign on FaceBook were also arrested.

“We are very happy with the outcome of the campaign. Many workers, students, and even schoolchildren stayed home,” an opposition member of parliament, Hamdin Sabahi, told DPA.

Several opposition campaigners were arrested in the town, Sabahi said.

In central Cairo, files of anti-riot policemen carrying shields and wearing helmets took their position on pavements and around squares in the area, which houses Egypt’s parliament, ministries, hotels, embassies and several syndicates.

Cameramen were banned from taking photos and filming in the centre of the city and journalists were harassed.

“Stay away. We are protecting the country,” shouted a police officer at photographers and journalists.

Outside buildings housing the unions of lawyers and doctors in the centre of the Egyptian capital, hundreds of armed policemen blocked the exits to avert any demonstrators from taking to the streets.

Scores of people were allowed, however, to stage protests and raise banners of the stay-home campaign on the stairs of union buildings.

Similar scenes were seen around university campuses in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. Student protests were allowed but only within the confines of their campuses.

In the northern Mahala town, the centre of the country’s textile industry, hundreds of anti-riot police were stationed, especially outside the main textile factory.

At least 10 activists were detained in Mahalla, the sources said.

The cyber campaign for civil disobedience has caused a stir in Egypt over the last week.

The government reacted nervously by issuing a warning that it would take firm action against anyone who would respond to the call to strike.

“Any attempt to incite unrest or disturb public order will be firmly met with legal action,” warned a statement by the ministry of interior.

Government departments have issued circulars warning their employees against participating in the planned strike.

Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have received a call to the Sunday strike by email, SMS, or word of mouth. The call has sparked fears among ordinary Egyptians, who remembered the bread riots of 1977.

The riots were sparked by rises in food prices and lifting of subsidies on bread, which led to mass arrests and human rights abuses by police.

The strike comes two days before key municipal elections, the first to be held after constitutional amendments in 2007.

The government has launched a crackdown on members of the popular opposition Muslim Brotherhood movement and their candidates ahead of election.

Paradoxically, the Muslim Brotherhood has distanced itself from the civil disobedience campaign.

“We have not taken part in the campaign for the general strike and will not take part,” Mohamed Habib, a senior member of the movement told DPA.

“The campaign of civil disobedience has been decided by a handful of political groups. This should have been discussed and decided by all opposition blocs,” Habib said.

IANS

Direct Engagement: Film Making of Daily Life as Resistance

Magid Shihade April 9th, 2008

Direct Engagement: Film Making of Daily Life and ResistanceVisit Iraq, and The Roof By Kamal Al-Jafari 

          There is always some new outlet, new ideas, new hope, despite the depressing reality in so many places, and at this time specifically in the “Middle East”. This is what one comes out with in watching the new documentaries by Kamal Al-Jafari.

           A Palestinian with Israel citizenship, Al-Jafari after spending months in Israeli jail, leaves to Germany to study at the Institute of Art in Cologne. For his master thesis-project, he makes this interesting documentary that takes place in Geneva, in a square/neighborhood, where the Iraqi Airline travel office used to be, and was closed after the U.S. invasion and destruction of Iraq.

          The documentary Visit Iraq is a humorous look at how Geneva residents project cleches on the office of Iraqi Airlines that once vibrant place for travelers visits, now remains empty, unoccupied.

          There, Al-Jafari spends weeks asking people in the neighborhood what do they think about that office, and why is it empty, unoccupied. Most those interviewed were very “suspicious” of why the office was no longer occupied, ignoring to what happened to Iraq in 1991. Many had their own prejudice about this “mysterious”, “strange” office, and the people used to work in it. One Arab interviewee responded to the film maker by telling quiet a different story about the office. He said, it was a great place where many Arabs in Geneva used to hang out, talk to each other, discuss politics, society and other issue. The Arab  interviewee seemed nostalgic for the loss of the place, like many now who are nostalgic for Iraq before U.S. occupation in 2003.

         The Roof is also an exploration of physical and psychic place, yet not Geneva nor Iraq. It is a film about Al-Jafari own family, and own hometown—Jaffa—used to be a vibrant Palestinian port city on the Mediterranean. Jaffa was transformed into a shanty town in a sense, a depressed neighborhood of the “cosmopolitan” Tel-Aviv city.

            In 1948, while the war against Palestinian and Palestinians started officially on a large scale, many of the residents of the city left, escaped under the fire of the Zionist troops. Out of 190,000 then, only 30,000 remained. Those who remained, among them Kamal and part of his family, live under this salient pressure of the past, and the present hardship as second class citizens in a country that was built on the ruins of their own society.

           Those who appeared in the film from his family, to some neighborhood residents, family, and friends, were a mirror of the brutal past, and criminal present of colonial reality.

          Jaffa—a place they lived in for generations, whose name, and its streets have been changed by the Israeli colonial myth making, and geographical imagination, is also a place where these living witnesses continue to struggle, burdened by psycholigal violence of “their” state-Israel, and by its policies of clearing as much land as possible to be filled with as many Jews as possible.

            Yet, these Palestinians remain, stay put, live, and make the impossible possible despite all odds, despite the past, and despite the present reality of a state machine that aims at their disappearance, and targets their memories of a peaceful place by the water, nothing fancy, yet dignified.

           The title of the movie—the roof—is about the second floor where Kamal and his family live. That second roof was supposed to be the apartment where his uncle was supposed to finish and live, yet he died in 1948, and the apartment remained unfinished, so is also the Palestinian story inside Israeli colonial cave, is unfinished one that remains to be a place of hope, pain, misery, racism, and resistance through the most “mundane” ways, in a struggle that aims to bring dignity to indignified life brought on the Palestinian by colonial modernity.

            The silence of the space, emptiness, melancholic appearance, is a witness to the past and present reality under “Israeli-Western democracy”. From Geneva to Jaffa, the answer lies in as much as in the Western hegemonic gaze, as much as in the resilience of the Arab-Palestinian, who view history in centuries not in decades, and who views history as the making of human deeds and its challenge by human misdeeds.  

Mexican Women Resisting Global Capital Locally

Stellan Vinthagen April 7th, 2008

On the 10th of April the Gothenburg Resistance Studies Seminar is discussing women workers in Latin America and their resistance to capital. Assistant Professor Edmé Dominguez gives a preliminary final report from her field research of women workers in Mexico and their resistance to “global capital at the local level”. Dominguez has during several years done research and published on these themes.

The paper is possible to download at the link above “Seminars”. All are welcome! (details of when and where you find on “Seminars” above).

Over 100 organizations call for boycott of “Israel at 60″ celebrations

jj April 5th, 2008

The “Boycott-Divest-Sanctions” National Committee has called for a boycott of celebrations planned by the state of Israel to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Israel’s creation in 1948. 104 organizations have signed on to the appeal, including civil society groups, non-governmental organizations, trade unions, popular committees and political organizations.

Will Resistance Studies Network support this appeal?

Boycott Israel

The appeal challenges the celebration of the creation of the state of Israel, saying that the project of Israel is a colonial project that completely disenfranchised the indigenous Palestinian population.

In addition, the appeal urges “international civil society in all its components, particularly institutions and individuals working in the arts, academia, sport, trade unions, and communities of faith” to boycott any events associated with the “Israel at 60” celebrations. The appeal states that support of these events undermines the Palestinian resistance, while strengthening the Israeli Occupation’s hold on Palestine.

The following is the text of the appeal, and the list of signatories:

Palestinian Appeal to International Civil Society

Sixty Years of Dispossession and Ethnic Cleansing

Boycott the “Israel at 60″ Celebrations!

30 March 2008

How can you celebrate? The establishment of the State of Israel sixty years ago was a settler-colonial project that systematically and violently uprooted more than 750 thousand Palestinian Arabs from their lands and homes. Sixty years ago, Zionist militias and gangs ransacked Palestinian properties and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages. How can people of conscience celebrate this catastrophe.

Israel at 60 is a state that continues to deny Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned right to return to their homes and receive compensation, simply because they are “non-Jews.” It still illegally occupies Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. It persists in its blatant denial of fundamental Palestinian human rights, in contravention of international humanitarian law and human rights conventions. It still subjects its own Palestinian citizens to a system of institutionalized discrimination, strongly reminiscent of the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa. And Israel gets away with all this, thanks to the unprecedented immunity granted to it by the unlimited and munificent US and European economic, diplomatic, political, and academic support.

In view of this multi-faceted oppression that is the reality of Israel today, we regard any Arab or international participation, whether individual or institutional, in any activity that contributes, either directly or indirectly, to the “celebrations” of Israel’s establishment, as collusion in the perpetuation of the dispossession and uprooting of refugees, the prolongation of the occupation, and the deepening of Israeli apartheid. Inviting Israel as a “guest of honor” to the Turin and Paris book fairs, for example, is not only a deliberate betrayal of basic principles of human rights, including those enshrined in the laws of the European Union itself, but is also a deliberate attempt to cover up Israel’s crimes against the Arab people, especially its successive war crimes in Lebanon and Palestine, and its acts of slow genocide against a million and a half Palestinians in the besieged and collectively punished Gaza Strip. In short, celebrating “Israel at 60″ is tantamount to dancing on Palestinian graves.

We urge international civil society in all its components, particularly institutions and individuals working in the arts, academia, sport, trade unions, and communities of faith to boycott the “Israel at 60″ celebrations wherever they are held in the world.

These celebrations, by definition, insult our history, violate our rights, and deepen our oppression. They also render the path to justice, freedom, equality, and sustainable peace based on international law longer than ever before.

Institutional Endorsers:

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
Department of Refugee Affairs - PLO
Jerusalem-The Arab Cultural Capital Project, Jerusalem
Higher National Committee for the Defense of the Right to Return
The General Union of Palestinian Women
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, PGFTU
Palestinian Farmers’ Union
Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), Gaza
Federation of Palestinian Refugee Camp Youth Centers
Higher National Committee for the Commemoration of the Nakba, Palestine
Refugee Affairs Department, Mobilization and Organization, Fatah Movement
Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO)
Ittijah-Union of the Arab Community Based Organizations, Haifa
Palestinian Lawyers’ Syndicate
Palestinian Journalists’ Association, Jerusalem
Palestinian Engineers’ Syndicate, Jerusalem
Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, UPWC, Ramallah
Stop the Wall-the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
Union of Employees at Private Schools-West Bank
Association of Residents of Depopulated Villages and Cities, Ramallah
General Federation of Cultural Centers, Gaza
Jerusalem Center for Social & Economic Rights JCSER, Jerusalem
Federation of Independent Workers Committees, Gaza
League of Palestinian Refugees in Europe
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem
Occupied Palestine Golan heights Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI)
Al-Aswar Organization for Cultural and Social Development, Acre
University Teachers Association, Gaza
Joint Advocacy Initiative of the YMCA-YWCA (JAI), Jerusalem
General Union of Health Service Workers, Gaza
Aida Refugee Camp Social Center, Aida Refugee Camp
A’idoun Group, Syria
Palestinian Community in Scandinavia
Canadian Arab Federation
Palestinian Counseling Center, Jerusalem
Land Research Center, Palestine, Jerusalem
Muwatin the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy
Palestinian Association of Brantford–Canada
Center for the Defense of Freedoms and Civil Rights (Hurriyat)
Wihdah Democratic Action Institute (Wa’ad)–Bethlehem
Federation of Agricultural Action Committees
Canada Palestine Association, Vancouver
Addameer, Ramallah
Ma’an Development Center, Ramallah
Gaza Center for Culture and Arts
Voice of Palestine, Canada
Canadian Palestinian Association, Ontario, Canada
Taghrid Association for Culture, Development and Reconstruction, Gaza
Jabalya-al-Nazaleh Cultural Center, Jabalya Camp, Gaza
Federation of Agricultural Work Committees, Gaza
Turathuna Charitable Society, Gaza
The Popular Committee at al-Burayj Camp, Gaza
El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe, Al-Bireh
Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, New York
General Union of Services and Trade Workers, Gaza Governorates
The National Council of Arab Americans - Metropolitan New York Chapter, NY
The Arab Muslim American Federation
The Palestinian American Congress, New York
Dramatists’ Federation
Society for the Development of Women, al-Burayj Camp, Gaza
Yanbou’ Cultural Forum, al-Reina
Palestinian Human Rights Monitor (Rassid), Gaza
Yabous Productions, Jerusalem
The Arab Student Observatory of Victims of Occupation and Blockade of the General Union of Arab Students (GUAS)
Arab Culture Society
Al-Siwar-Arab Feminist Movement to Support Victims of Sexual Assault, Haifa
Popular Art Centre, Al-Bireh
Federation of Working Women’s Committees
Palestinian Federation of Women’s Action Committees
Al-Najda Association for the Development of Palestinian Women
Teacher Creativity Center, Ramallah
Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art (PACA)
Al-Quds Information Bank, Gaza
Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, Ramallah
The Palestinian Working Women’s Society for Development
Jimzo Charitable Society
Al-Lidd (Lydda) Charitable Society, Ramallah-Al-Bireh Governorate
Al-Lidd (Lydda) Social Association, Beitunia
Lifta Charitable Society, Palestine
Committee of Residents of Greater Masmiyya, Ramallah-Al-Bireh Governorate
Falsteen Al Gaad association – Deheisha refugee camp
Meethaq Center for Development, Alkahder
Women Development Center, Addoha, Bethlehem
Al Feeneeq Center, Duheisheh Refugee Camp
Palestinian Progressive Youth Union, Gaza
Palestinian Women’s Information and Media Center, Gaza
Said Mishal Foundation for Culture and Science, Gaza
Assala Association for Heritage and Development, Gaza
Jerusalem Center for Arabic Music, Jerusalem
International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah
Juthourr Cultural Society, Gaza
Women’s Research and Legal Counseling Center, Gaza
Media Forum for Women Affairs Advocacy, Gaza
Palestinian Cultural Center, Gaza
Refugees Popular Committee, Gaza
Workers Resource Center, Gaza
Progressive Union Work Society, Gaza
Friends of An-Nour Center Society, Gaza
Al-Aqsa Charitable Youth Welfare Society, Gaza
The One Democratic State Group, Gaza
Arab Cultural Forum, Gaza
Palestinian Democratic Union-Fida

Dare Not Walk Alone

jj April 4th, 2008

BROOKLYN, NY–(Marketwire - April 3, 2008) - The independent feature film “Dare Not Walk Alone” (www.darenotwalkalone.com) opens April 25 at the Laemmle Grande 4-Plex in Los Angeles. Acclaimed as “brave filmmaking” by the San Jose Mercury News, this award-winning documentary delivers a new generation’s take on civil rights, set to a soundtrack that flows from gospel to hip-hop.

“Dare Not Walk Alone” vividly portrays the heroism of campaigners for equality, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., alongside grim realities of life today on streets where those campaigns were fought, in a place that symbolizes what Sen. Barack Obama has called “the gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.”

Hailed by critics as “a powerhouse of a picture… a triumph of outrage and empathy” (Aaron Mesh, Willamette Weekly); “a powerful and important film” (Orlando Weekly); “the grittiest version of civil rights history I’ve ever seen” (Peter Miller, Co-producer of Ken Burns’ Jazz).

The film’s young writer and director, Jeremy Dean, used rarely seen archive footage, like Dr. King’s arrest in Saint Augustine, Florida, during a campaign of non-violent protest against segregation. Says Dean, “A lot of people who visit Florida don’t know about the courageous campaign of civil disobedience coordinated here by Dr. King, the SCLC and the NAACP. Tourists of all races now vacation on beaches where blacks once braved club-wielding whites to swim.”

The 1964 campaign culminated in passage of the first civil rights act after the world witnessed a motel owner pouring acid into a swimming pool of black and white bathers. The film illuminates these moving images from the past with present day interviews of the participants, including Ambassador Andrew Young, who was beaten up in Saint Augustine. In the only interview such ever filmed, motel owner James Brock describes his encounter with Dr. King.

To this mix Dean adds the perspective of African Americans living in Saint Augustine today, teenagers who see hip-hop as “the only way out” and kids to whom Dr. King’s dream of a “Beloved Country” still seems like only a dream.

The film shows signs of hope, like a 2004 service of reconciliation at a church that banned blacks in 1964, but the film lets viewers draw their own conclusions about how far we’ve come and where we must go from here.

About “Dare Not Walk Alone” :

Picked for non-theatrical distribution by THINKFilm after a strong showing at Cinequest in 2006, the film was signed for theatrical distribution by Indican Pictures after winning Audience Award for Best Film at the 2007 Deep Focus Film Festival. Written and directed by Jeremy Dean; produced by Stephen Cobb, Jeremy Dean, and Richard Mergener; executive producers are Stephen Cobb and Chey Cobb.

Movie trailer

Berghof’s new publication series on resistance/liberation movements

jj April 3rd, 2008

Berghof Transitions Series:
New case studies on the CPN-M (Nepal) and the LTTE (Sri Lanka).

We are pleased to announce the release of two further reports in Berghof’s new publication series on resistance/liberation movements in transition from arms to politics.

Kiyoko Ogura:
Seeking State Power - The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
(March 2008) - Berghof Transitions No. 3
http://www.berghof-center.org/uploads/download/transitions_cpnm.pdf

Suthaharan Nadarajah, Luxshi Vimalarajah:
The Politics of Transformation: The LTTE and the 2002-2006 Peace Process in Sri Lanka
(April 2008) - Berghof Transitions No. 4
http://www.berghof-center.org/uploads/download/transitions_ltte.pdf

For more information on the project and further reports, please check out our website at: http://www.berghof-center.org/std_page.php?LANG=e&id=183&parent=10

To order hardcopies (€ 6.00 + postage), please send an email to:order@berghof-center.org

Enjoy! We are looking forward to your feedback and comments.

Digital Billboard Liberation

klang March 26th, 2008

The higher philosophy behind billboard liberation is the re-appropriation of public space. It is a reaction against the commercialization of the world in which we live where there is a virtual monopoly on the right to broadcast messages into the public sphere. Individuals and organizations (for example the Billboard Liberation Front) carry out acts of adbusting in order to show that culture jamming is a way in which protest is possible.

In a rare example of digital billboard liberation a hacker known as Skullphone has hacked ten of Clear Channel Communications’ digital billboards in Los Angeles. The to achieve this billboard liberation Skullphone had to hack into the Clear Channel network and insert his trademark skullphone between the commercial messages shown on the billboards.

Update: Fresh information (see comments below) suggests that this was not a hack at all but a paid commercial approved by Clear Channel. More information will be presented as soon as it is available. More information available here.

(via Supertouch who also has more pictures)

Moqtada al-Sadr and Civil Disobedience

jj March 26th, 2008

According to several press reports in the last 24 hours there are obviously a huge offensive going on against supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra and Sadr city. The six-months ceasefire was extended last month and it looked like there were some negotiating going on between the Sadrist movement and US/al-Maliki. Now it suddenly looks like the government and the occupiers are doing their best to crush Sadr and his people.

Moqtada al-Sadr

According to Agence France-Presse Sadr called for “all Iraqis to launch protests across all provinces. If the government does not respect these demands, the second step will be general civil disobedience in Baghdad and the Iraqi provinces.”

I wonder if any Arabic-skilled reader of this blog could check if this is an accurate translation? The ceasefire Moqtada al-Sadr announced was a surprise in itself, but if he does not lift it after this powerful military attack and ask his followers to use civil disobedience it is an amazing new strategy from his side. Something for a researcher of resistance strategies to look into!

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