Modspil::URBAN

Det er nu næsten præcis to år siden, at jeg først startede  en blog her på  Urbans hjemmeside, Modspil::URBAN - og den har jeg faktisk skrevet en del på den sidste måneds tid eller to, og det har jeg været glad for.

Men … her på Urbanblog har jeg ikke så meget styr over det hele, som jeg kunne tænke mig. Jeg har derfor installeret Wordpress ovre på min egen hjemmeside og har dermed så at sige taget Urbanbloggen hjem.

Alle indlæg på Modspil::URBAN de sidste to år er importeret til en ny blog, www.modspil.dk/wordpress/ (forkortet: Modpress), som fra nu af vil være den blog, jeg skriver mest på.

Så tag godt imod den lille ny, zap ind, læs og kommenter, kom med forslag. Den kan nok ikke  betragtes som færdig, rent layoutmæssigt. Der slibes og pudses hen ad vejen, lige nu kan kanterne godt være lidt rå. Betragt det som en del af oplevelsen.

Link.

Britiske soldater anklages nu for seksuelle overgreb på en dengang kun 14-årig fange i Irak, et af de “brune” lande, der for tiden ikke skønnes at kunne “klare sig selv” og som “vores” drenge derfor er nødt til at boltre sig i - hvis det for nogen lyder som det 19. århundredes kolonialisme, er det, fordi det ret klart er den, vi er kommet tilbage til.

Som Lenin fra Lenin’s Tomb gør opmærksom på, er der ikke noget særligt ved sådanne angreb, der formentlig er en helt naturlig konsekvens af den racisme, der ligger til grund for hele besættelsen og det sprog, den forsvares i:

This sort of daily, often quite arbitrary, violence by forces who accept the minimum possible responsibility for their behaviour is just so much background noise to the war against barbarism/extremism/terrorism/savagery/etc. It just blends into the screams from the torture chambers and the crunch of metal against bone as troops shoot up cars at checkpoints or lob missiles into houses. The fact that this is perfectly ordinary behaviour by imperialist troops, under whatever authority and of whatever nationality, is always missed. Whether in Kosovo, Somalia or Haiti, whether the military mission is conducted under the NATO brand or the UN brand, there always emerges some sickening stories of systematic physical and sexual abuse of the supposed recipients of humanitarian largesse.

Den eneste grund til at vi overhovedet hører om den aktuelle sag er måske, at den er ekstrem - alle de “almindelige” tilfælde af overgreb og tortur forsvinder i mængden: “Had it been left at a whipping and beating for the crime of stealing milk, it may not have ever been reported.”

Hvornår begynder de første, tilsvarende sager om danske soldaters optræden i Afghanistan mon at dukke op? Et land, hvor USA stadig opretholder store fangelejre, hvor tortur praktiseres præcis så rutinemæssigt som på Guantánamo. Hvad har danske soldater dog at gøre på den galej - og så som “allierede”?

Naomi Klein i The Guardian om de nye kontrakter om udnyttelse af de irakiske oliereserver, der giver de multinationale selskaber den største bid af kagen:

One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of backroom arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oilfields, accounting for half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq’s oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under the control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign corporations will keep 75% of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25% for their Iraqi partners.

That kind of ratio is unheard of in oil-rich Arab and Persian states, where achieving majority national control over oil was the defining victory of anti-colonial struggles. According to Greg Muttitt, a London-based oil expert, the assumption up until now was that foreign multinationals would be brought in to develop new fields in Iraq - not to take over those which are already in production and therefore require minimal technical support. “The policy was always to allocate these fields to the Iraq National Oil Company,” he told me. “This is a total reversal of that policy, giving the Iraq National Oil Company a mere 25% instead of the planned 100%.”

So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already suffered so much? Paradoxically, it is Iraq’s suffering - its never-ending crisis - that is the rationale for an arrangement that threatens to drain Iraq’s treasury of its main revenue source. The logic goes like this: Iraq’s oil industry needs foreign expertise because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology, while the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And Iraq needs to start producing more oil urgently. Why? Also because of the war. The country is shattered and the billions handed out in no-bid contracts to western firms have failed to rebuild it.

And that’s where the new contracts come in: they will raise more money, but Iraq has become such a treacherous place that the oil majors must be induced to take the risk of investing. Thus the invasion of Iraq neatly creates the argument for its subsequent pillage.

Det er åbenbart slut med det “post-koloniale” i et besat land som Irak - en udvikling, som resten af verden nok skal bide mærke i.

John Pilger fortæller i dagens Guardian om den palæstinensiske journalist Mohammed Omer, der for to uger siden fik Martha Gellhorn-prisen, som går til verdens bedste krigskorrespondenter.

At få lov til at rejse fra Gaza til London for at modtage prisen var et diplomatisk mareridt for Omer, der kun fik lov til det efter pres og sammen med en ledsager fra den hollandske ambassade.

Da han kom tilbage fra prisuddelingen, stod den Israelske efterretningstjeneste Shin Beth parat for at stjæle de 5.000 britiske pund, som prisen består af:

On his return journey, he was met at the Allenby Bridge crossing (to Jordan) by a Dutch official, who waited outside the Israeli building, unaware Mohammed had been seized by Shin Bet, Israel’s infamous security organisation. Mohammed was told to turn off his mobile and remove the battery. He asked if he could call his embassy escort and was told forcefully he could not. A man stood over his luggage, picking through his documents. “Where’s the money?” he demanded. Mohammed produced some US dollars. “Where is the English pound you have?”

“I realised,” said Mohammed, “he was after the award stipend for the Martha Gellhorn prize. I told him I didn’t have it with me. ‘You are lying’, he said. I was now surrounded by eight Shin Bet officers, all armed. The man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: ‘Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.’ He said, ‘This is nothing compared with what you will see now.’ He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said, ‘Why are you bringing perfumes?’ I replied, ‘They are gifts for the people I love’. He said, ‘Oh, do you have love in your culture?’

“As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror.”

Moderne, israelsk apartheid i en nøddeskal?

En forfærdelig påmindelse om det regime, besættelsen påtvinger de besatte såvel som besætteren, et regime, hvor det mindste tegn på oprør eller international anerkendelse skal kvæstes. En forfærdelig påmindelse om, at Israels besættelse af Vestbredden og Gaza er en skændsel og bør ophøre snarest muligt.

Fra et læserbrev i Jyllands-Posten i dag - en breakdance-instruktør fortæller om en Danmarksturné, hvor også fire deltagere fra Uganda var med:

Det har været chokerende at være vidne til den fjendtlighed, mennesker med mørk hudfarve bliver mødt med i Danmark.

Dette kulminerede, da uganderne blev stoppet på åben gade i København af tre civilklædte betjente og på særdeles hårdhændet vis gennet ind i nærmeste opgang, hvor de blev kropsvisiteret og ydmyget; bl.a. blev de beordret til at tage bukserne af.

Efter visiteringen, der havde været uden resultat, forklarede betjentene, at mange afrikanere kommer til Danmark for at sælge stoffer, og at de derfor havde troet, de var pushere.

En af uganderne påpegede, at de jo udelukkende var blevet stoppet, fordi de var sorte, hvorpå en betjent svarede, at det er sådan, systemet fungerer.

Er Danmark “verdens bedste land” - et “foregangsland for menneskerettigheder”?

Åbenbart - medmindre du er sort, for så kan du få af kniplen, kan du. “En sump af racisme og apartheid”  var måske mere præcist? Breakdance-instruktør Sune Pejtersens overskrift til læserbrevet var: “Jeg skammer mig”, og indlægget slutter:

Det [er] et menneskeforagtende system, vi har skabt os i foregangslandet Danmark, et system, der vil lulle os ind i en falsk fornemmelse af tryghed ved at forfølge mennesker, man ud fra forskruede opfattelser anser som værende farlige.

Uganderne har ikke lyst til at komme tilbage til Danmark - hvor jeg skammer mig over at være dansker.

Hvor man dog forstår ham!