Shakespeare on Brexit

=By= Jimmie Moglia

In this essay, Jimmie Moglia takes us on a refreshing and enlightening neo-Marxist walk about of the BREXIT vote. He definitely brings a different perspective and fresh eyes to a topic that is being chewed to death. -rw

The championship of hyperbolae is over and the first dust of time is settling on the Brexit referendum.

In the circumstances, it may be somewhat amusing to evaluate not the results but the reactions. Considering that opinions are formed in abysses of approximation, prejudgment and passion. Eventually a new fact is evaluated less for its accuracy than for its possibility to serve or disserve a system of interpretations, a feeling of emotional comfort or, as with the Brexit case, a network of alliances.

We can think of any analysis as the sectioning of a subject into components or layers. A components-based analysis suggests their mutual independence, whereas a layer-based analysis suggests that the various layers of interpretation interact with each other, sometimes directly and often indirectly. In the case of Brexit, I think the latter is the case.

Even so, all this is arbitrary, therefore I’ll say, “Boldness be my friend, arm me audacity from head to foot” (1) – before going any further.

One popular interpretation is linked to racism. Permanence in the EU would result in a larger influx of migrants. And in certain political circles, he who objects to the (essentially) uncontrolled mass-migration into Europe is a racist. According to this theory, London voted for the EU, because the South of England hosts a larger immigrant population, which is inherently pro-EU (i.e. pro-immigration).

However, immigrants are less likely to reside in Scotland, being far, cold and removed. And yet, Scotland, with less immigrants, voted to stay. But the racist theory is applicable here too. The Scots did not see danger in the EU, because immigration has not affected them as badly as elsewhere.

The second interpretation centers on the age of the voters. Whereby older voters chose Brexit because they are stuck in their old ways, like the “oak, whose boughs are moss’d with age and high top bald with dry antiquity.”(2) Reminiscing of the times when “Britannia ruled the waves” and was not subservient to a political center, established elsewhere and staffed by people who speak English with a funny accent.

Of course, a literary-minded mature adult may retort that “…flowers distilled, though they with winter meet, lose but their show, their substance still lives sweet.”(3) But let that go.

Instead, still following the age-centered theory – younger voters chose the EU, because either (1), they are less encumbered by prejudice (according to the “pro-EU” interpreters) and/or (2), because they have been influenced by the massive mainstream-media campaign against Brexit. Which only shows that the pro-EU younger voters are in their “salad years, when they are green in judgment.”(4)

So far then, the clarity of numbers is but a mirage. Or rather, two and two may still make four, but for sundry different reasons.

One curiously subdued interpretation, has to do with the staggering administrative costs of the EU. As readers know, it is an enormous superstructure, employing 1800 linguists, 1000 plus politicians and thousands of career bureaucrats, paid well above the average employee doing the same job. A post in the EU bureaucracy is a most coveted position across the continent – position usually obtained through an intricate nepotistic network of connections.

One relatively unknown, and almost unimaginable expense, involves the monthly transfer of the whole EU bureaucracy from Brussels to Strasbourg and back again. The cost of these transfers alone amounts yearly to a billion $ plus. Each month, 2,500 plastic trunks filled with papers (documents, diaries and other items), are loaded onto trucks, unloaded at destination, where the papers are re-filed. Thousands of politicians, officials, assistants and translators are moved to the other location, via chartered express trains. Just the cost of the private express trains to make the journey back and forth during the year is estimated to be over 300 million $.

Should the reader finds these figures unbelievable, he may search on line for the official report titled “The three places of work of the European Parliament – Financial, environmental and regional impacts – of geographic dispersion.” In fact I did not include Luxemburg, which is another place where politicians and bureaucrats are routinely ferried back and forth to “conduct business.”

Talk about the “The caterpillars of the commonwealth, which I (Bolingbroke) have sworn to weed and pluck away.”(5) So far, any attempt to reduce the number of days when the EU parliament sits in Strasbourg has been ruled unlawful – for a treaty protects ‘equal status’ for Strasbourg.

Compared to the EU godfathers, even the spendthrift Timon of Athens is a miser. And the whole machine appears as a “… mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected.”(6)

Another relatively discounted interpretation of the vote has to do with the class struggle. Only the colorful George Galloway mentioned it. For him, Londoners who voted for the EU are those who begin their day with an Italian ‘caffe’ macchiato’ and who employ a nanny for their offspring. Amusing characterization that, however, raises perhaps the most important issue behind the referendum itself.

For, when societal changes occur sufficiently slowly, they escape consciousness and usually elicit no reaction, opposition, or revolt. Examining the last decades of our times, we can perceive the undergoing of a slow drift to which we become accustomed. Also considering that the relentless hammering of media information saturates the brains, thus rendered temporarily unable to distinguish things.

But in time perception gradually takes hold, just like when, passing from light to darkness, we become slowly aware, however dimly, of the surroundings. In the instance, the developing awareness translated into an instinctive rejection (Brexit), of new and very unpalatable surroundings. A rejection, by the way, that finds no way of expression, when choosing between Tories and Labor in national elections. Witness the fact that both leaders of the two parties were pro-EU.

Reality shows that the proletariat no longer exists, but not because poverty has been abolished. The poor may still say, “I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.” But in the instance, the proletarian poor has remained poor without being a proletarian.

For the capitalistic division of labor has destroyed the conditions that made Marx’ ‘scientific socialism’ feasible. Apart from the de-industrialization of the West, (including England), the worker’s labor no longer involves any power. And a class whose social activity yields no power does not have the means to take power.

Besides, work is no longer the worker’s activity. In most cases, in the factory or office, work has become a passive, pre-programmed operation, totally subordinated to the working of the big machinery, leaving no room for personal initiative. Consequently, inability to identify with one’s work equates to losing the sense of belonging to a class.

The workers’ objective, then, is no longer to free themselves within work, by seizing power inside the employing organization. The (yet undeclared but palpably evident) objective is to free oneself from work by rejecting its nature, content, necessities and modalities. But rejecting work is also to reject the traditional organizations of the working-class. The object is not to win power as a worker, but to win the power to no longer function as a worker.

These ideas are anathema to the lingering ‘leftist’ organizations, where the Trotzkiaites fight the Stalinists with virulent animosity, accusing each other of unspeakable crimes, while dreaming of grass-root socialist movements, impossible because there can be no grass where there is no root.

Still, Marx held that there was a negativity embodied in the working class. Such negativity has not disappeared, it has been displaced and has acquired a new radical form, in a new non-class.

The non-class includes all those whose job was eliminated by machines, or whose capacity is under-employed, following the automation and consequent industrialization of intellectual work.

The non-class is a result of the decomposition of the old society based upon the dignity, value, social utility and desirability of work. The non-class worker is even deprived of the (meager but authentic) moral satisfaction of the proletarian of old, who could perhaps say, “…like a lackey, from the rise to set, (I) sweat in the eye of Phoebus and all night sleep in Elysium.”(7)

The traditional working class is currently a privileged minority. The majority belong to a post-industrial, neo-proletarian society without job security and class identity, employed in casual, probationary, contracted, temporary, part-time employment. As such they cannot feel as belonging to a working class.

It is in the context of this ideological climate that the notion of the 1% versus the 99% was born and took hold. If a worker has lost his dignity as a member of a class, it follows that his contribution is increasingly meaningless, rewarded accordingly and, even so, reluctantly, waiting for the next robot to replace him.

For example, when Seattle made the minimum wage mandatory, McDonald announced a program to robotize 90% of the operations still conducted by humans in their fast-food franchises.

In these conditions, the concealment and the manipulation of truth are enshrined as a system of government, with the complicity of the information industry.

Even discounting the gross manipulation of employment statistics, the relatively high levels of employment are artificially maintained, due to the inextricable confusion between the production of the necessary and the superfluous, the useful and the useless, waste and wealth, destruction and repair.

How else can we judge or justify the current bellicose maneuvers, wars and threats of war, terrorism and the immense expenditures on (this time real) weapons of mass destruction.

In the realm of the never-enough-cursed, neo-liberal, Thatcherite economic superstition, the whole idea is to keep people occupied while preserving the relations of subordination, competition and discipline upon which the dominant system can exert its hegemony.

Which is to say that ‘progress’ has arrived at a limit beyond which what appears a plus is actually a minus – presaging a future heavy with menace and devoid of promise.

The manipulators of society use a clever gimmick or argument. They say, we are much happier than previous ages because people, then, could not avail themselves of today’s inventions. In reality the unhappy ones are ourselves when, used to today’s comforts and gadgetries, imagine ourselves transported in an age when those comforts did not exist while our needs do – even though these needs were born with or from the comforts.

“Give me ten thousand eyes and I will fill them with prophetic tears.”(8) Which may seem overly pessimistic, but in the instance of Troy, Cassandra was right. And so was Marx, when he accurately foresaw the evolution from capitalism into monopoly, from monopoly into finance-capitalism, and from finance-capitalism to imperialism, eventually leading to WW1, WW2 and beyond.

To ascribe to the pro-Brexit voters the cognizance of “the giant mass of (bad) things to come at large”(9) would be a stretch. But just like “men judge by the complexion of the sky the state and inclination of the day,”(10) perhaps some of them correctly saw in the EU what’s in store for them and voted accordingly.

The great XIX century historian Macauley wrote, “He alone reads history aright who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.”

Even so, a powerful machinery is already at work to nullify the Brexit vote. The history of EU politics shows that referendum results can be ignored, given the non-class status of most of the people, who are therefore irrelevant, and can be dissolved a’ la Bertold Brecht, as the Saker reminded us in his blog. (thesaker.is)

Hence the conclusion that so “Much Ado About Brexit” may prove, in the end, “Much Ado About Nothing.” And maybe the event won’t even appear in print, in the history books of yonder years.

— (1) Cymbeline
— (2) As You Like It
— (3) Sonnet #5
— (4) Antony and Cleopatra
— (5) King Richard II
— (6) Hamlet
— (7) King henry V
— (8) (9) Troilus and Cressida
— (10) King Richard II

About the author

Jimmie Moglia is a Renaissance man, and therefore he's impossible to summarize in a simple bioblurb. In any case, here's a rough sketch, by his own admission: Born in Turin, Italy, he now resides in Portland, Oregon. Appearance: … careful hours with time’s deformed hand, Have written strange defeatures in my face (2); Strengths. An unquenchable passion for what is utterly, totally, and incontrovertibly useless, notwithstanding occasional evidence to the contrary. Weaknesses: Take your pick. Languages: I speak Spanish to God, French to men, Italian to women and German to my horse. My German is not what it used to be but it’s not the horse’s fault. Too many Germans speak English. Education: “You taught me language and my profit on it Is, I know how to curse.” (3); More to the point – in Italy I studied Greek for five years and Latin for eight. Only to discover that prospective employers were remarkably uninterested in dead languages. Whereupon I obtained an Engineering Degree at the University of Genova. Read more here.

Source: Your Daily Shakespeare.

Acknowledgment. Cartoon by the unbeatably genial cartoonist Vincenzo Apicella

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Jesse Williams Speaks Out at BET Awards

Last night, Jesse Williams received the 2016 Humanitarian of the Year award. He took the opportunity to speak out. It was an eloquent statement against racism in the United States, and makes a direct challenge to others to not stand quietly while racist police brutality continues.

jesse williams – full speech from Josh Begley on Vimeo.

Transcript of Williams’ remarks (from Genius.com)

Peace peace. Thank you, Debra. Thank you, BET. Thank you Nate Parker, Harry and Debbie Allen, for doing that. Before we get into it, I just want to say — I brought my parents — thank you for being here and for teaching me to focus on comprehension over career. They made sure I learned what the schools were afraid to teach us. Also, thank you to my amazing wife for changing my life.

Now, this award – this is not for me. This is for the real organizers all over the country – the activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do.

It’s kind of basic mathematics – the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize.

Now, this is also in particular for the black women in particular who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you.

Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to deescalate, disarm and not kill white people everyday. So what’s going to happen is we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.

Now… I got more y’all – yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice‘s 14th birthday so I don’t want to hear anymore about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on 12 year old playing alone in the park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better than it is to live in 2012 than it is to live in 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Dorian Hunt.

Now the thing is, though, all of us in here getting money – that alone isn’t gonna stop this. Alright, now dedicating our lives, dedicating our lives to getting money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies, and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies.

There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There has been no job we haven’t done. There is no tax they haven’t leveed against us – and we’ve paid all of them. But freedom is somehow always conditional here. “You’re free,” they keep telling us. But she would have been alive if she hadn’t acted so… free.

Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but you know what, though, the hereafter is a hustle. We want it now.

And let’s get a couple things straight, just a little sidenote – the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That’s not our job, alright – stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest, if you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.

We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, yo, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil – black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is though… the thing is that just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real.

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Speaking Truth to Power – Wasfi on the Reality of the US Government

=By= Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

Fallujah after Operation “Iraqi Freedom”

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] would like to introduce a powerful voice of conscience to The Greanville Post community. Dahlia Wasfi is an Iraqi American doctor and peace and environmental activist. She was born in New York to a Jewish American mother and a Muslim Iraqi father. She lived for a period of time in Iraq as a child, and has returned to Iraq twice since the Bush Administration’s “Shock and Awe” campaign. This included a three month stay in Basrah. Dr. Wasfi is uniquely placed at the cusp of the U.S. “adventures” in the Middle East. In this piece below she speaks to US interests in Iraq and Afghanistan. -rw

The Reality of the United States Government

Republished with permission of Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

You may follow Dr. Wasfi at her Facebook page.

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Stalin, Opinions & the Video Series

by
Jimmie Moglia

Good my Lord, be cured
Of this diseased opinion, and betimes,
For it is most dangerous.” (1)

The recent video production in the series “Historical Sketches” had to do with five episodes covering the life of Stalin. (See Appendix I) The very popular blog/website thesaker.is has published the links to the various episodes. (those interested can also find them here, by following the link “Historical Sketches” in the menu http://yourdailyshakespeare.com/historical-video-sketches).

I came across “The Saker” site (thesaker.is) by chance, as I searched for information on the events in Ukraine. – information untainted by the bias, of which most informed readers are aware. Namely, that the orange revolution in Ukraine was ‘spontaneous’, as opposed to a CIA orchestrated operation in which, per the mouth of one of its notorious inspirers (US assistant Secretary of State, V. Nuland), the CIA had invested 5 billion $.

The Stalin video-series generated a large volume of comments (readable on the Saker site, http://thesaker.is/the-life-of-stalin-by-jimmie-moglia/). Then The Saker himself published his related opinion. That too gave rise to even a larger number of comments (http://thesaker.is/the-controversy-about-stalin-a-basket-of-preliminary-considerations/)

I compared my thoughts on the issue with his and, in turn, I published an extended comment, which I post here. I think it fits with the spirit of this web site, given the latter’s historical and sociological bent, with an added ‘Shakespearean’ twist. Here follows the post. As you see, it deals mostly on how we form our opinions and on how I formed mine on Stalin, the character in question.

“After reading The Saker’s article, (and the many comments), one first and obvious thought came to my mind. Namely, how much our personal experience shapes our thought, including our historical opinions.

For our own life is a history – and besides, in every written history, bubbles up the history of the historian himself.

Therefore… I first propose the idea that there are (5) stages involved in forming our historical opinion(s), including on Stalin. Then I will try to briefly say how mine came about.

Stage 1. We may not call it yet an opinion, but it is what we learn at home, at school, at church (if applicable), from television and movies. This stage lasts approximately till junior high.

Stage 2. (I speculate that the great majority stops at stage 1). We start reading for personal interest, we get involved with people who, by the force of their own thought, inspire us to meditate on ours. Perhaps we travel. Maybe we meet people from other countries, who seem original in how they behave and tell their stories and opinions. We realize that what we learned in stage-1 not only can be questioned, but is not true in the sense we thought it was.

Stage 4. We realize that the more we read (and add our experiences and other opinions as more tiles in the mosaic), the more difficult it is to proclaim papal-style encyclicals, embodying (our) dogmatic truth.

Which is not to say that complexity prevents us from distinguishing good from evil. But the recognition of complexity prompts us to suspend our judgment, or at least to see more sides of an issue.

Stage 5. Our opinions are now similar to those magnificent Byzantine mosaics, where you see the whole as the sum of thousands little tiles of different shapes and color, blending into one comprehensive effect. And yet, unlike the static mosaic of the analogy, our opinions are never final.

Screen Shot 2016-05-05 at 12.10.56 PM Which brings me to how I formed mine about Stalin. And, if you have enough patience to read through, how I have reached, through entirely different paths, conclusions quite close to the Saker’s (as expressed in his own post) – http://thesaker.is/the-controversy-about-stalin-a-basket-of-preliminary-considerations/

[dropcap]I [/dropcap]grew up in Italy, in a Catholic family, my grandfather being the exception, an agnostic and a socialist, though he never belonged to any party. I was deeply involved in the life of the parish, which was run by Franciscan friars.

The provincial friars instructed the dependent friars, the bishops the provincial friars, the archbishops the bishops and the pope the archbishops. Bottom line, communism was ‘evil’ because it was ‘Godless’ – communists were automatically excommunicated. There was a sarcastic sentence summing up the anti-communist (and by inference anti-Russian) propaganda of the time, “Communists eat children.”

In truth one Franciscan friar of the church struck a deep friendship with my agnostic grandfather. Thinking about it later, it reminded me of Balzac’s novel “The Atheist’s Mass”, but I digress.

As a very young man I travelled to Soviet Russia and I concluded immediately that the ideas acquired at stage 1, and already questioned in stage 2, were grossly mistaken.

My trips were not extensive, but long enough to conclude that people ran their own life seemingly contentedly, or at least without great unhappiness or great expectations. And with a certain quiet pride – after all, their nation put the first satellite and the first man in space. Their schools seemed excellent based on the students I spoke with etc. etc.

During stage 3 and 4, disgusted at the war in Vietnam, I read more about US history – and the distorted picture given by Hollywood (my first perception, as a youngster, of American history). I then began asking if everything else propagandized about Russia (and Stalin), could be as true as the movies about the uncivilized, expendable ‘Indians’ or the evil North Vietnamese, whom John Wayne bravely fought against in ‘Green Berets’.

In itself, nationalistic, historic propaganda is not exclusive to the US. No nation omits to record the action of their ancestors, however bloody, savage, and rapacious – though often using circuitous reasons to justify them.

Except that, with US history, blood, savagery and rapaciousness are not justified, simply because they are officially (and/or artfully), hidden to most but those who, by chance or election, decide to dig a bit deeper. Instructive, I think for example, is the unsuccessful War of 1812 (covered by (3) historical sketches), launched by the US to annex Canada and export thither, – then as now – ‘freedom and democracy’ (video sketch episodes #16, #17, #18).

Furthermore, history is easily re-written by masters and managers of the thought-unique. Distance, either of time or place, is sufficient to reconcile pliable minds to soothing notions and satisfying explanations.

Expressed differently, what is distant is in itself obscure and when we have no wish to see it, easily escapes our notice, or takes such a form as desire, hearsay or imagination bestow upon it.

Based on all of the above, it seemed, to me that,

a) There is a continuum between the cultural developments in the Russia of the XIX century and the events that led to the 1917 revolution.

b) As it can be (perhaps) expected only from Russia, where even the villains are original, the 1917 revolution was the first successful experiment at turning our way of life completely upside-down. And in line, at least in intent, with messages expressed in the Russian classics (I specifically think of Tolstoy, but there are others).

In other words, what Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, etc. were to the French revolution, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Pushkin etc. were to the Russian Revolution.

Let’s not forget that the beginning of the French revolution had remarkable similarities (at least conceptually), with the Russian revolution. But in the French instance – the funding coming from the newly rich bourgeoisie – Robespierre became quickly dispensable; he was the Saddam Hussein of his time, a total misrepresentation in both cases. Good-bye revolution.

So much so that Frenchmen found everything wrong with king and nobles, but nothing wrong with an emperor.

As for Stalin, the Western narrative portrayed him as a shrewd, cruel and ignorant peasant –clearly not true. That the revolution could survive a civil war and the intervention of the western armies is, historically, a miracle.

In assembling what I had read, or learned from holders of qualified opinions, I concluded,

That in Russia there was a deep-seated fear of foreign meddling, in the midst of a (revolutionary) process never tried before in history on this scale. Namely, to radically change certain entrenched modes of thought acquired in infancy, including the patriarchal scheme, eventually traceable to the equation of sex with sin, etc. etc.

That in this respect, even Lenin had been somewhat too optimistic (easy to say after the fact, of course). And that in the face of these difficulties, Stalin had to deal with problems so big that even a minor tilt of the scale may have brought a total collapse.

That the dangers increased even more during the 1930s when the West, due to the restlessness of the working class, had as an absolute priority the destruction of the Soviet Union for fear of a revolutionary contagion. Hence the repression of real (or perceived), so-called right-wing deviationism in Russia, was assumed as an indispensable necessity.

That even after the patriotic war, the danger did not end. After all, the USA had nonchalantly dropped the A-bombs on actual people – why could they not drop them on Russia? The danger was real for at least 5 years.

For these reasons I see in Stalin a symbol of the survival of the Soviet Union. For what is worth, I do not think (without any other evidence than me saying so), that Stalin was killed.

He lived a (materially) good life but he had subjected himself to great stress, dangers and hardships in his youth. He had even been run over by a horse chariot, which left him partially disabled. He smoke heavily and when he stopped smoking, not long before he died, he put on weight. All conditions that, from what we know, can cause a stroke, or brain hemorrhage or similar.

But there is a personal, though indirect reason why I, and many millions of Europeans, should spare some good thoughts for Stalin. After WWII, there was actual fear of him and of a 1917-like revolution, even in countries like England. We owe in good part to the fear of Russia, the social reforms bringing health-care to all, plus labor protection, free instruction and important others.

The contributions by the USSR to the various Communist Parties in the West were notoriously meager, but, when we think of Russia’s sacrifices in the patriotic war, those contributions deserve as great, if not greater gratitude than if they had been 10 times as big.

As I mentioned at the end of the series (episode 5), the intent of the cycle on “The Life of Stalin” was to provide a connective thread among the many events of a remarkable life, and a starting point for those who wish to know more.

Especially considering that to judge rightly of the present, we must oppose it to the past; for all judgment is comparative, and about the future we can only speculate.

The truth is that no mind is only employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. Our passions are joy and grief, love and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and fear the past is the object, of hope and fear the object is the future. Even love and hatred are bound to the past, for the cause must have been before the effect.

And in the end, if we act only for ourselves, neglecting the study of history maybe irrelevant – though historical ignorance leaves man without defence against the armies of malignity. But in those who are entrusted with the care of others neglect is unjust. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refuses to learn how he might prevent it.

I am personally pleased that the series of videos on the life of Stalin and The Saker’s article have triggered such a variety of comments, many of which illuminating, both on the subject and on the person who made them.

For I see The Saker’s site as a XXIst century version of the XVIIIth century Parisian cafes, where the French philosophes discussed how man should live and how society should evolve. Which implies, then and now, a measure of hope for the future.

Unless we resign ourselves to think like Hamlet, who was so pissed-off with mankind, as to say to his chums, “What is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, nor woman either, though by your smiling, you may seem to say so.”(2)

As for Stalin, there is considerable renewed interest at large in the character. Those who only see the evil may consider that,

“The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones.” (3)

and that, notwithstanding the clash of opinions, Stalin seems to have acquired,

“…A forted residence ‘gainst the tooth of time

And razure of oblivion” (4)

Winter’s Tale
Hamlet
Winter’s Tale
Measure for Measure

In the play (initial quote): Camillo tells Leontes that his jealousy is totally unjustified and dangerous.

APPENDIX I

Historical Video Sketches

Introduction to the Series
Scroll to the end of this Introduction to locate the links to the various episodes. Or watch this 3-minute introductory video “Channel Trailer” http://youtu.be/_8gyol-q87A

“Historical Sketches” are produced in the Studios of TVCTV, Beaverton, Oregon and re-broadcast through the Portland Area and in various other States in the Nation.

According to Italian philosopher and historian Benedetto Croce, all history is “contemporary history”. That is, history consists essentially in seeing the past through the eyes of the present and in the light of its problems. Therefore the main work of the historian is not to record but to evaluate. This collection of video-historical sketches is not that ambitious. The objective is to cast light on some less-known history and/or on the periphery of known historical events – considering that often, when looked at in detail, history reads almost like a novel. Nor we can omit what Shakespeare says of Nestor, “Instructed by the antiquary times,/ He must, he is, he cannot be but wise.” (Troilus and Cressida, act 2, sc. 3)

And…. although a little knowledge is a dangerous things, complete ignorance is not necessarily safer.

EPISODE #30 http://youtu.be/weH3ElNKrAk
Life of Stalin part 1. Following the birth of Stalin in Gori, Georgia, his parents and the first part of his youth in Gori and Tbilisi

EPISODE #32 https://youtu.be/VStKhZpt5NY
Life of Stalin part 2. Considerations on Russia when Stalin was born (1882), and Russia’s conditions vis-a-vis Europe – how socialism reached Georgia plus unknown facts about Stalin’s education, exiles, flings and revolutionary activities.

EPISODE # 33 https://youtu.be/OZvbII7EghQ
Life of Stalin part 3. Covering the period approximately 1900 to 1924. Stalin’s introduction to socialism, his relentless activity in the Caucasus, the multiple exiles in Northern Russia and Siberia, his flings, his marriages, his sons, in and out of marriage. The combination of circumstances that made the 1917 revolution successful. What Lenin saw in Stalin for the continuation of the revolution.

EPISODE #34 https://youtu.be/BgovqnTMQU0

Life of Stalin part 4. Dedicated to the 1930s, perhaps the most controversial decade of the Soviet Union. This episode discusses briefly the most critical issues, collectivization, emphasis on heavy industry and the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact – inexplicable without realizing the background and the antecedents.

EPISODE #35 https://youtu.be/mCyclYjJiYM

Life of Stalin part 5. The conclusion of the life of an extraordinary character (extraordinary per se and independently of ideological leanings). Includes the effect in the USSR of the explosions of the atomic bomb in Japan, the death of Stalin, the XXth Party Congress, the denunciation of the ‘Cult of Personality’ and the effect that this Congress had on the life and the future of the USSR.

APPENDIX II

Episode #36 https://youtu.be/JpOw-LuSOYw

About the author

Jimmie Moglia is a Renaissance man, near impossible to summarize in a simple bioblurb. In any case, here's a rough sketch, by his own admission: Born in Turin, Italy, he now resides in Portland, Oregon. Appearance: … careful hours with time’s deformed hand, Have written strange defeatures in my face (2); Strengths. An unquenchable passion for what is utterly, totally, and incontrovertibly useless, notwithstanding occasional evidence to the contrary. Weaknesses: Take your pick. Languages: I speak Spanish to God, French to men, Italian to women and German to my horse. My German is not what it used to be but it’s not the horse’s fault. Too many Germans speak English. Education: “You taught me language and my profit on it Is, I know how to curse.” (3); More to the point – in Italy I studied Greek for five years and Latin for eight. Only to discover that prospective employers were remarkably uninterested in dead languages. Whereupon I obtained an Engineering Degree at the University of Genova. Read more here.

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The Spirit of Nelson Mandela in Palestine: Is His Real Legacy Being Upheld?

Ramzy Baroud, PhD
Truth’s Advocate

A Palestinian girl carries a picture of Nelson Mandela in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. (Photo: Activestills.org, file)

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] had mixed feelings when I learned that Palestine has erected a statue of Nelson Mandela, the iconic South African anti-Apartheid leader. On the one hand, I was quite pleased that the unmistakable connection between the struggles of Palestinians and South Africans is cemented more than ever before. On the other hand, I dreaded that rich, corrupt Palestinians in Ramallah are utilizing the image of Mandela to acquire badly-needed political capital.

Mandela statue in Ramallah. Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency ) via aa.com.

The six-meter bronze statue now stands in its own Nelson Mandela Square in Al-Tireh neighborhood in Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority headquarters are based. The PA is known for its endemic political and financial corruption. In some ways, its survival is both essential for the richest Palestinian class and also for the Israeli military Occupation.

Thus, it was quite disheartening to witness the travesty of political theater where the likes of PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, who rules with a long-expired mandate, unveiling the statue in a ceremony attended by his ministers and foreign diplomats.

The statue was a gift from the City of Johannesburg, and its costs of R6 million was paid for by the people of that city, whose solidarity with Palestine is rooted in a long history, that of blood and tears, and the haunting cries of pain and freedom. At that, the gift is most appreciated.

But the Mandela that now stands erect in Ramallah has been incorporated into the zeitgeist of this city, particularly the rich and beaming neighborhood of massive white-stone villas and luxury cars.

It would have meant much more if it had stood in the center of Gaza, a city that is withstanding an ongoing genocide; in the heart of Jenin, a town known for its bravery and hardship; in Al-Khalil, in Nablus or in Khan Younis. Seeing rich Palestinian officials and businessmen rubbing shoulders with unmistakable giddiness while fighting for space before the many cameras, made the occasion vastly less special.

Oddly enough, the main location of the Nelson Mandela Square and statue in Sandton City in Johannesburg is equally unsettling. I visited the place more than once, and despite my immense admiration for Mandela, it failed to move me.

The commercial atmosphere there felt as if it was an attempt at redefining who Mandela was: from a populist leader and a former prisoner with proud ties to the Communist Party to an emasculated icon, a warm, fuzzy figure with no radical roots.

Worse, he is being promoted as if a merchandise within a precarious neoliberal marketplace, where revolutionary values are shunned and everything is on sale. This is how the Sandton City website describes the square:

“Home to some of South Africa’s finest restaurants, exclusive couture and designer labels and a European styled piazza, Nelson Mandela Square offers chic sophistication, culture and glamour, all under the African sun.”

Yet, the Mandela that is promoted by some in South Africa and their counterparts in Palestine is fundamentally different from the Mandela many of us knew about. The man passed away on December 5, 2013, but he clearly left behind two legacies, one celebrated in Palestinian refugee camps and South Africa’s slums, while another is sold to the culturally ‘sophisticated’ tourists and Ramallah’s corrupt class.

The name ‘Nelson Mandela’ was a staple in my family, living in a dilapidated refugee camp in Gaza under military Occupation and the constant threat of violence. We rushed to the television to watch whenever his name was mentioned in the news. The finest young men in camp were chased down, beaten, arrested and shot while trying to write his name on the decaying walls of our humble dwellings.

That was the Mandela I knew, and most Palestinians remember with adoration and respect. The one standing in Ramallah, unveiled by those Palestinians who speak proudly of conducting ‘security coordination’ with Israel – as in jointly cracking down on Palestinian Resistance – is a whole different Mandela.

He is a different Mandela because Abbas and his Authority do not, in the least, embody the spirit of Mandela the freedom fighter, the defiant prisoner, the unifying leader, the champion of a boycott movement.

In fact, the Palestinian leadership as represented in the unelected government of Abbas in Ramallah, is yet to endorse the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), itself modeled after the South Africa boycott movement.

Instead, Abbas’ PA has wasted over 20 years of nonsensical and futile negotiations, collaborated with Israel, divided the ranks of Palestinians and is actively involved in suppressing Palestinian Resistance in the West Bank.

With his popularity falling to an all-time low among Palestinians, Abbas is desperate to concoct hollow victories, and insist on presenting himself as a national liberation leader, despite all evidence to the contrary.

But the bond between South Africa and Palestine is much greater than a photo-op in Ramallah, involving well-dressed men repeating insincere clichés about peace and freedom. I dare say it is bigger than Mandela himself, regardless of which legacy we insist on remembering him by. It is a link that has been baptized in the blood of the poor and the innocent and the tenacious struggle of millions of black and brown Africans and Palestinian Arabs.

Hands in Solidarity, Hands of Freedom mural on the side of the United Electrical Workers trade union building on West Monroe Street at Ashland Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. (Terence Faircloth)

I was fortunate enough to experience this for myself.

In my last South African speaking tour a few years ago, I was approached by two South African men. They seemed particularly grateful for reasons that initially eluded me. “We want to thank you so much for your support of our struggle against apartheid,” one said with so much sincerity and palpable emotions.

It made sense. Palestinians saw the struggle of their black brethren as their own struggle. But the two men were not referring to sentimentalities. While the Israeli government, military and intelligence supported the apartheid government in many ways, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had actually trained and equipped ANC fighters. Cuba and others did too, but to think that the then Palestinian leadership had the kind of political consciousness to extend a hand of solidarity to a nation fighting for its freedom, while the Palestinian people were themselves still enduring that same fight, filled me with pride.

Those men told me that they still hold onto their PLO-supplied military uniforms, even after all these years. We embraced and parted ways but, with time, I came to realize that the present struggle against apartheid in Palestine is not merely similar to that of South Africa. Both struggles are extensions of the same movement, the same fight for freedom and, in fact, against the same enemy.

When Nelson Mandela said, “We know all too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” he was not trying to be cordial or diplomatic. He meant every word.

Someday, we hope that a statue of Mandela, one that represents the spirit of Resistance in Palestine, will stand tall amid the people who championed his cause and loved him most.

Ramzy Baroud, PhD

Has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

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