Daily Archives: February 26, 2022

Charities have urged the UK government to welcome refugees from the conflict in Ukraine on the same scale as the thousands of families from the Balkans resettled during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.

In a letter to the Times, the charities, which include Save the Children, Amnesty International and the Refugee Council, asked the UK to lead international cooperation to handle a sudden increase in the number of people forced to flee the conflict, which threatens to be the most significant in Europe since the collapse of Yugoslavia.

The US has warned that 5 million people could be displaced by the conflict.

The UK government said its priority was to support British nationals and their families in Ukraine, and the government position was that people fleeing persecution should seek safety in the first safe country they reach.

An estimated 100,000 Ukrainians are already internally displaced after fleeing their homes to escape attack, while footage on social media shows lines of cars heading west into neighbouring Poland, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. The UN has appealed to neighbouring countries to keep their borders open to people seeking safety.

The letter from dozens of charities urged the government to implement a well-resourced initiative working with councils across the country to support Ukrainians in search of sanctuary, similar to the evacuation and resettlement programme during the Balkan conflict.

Visa applications from Ukraine for people who are not related to British nationals are currently suspended, meaning there is no legal route for them to enter the UK and claim asylum. A source told the BBC the government was scenario-planning for an increase in asylum seekers from Ukraine.

The charities said the crisis illuminates the crucial flaw in the nationality and borders bill, which discriminates against refugees who reach UK shores by illegal means, such as by boat across the channel.

The charities wrote: We urge the government to rethink this harmful bill and uphold our proud record of helping those fleeing war and oppression.

The prime minister has announced that the UK has 1,000 military troops on standby to support a humanitarian crisis in Europe, should they need to be called upon.

On Thursday, the Home Office confirmed that work, study or visit visas would be temporarily extended for some Ukrainians in the UK, or they would be able to apply for family visas or points-based immigration without leaving the country. This would grant them additional time to potentially find a job and stay in the UK for longer.

Those already on the point-based system will be able to stay longer and seasonal agricultural workers will have their visas automatically extended until the end of the year.

A government spokesperson said: Our priority has been to support British nationals and their families in Ukraine. This has included temporarily waiving application fees for those eligible under the family migration route, allowing entry for 12 months for others who did not meet the requirements and fast-tracking visas.

We continue to work with our international partners on a range of issues as the situation develops, including migration.

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Charities urge UK to welcome refugees fleeing Ukraine conflict - The Guardian

Republished: Tribune writer's story still an true to Ukrainian people's thirst for religious freedom

EDITORS NOTE:In 2001, South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits joined a Niles bike builder on a bicycle tour of Seventh-day Adventists churches in Ukraine. They heard stories of religious oppression under communism and saw churches reborn after they gained freedom in 1991.

Here is that story again, republished as it ran on July 9, 2001. It is a snapshot in time. Since then, religious freedom has shifted to some degree, especially in certain parts of Ukraine. But this story is still true to what Ukrainians suffered under communism, plus the religious rebirth they started to experience in their first decade of freedom. It's also true to the enduring generosity of the people.

In 2001, news media spelled the capital Kiev. Today, of course, it is known as Kyiv.

KIEV, Ukraine We rolled out of inky black croplands that look like the Midwest. On the edge of the nation's capital, Kiev, our bikes began to swish and dance around countless puddles on a muddy road into the town of Borispol.

Ukrainians navigated their way on foot and in boxy Ladas, the four-door jalopies made in neighboring Russia.

Rain-soaked foliage almost hid the small homes of concrete, but not the boring, Soviet-era apartment high-rises that flood the nation and that badly need new concrete, new tile, new everything.

Our tires nudged into the garden gate of a Seventh-day Adventist church. It was lunch, and the church folk had been expecting us for a couple of months.

Five cyclists from South Bend, Niles and Buchanan and six other Americans had just begun a weeklong tour of Adventist churches in this former Soviet nation. The generosity of the people humbled us. But so did the price they've paid for their faith. It was easy to find people who've spent years in jail for practicing Christianity. Neither the growth of churches we witnessed nor the tour itself was possible 10 years ago, when communism held its final grip.

The beaming pastor in Borispol showed us his unfinished church building. Exposed bricks held up a roof over a dusty floor cluttered with boards. He's struggling to raise $10,000 to finish the $35,000 project.

The fee for our tour brought a few hundred dollars to that cause. It was time to thank us. Cloth-covered tables were plastered with red borscht, bread, potatoes, salad, sweet rolls and fruit drinks in colorful mugs and plates. We snapped pictures. This surpassed our simple expectations. Then church women brought more goodies cabbage rolls, cabbage pancakes, strawberries and sweet, doughy desserts filled with fruit and cheese.

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Our tummies packed, they led us into the lower-level room that they used for worship and seated us on one side. Church members glowed at us from their seats. More than 5,000 miles and a mountain of riches divided our cultures, and all of that had been reduced to a few feet. As one Ukrainian woman said, "We are brothers and sisters."

They gave each of us a hand-painted wooden container or candlestick.

Such feasts and gifts repeated themselves throughout the tour breakfast, lunch, dinner. We all wished we had something small to give back. In fact, we often laughed while trying to get our translators to explain: "We are not worthy!"

We could have expected divine care on this fund-raising trip. We were ambassadors from the land of milk and honey on a first-ever tour. But, as I found traveling to people's homes after the tour, Ukrainians love having visitors, and they express this by cooking.

Doug Fattic assembled the mid-June trip when he wasn't building or painting bikes out of his Niles home or serving on the finance committee of the Adventist church in Niles.

He worked with Adventist church leaders in Ukraine.

The fee helped to raise money for the churches and for a project to give bikes to pastors. Many of the nation's 500-plus Adventist clergy can't afford cars, yet they have to minister to small communities that are 3 to 15 miles from where they live. So far, the project has gathered 350 bikes, 250 of which were bought from a bike factory in Ukraine, Fattic said. Much of his financial help $30,000 recently comes from his camping buddy, Debbie McKee of the "Little Debbie" snack cakes.

I was among two non-Adventists in the group. I'm Catholic. I came because I love to cycle and see out-of-the-way countries. I knew Fattic from years of cycling with him in a club.

Even the American Adventists were touched by the Ukrainians' devout faith and penchant for prayer throughout the day. Maybe it's the old truth about converts being the most fervent Christians; new religious freedom has drawn thousands of newcomers to the faith.

Or maybe it's because the Ukrainians' faith has endured bloodshed and anguish. Nazis murdered an estimated 700,000 Jews here in World War II, almost half of the Jewish population, and Soviet leaders killed, tortured or imprisoned thousands more for religious reasons.

About 140 years ago, a Catholic priest wrote the melody to fit a poem, "Ukraine Has Not Perished," which the Parliament chose as the national anthem in 1992. It begins:

"Ukraine has not perished, neither her glory, nor her freedom,

Upon us, fellow Ukrainians, fate shall smile once more.

Our enemies will vanish, like dew in the morning sun,

And we, too, shall dwell, brothers, in a free land of our own."

Growing up, the Rev. Michael Skrypkar used to climb into the mountains with other youths so they could escape the eyes and ears of the KGB and learn about their faith. When he turned 19, the army called, and, like all men his age, he was required to enlist. It was 1978. He refused to work on Saturdays, the Sabbath, which Adventists reserve for worship and rest. The army quickly found out and sent him to prison for three years.

The food was terrible, but Skrypkar prayed with many other men who were behind bars for their faith. He said he became a "good friend" to, and converted, a man who'd spent 15 years in prison for killing 31 allegedly corrupt policemen.

Now Skrypkar serves as pastor for the church in Belaya Tserkov, which means "White Church."

In a general sense, his heritage reminds me of the dual life Ukraine had to live under communist atheism. Skrypkar's brown hair and brown eyes, his rounded cheeks and jaw line reveal a Romanian ancestry. He speaks Romanian and enjoys the native food and music at home. But his passport says he's Ukrainian because he's from Chernivtsi, a Ukrainian town on the southwest border, which originally was a part of Romania.

He doesn't seem to mind. Many residents of western Ukraine have a split or mixed heritage because various parts of the area had belonged to neighboring countries.

It's more painfully ironic how communism tried to force atheism on a country that, in fact, had such a rich religious history.

Ukrainian churches go back to the 10th century. Ukraine was the first Eastern region to receive the Christian rites from Constantinople that shaped the Orthodox churches, the most prevalent of the Christian denominations in Ukraine and Russia today.

Kiev's medieval Pecherska Lavra, the "Monastery of the Caves," is a color- and gold-splashed assortment of Orthodox churches and buildings that was the site of many cultural firsts, among them the printing of the first Ukrainian dictionary. The western city of Lviv holds more medieval churches than you can see in one day, including Roman Catholic, Byzantine Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox.

Communists took direct control of the Russian Orthodox church during their reign and outlawed all other faiths.

Adventists recall how they'd knock out the wall between two apartments to hold Sabbath in secret, and how KGB members would appear at the services. Officials tolerated services but cracked down when the faithful began to teach their children.

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One of our translators, Svitlana Kryshtalska, recalls what happened to children who were found going to church: "Teachers would …gather the whole school and would start shaming you before the whole school audience that you believe in God and are visiting churches," she said. "God was a myth, and the communists were doing everything in order to make people consider it as something ridiculous. …Such things happened a lot of times. But, thank God, it never happened to me."

Kryshtalska, now in her 20s, said her father used to paint icons in Orthodox churches, but he never told her what he did for a living until she was 13 or 14 old enough to keep it a secret. She knows of another man who went to prison for 10 years for doing the same. Yet another was jailed for baptizing too many people.

Every typewriter had to be registered with the government so that, if religious material or counter-propaganda arose, officials could track down the author. Many Christians typed church papers inside closets, where they could muffle the clicking of their keys.

Youths used to go to a wooded camp and building called Bucha on the outskirts of Kiev to learn about communism. Adventists have turned it into an institute of higher education. Our group joined 300 or more young Adventist adults who gathered there in Sabbath suits and dresses for a conference of music, Bible school discussions and talk of church trips and evangelism.

Church buildings are still coming out of their shackles. The government had turned many of them into warehouses and, in one case, a museum to atheism.

There aren't enough old churches to meet the demands of growing denominations. Adventist numbers have tripled from about 20,000 over the past decade. Now there are more than 800 Adventist congregations throughout Ukraine, plus about 375 prayer groups that aren't large enough to be considered congregations, said the Rev. Vladimir Krupsky, president of the Adventist church in Ukraine.

The Adventists are erecting 15 to 18 church buildings in each of the eight conferences in the country, Krupsky said. Four out of the eight churches we visited were still being built. Tour organizers, no doubt, wanted us to see this for fund-raising purposes. But I saw many churches of other denominations being built, too.

Not all of this is for evangelizing. Adventists also talked about meals and clothing they provide for the needy.

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Ukrainians can build a church for the price of a high-end sport utility vehicle in the United States.

The pastor in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky sold his car to raise money for his church building. It couldn't have been a fancy car; pastors typically make less than $50 a month. Church members bought an unfinished house, and, little by little, they have installed what they can as collections trickle in from the members' also-meager incomes.

Their unfinished building is made of a white, concrete brick. Brick is cheaper and easier to come by than wood. The floor is still dirt, walls and ceiling are missing, but the garden outside is full. The side building has a garage, a small gathering room and a second story for storage that you reach by ladder.

The congregations we met borrowed money from relatively wealthy neighbors. Many people don't trust banks, one young pastor told me, because they have been known to close unexpectedly.

The churches tend to hire a handful of men with versatile building skills who are the ones who slap the cement, pound the nails, run the wiring and do everything else.

The Rev. Krupsky relaxed at his home with Doug Fattic and me to reflect on the tour we'd finished and the prospects for another tour next year. As Adventist president, Krupsky told Fattic that the bike tour would have been unimaginable seven years ago, at least for Krupsky. He and others were still shaking off years of thinking in the old Soviet way. Had Fattic come then, Krupsky said, he would have returned to the United States and warned others, "Never go there, never do business with those people."

The Ukrainians on our trip delighted in our 300-mile adventure, whether they were following in our three support vehicles or riding alongside us on their own bikes. Touring dozens of kilometers a day on a bike was common to us, totally new to them.

They and the pastors we visited took their cues from the Rev. Yuri Kusmenko, the fussy and clever man who masterminded our course. A lean man with raw Ukrainian cheekbones, Kusmenko oversees all of the Adventist pastors in Ukraine. He drove one of the two vans and watched the cyclists like a worried shepherd.

His intensity paid off. Rarely were we off schedule, and when we were, it wasn't by much. Pastors at several churches asked us to forgive their imperfections, whatever those were.

The Ukrainians overcame limitations with ingenuity.

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Take the bad water pressure that plagues the entire nation. Hot water is pumped to some homes, although it often fails or stops at a certain hour. One family's water stopped completely after 10 p.m. Water is expensive, so if you don't live in a high-rise, chances are that you have a pit toilet.

But our hosts built showers just for us. These consisted of two wood-frame stalls wrapped in wood or black plastic. Volunteers climbed a ladder to dump buckets of heated water into a barrel, from which the water flowed into shower heads. In Kaniv, youth group volunteers ran water from the heat of a fire up to the church's second floor, where it flowed from a tank down a long tube to the showers.

Ingenious or hospitable? We had brought sleeping mats and sleeping bags but never got to use them as the faithful cleared room in their churches for beds or mattresses, sent us to a hotel or to members' homes.

Not all is broken. City markets thrive without long lines for food. All of the highways and country roads we rode were paved. City streets are free of litter. Kiev is building a new, modern train station. The city's subways are not only full of art; they help many of the 5 million citizens get around with great efficiency.

Dignity lives in Ukraine, too. Village houses may be small, but they are immaculate and brightly painted. Many live in Soviet-built high-rise apartment buildings, hundreds of which fill Kiev's skyline. From the outside, they shock the eye like old public housing in Chicago. Front steps have holes big enough to catch a child's foot. Poorly lit hallways look like dungeons. Elevators chug along like old cars.

But open the door to someone's home and you find tidiness and warm-colored paint, wallpaper, carpets, lacy curtains and perhaps a book of worship.

Like stepping from hell into heaven.

Follow Outdoor Adventures columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures. Contact him at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

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We saw Ukraine churches reborn after communist oppression in this 2001 bike trip - South Bend Tribune

During the four long years of Donald Trumps presidency, many Canadians looked to the New York Times as an important beacon of reason and decency. Now that Canada is having its own Trump-esque moment, one thats been amplified by the Trumpist instruments of Fox News and Facebook, the Times appears to have abandoned its post. Instead of serving as a crucial bulwark against the spread of misinformation and populist fear-mongering, its now unintentionally aiding and abetting it.

On two separate occasions, the Times made fundamental errors of fact that skewed the way millions of people saw what was unfolding in Ottawa. First, they claimed in a tweet that the invocation of the Emergencies Act was a de facto suspension of civil liberties, one that it eventually walked back after nearly every constitutional expert in Canada pointed out its mistake.

Then on Saturday, as police were clearing out the remaining protesters, it ran a headline suggesting police arrested demonstrators at gunpoint despite that happening only once when police suspected explosives were inside a vehicle. The Times eventually softened the headline, but the damage was already done, and the story itself remained conspicuously biased towards the perspective of the protesters.

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But the recent episode on the events in Ottawa of its widely followed The Daily podcast might have been the biggest problem of all. To add insult to injury, it was a Canadian Catherine Porter, the New York Times Canadian bureau chief at the heart of it.

This is not the first time Porter has painted a picture of Canada for her American audience that many people found at odds with reality. On Oct. 17, 2018, when cannabis became legal across the country, she wrote: Canadians are calling it C-Day. That was, as the kids say, not a thing, and much Twitter mockery ensued.

But her depiction of the Ottawa encampment is no laughing matter. The podcast is marbled with language that seems conspicuously complimentary towards the people who assembled illegally near Parliament Hill holding the city hostage for weeks. She described the trucks that were gumming up the citys traffic as brilliant protest machines and suggested the protests had the feel of a huge tailgate party or festival.

Porter paid brief lip service to the existence of a menacing element that was telling Trudeau where to go (she declined to tell listeners they were telling him to go fuck himself), but she didnt spend much time on it. Instead, she talked to a 24-year-old beekeeper who said he was there to spread love and peace, a truck driver from northern Ontario, and a former yoga studio owner who she apparently heard yelling on the street and decided to interview. There was some real healing going on there, Porter said.

Portraying the protest as an act of collective grieving rather than a bacchanal of vandalism and constitutional hooliganism was a choice. So too was the willingness to employ the same framing some of the convoy organizers were presenting, that the more radical elements associated with the protests had latched on to the plight of the truckers. As Justin Ling tweeted, This is just wrong. It's entirely backwards.

She wasnt the only Times journalist to present an incomplete version of what was happening in Ottawa. In their coverage of the police crackdown on the remaining occupiers, reporters Natalie Kitroeff and Sarah Maslin Nir described Pat King as a prominent online champion of the protests, which is a bit like referring to Steve Bannon as a free speech enthusiast. In reality, King is a known white supremacist who made racist comments about NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh just last week.

All of this calls into question the newspapers basic competence in accurately reporting information about the U.S.s closest neighbour and ally. If they cant get it right about Canada, a country with which they share a language and the worlds longest undefended border, why should anyone trust the Times reporting from anywhere else in the world?

Canadians certainly dont seem inclined to trust the Times as much as they did before it botched its coverage of the occupation of Ottawa. Many of them, including plenty of high-profile ones, publicly cancelled their subscriptions last week. The hashtag #NYTunsubscribe was even trending in Canada on Saturday.

But all the cancelled subscriptions in the world wont repair the damage the New York Times did with its coverage of Canada last week. It validated a narrative of the protest that its organizers desperately wanted to telegraph, one in which they were fighting for freedom and resisting government oppression rather than agitating for the removal of a democratically elected government and the imprisonment or worse of the prime minister.

At a time when misinformation is poisoning our democratic discourse and being weaponized by those who want to undermine it, the self-anointed newspaper of record has to do better than this.

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The New York Times is failing Canada - National Observer

Turkey is heading toward another election. More precisely, it is heading toward its make-or-break vote like a car with no brakes, a faulty steering wheel, and an engine on fire. Discontent at runaway inflation is allied with question marks over a taxpayer-funded construction spree with President Recep Tayyip Erdoans prestige projects inevitably tendered to gang of five firms that keep getting tax breaks and debt write-offs. Yet while economists claim that Turkey is two steps away from crashing and burning, Erdoan resorts to calling them treacherous accomplices of foreign powers.

While elections are due by June 2023, coinciding with the centenary of the republic, constant instability makes it impossible to predict when they will occur (Erdoan or his coalition partner will get to choose, in their own best interests). The actors in the simultaneous presidential and parliamentary contests are, however, similar to previous elections. Erdoan is backed by his Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), together constituting the right-wing Peoples Alliance; they are opposed by the Nation Alliance, consisting of the center-left Republican Peoples Party (CHP) and the center-right, nationalist Good Party (IYIP, itself a split from MHP). Several other minor parties, ranging from center-right to far-right and from liberal to Islamist, seem likely to join or give support to the Nation Alliance.

More hopefully, from the Lefts perspective, there is the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). Having achieved 11.7 percent in the last elections, this force, led by the Kurdish civil rights movement, has also incorporated several left-wing movements and parties. Its ambitious Turkeyification project which aimed to transform it into a party of Turkey rather than of Kurds and their issues alone came to a halt as AKP resorted to overwhelming political oppression and violence in the Kurdish-majority areas. This growing hostility impeded the HDPs aim of an all-encompassing vision extending beyond Kurdish politics and forced it to retreat to its initial priorities. The government used this turn to further isolate and criminalize HDP: such measures have included the jailing of its members and leaders, constant defamation, and complete media censorship. This vilification reached new heights when HDP member Deniz Poyraz was murdered in the party headquarters in zmir by an assailant intent on mass murder as it happened, she was the only person in the building. Meanwhile, a state prosecutor filed a lawsuit for the Constitutional Court to close down the HDP and ban 451 of its politicians. It remains unknown whether HDP will be shut down, but the pressure coming from all sides is at an all-time high.

Despite the varying degrees of oppression, censorship, and suffering brought by Erdoans rule, the opposition seems energized and is calling for early elections. The presidents support is slowly crumbling, alongside the economy and the general welfare of the population. The main opposition bloc is on an upward trend and gaining ground. The HDP is showing great resolve and preserving its political base and influence. But where is the Turkish left in all this?

With the recent exception of HDP, left-wing politics in Turkey has been sidelined, if not slid into relative obscurity, in electoral politics and popular mobilization in the last forty years. Since Turkey was proclaimed a republic in 1923, the far left has been ostracized, obstructed, and prosecuted at every possible opportunity in the staunchly US-aligned NATO member state.

The Turkish lefts last limited parliamentary breakthrough came in 1965, when the Workers Party of Turkey (TP) gained 3 percent of the vote and fifteen seats in parliament. For a brief period, it successfully attracted young urban voters alongside intellectuals and blue-collar workers. Even this meager score was enough to scare the establishment to change the election system and avoid such radical movements gaining a parliamentary foothold. As the far left was pushed out of parliament and legal politics, several movements and parties took their struggle to the streets, factories, and universities, with some groups even turning to armed struggle. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the country became sharply polarized between right- and left-wing politics, as armed conflict between numerous groups became a part of daily life. Meanwhile, TP and multiple other left-wing parties were shut down by courts throughout these decades for a myriad of undemocratic reasons.

All this polarization and political struggle came to a screeching halt in September 1980 with a coup dtats. Here we cannot delve into the vast scale of the oppression and the unhumanitarian treatment that the Turkish left faced but, from bans to persecutions, obstructions to coup dtats, as hundreds were killed or executed while thousands were arrested, jailed, and tortured, the Turkish left was scattered, exiled, or simply languished. The military coup of 1980 traumatized left-wing movements, which again received a significant blow a decade later with the fall of the Soviet Union. These movements retreated, hoping to recover and reassess, as many movements and parties worldwide did during and after the 1990s. Yet the Turkish left became marginalized, both in terms of public resonance and political relevancy; more puritan and theoretical attitudes took over its discussions, separating it from the mass of the population.

Attempts were made to revitalize the Left; several parties merged, only to split again. They also contested elections, only to crumble before the draconian barrier set by the 10 percent election threshold. The United June Movement, which emerged after the Gezi Park protests in 2013, looked like a possible basis to build a meaningful left-wing coalition, only to succumb to infighting, factional differences, and disagreements over strategy.

Among all this tumult, the Workers Party of Turkey (TP) was reborn in 2017 out of a split in the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) dating back three years earlier. Another party splitting in the vast constellation of the Turkish left is not necessarily noteworthy. But TP has managed to break out of the wilderness, at least to some degree. This also owed to the HDPs cooperative attitude. As part of its ultimately unfulfilled Turkeyificiation process, HDP opened its lists to other socialist movements and figures, hoping to solidify its support beyond the Kurdish population. TP was one of the beneficiaries, whereas some left-wing parties refused.

TPs strategy henceforth was to act and vote together with the mainly Kurdish-led party but sit under its own name an approach that the HDP welcomed. In all fairness, the latter also had several socialist and far-left MPs under its umbrella; however, the party was (and still is) a coalition of numerous forces with differing inclinations and ideological stances. In this sense, TP taking its first steps to stand on its own was a small but considerable initiative. Its leader, Erkan Ba, and actor-turned-politician Bar Atay were elected on HDP lists in 2018, but took their seats as TP MPs, ending the almost fifty-year lack of a far-left party in Turkeys National Assembly.

Although these parliamentary activities started only recently, Erkan Ba is a somewhat familiar name, especially in left-wing circles. Part of the socialist movement since his teenage years, he came to prominence as an organizer and provincial and national Communist Party leader; he was expelled from his academic position for organizing striking workers at Istanbul University.

Making their voice heard in parliament provided a launchpad for further progress the TP started to gain traction and membership, especially from the younger parts of Turkish society. Two MPs became three as the well-known journalist and author Ahmet k joined TP ranks after amicably leaving the HDP to sit as an independent. The TPs parliamentary presence grew further when Sera Kadgil, an activist and lawyer popular among Turkish youth, defected from the center-left CHP last summer. Although small in number in a parliament of six hundred, these four MPs made a name for themselves for their fierce opposition, which the centrist opposition parties have failed to match.

It would be premature to speak of a revival of the Turkish left. But certain opportunities suggest that the TP and the Left can make a real comeback in the national political arena.

First, while the electoral system has been developed by the AKP-MHP coalition for these parties own benefit, it has backfired massively, for it invalidates the 10 percent threshold that had, since 1980, aimed to keep specific (mostly Kurdish, Islamist, and left-wing) movements out of parliament. The threshold is still there in name, but the possibility of contesting elections in broad alliances makes it much more easily surmounted, ensuring votes are not wasted on sub-10-percent parties. This is important given that with almost all other sites of politics so oppressed and intimidated making your vote count has long been the primary way to express oneself politically in Turkey.

Currently, HDP, TP, and several other far-left parties and movements are in discussions to organize an alliance for the next elections and beyond. Amid the widespread vilification and criminalization of HDP, an alliance with this party certainly generates unfavorable responses from certain parts of Turkish society, especially center-left nationalists and conservative circles. The Kurdish question is evidently one of the key divides in Turkish politics. That said, TP seems to be unfazed by those reactions: its position revolves around a nonviolent peaceful resolution of the conflict and equal citizenship for all groups in the country.

The more mainstream opposition hopefuls, Nation Alliance, come from both center-left and center-right, and seek votes from across all possible sections of society. Still, they seem most intent on winning over conservatives former AKP voters who are now undecided. The center-left CHP is trying to maximize its votes as a party of the center, and YP is set on being the new center-right catchall force in the post-AKP era. Whether CHP will be successful in such outreach remains unknown, and the strategy is itself rather controversial. Indeed, these overtures seem to push CHP toward rather two-faced economic policies, watering down proposals for nationalization and committing to minor tweaks to the economy, thus eroding the partys social democratic positions. Moreover, an excessive focus on shopkeepers and rural voters two overwhelmingly pro-government groups leads them to neglect blue- and white-collar workers, the precariat, and those working in the rising gig economy. Meanwhile, minor right-wing parties around the Nation Alliance are also hoping to cater to core AKP voters with varying degrees of liberalism and conservatism.

As Turkish politics center of gravity shifts to the right, TP can thus be an alternative for the left-leaning electorate that finds CHP too focused on moderate conservatives and HDP too specifically Kurdish-oriented. The radical left benefitting from such a realignment is hardly exclusive to Turkey: forces abroad like La France Insoumise and Denmarks Red-Green Alliance have similarly sought to mobilize the former voters of center-left parties that set off on a neoliberal or openly conservative trajectory.

The politics of Turkey somewhat fit into this shift, too: since the country transitioned to multiparty democracy after 1945, the ruling parties have (with brief, exceptional interludes) overwhelmingly been right-wing (with differing inclinations), with an increasingly conservative-leaning population. As the election looms, the center-left CHP and secular center-right IYIP are flirting with the conservative electorate by adapting their rhetoric and assuring these voters that there will be no revanche-minded secular policies such as banning headscarves in education or discriminating against the pious in civil service or employment.

While TP is not for a secular-revanchist agenda either, it also stands firmly against the shift toward conservative rhetoric and the diluting of the secularist roots of the republic. For example, its reaction to religious sects and their influence over public life came under the spotlight after a student who resided in an apartment funded by one such sect committed suicide. TP advocated the nationalization of all sect-run dormitories and flats and argued that religious sects must be precluded from providing public services and running private enterprises.

TPs left-populist discourse largely reflects its audience: blue- and white-collar workers, the unemployed, students, women and sexual minorities, environmentalists, and so on. Erkan Ba uses left-wing populist rhetoric to unify these groups against the establishment, calling for measures to resolve the division between the 99 percent, naturally including the groups above, and a privileged handful, the 1 percent, referring to the business people, government officials, and, of course, Erdoan and his AKP. The rest of the TP MPs share this discourse with different emphases; Ahmet k, for example, primarily focuses on government corruption and shady dealings within the state.

TP thus aims to mobilize these core groups, becoming an influential organizing force as well as an electoral one. Their attraction to TP, compared to more centrist opposition parties, is also because it is not afraid to scare off different electorates; hence its aggressive opposition comes across as uncompromising yet on point. TP can build out its base by doing what it has done best in the last three years: mounting a formidable opposition to privatization, inequality, and corruption while developing a coherent party program with sound alternative solutions.

The publics perception of the Turkish left is essential here. In the decades when the Left lost its place in mainstream politics, it became perceived less as running possible candidates for change than as overtly marginal pressure groups. To resist such an impression, TP must focus its policymaking on peoples everyday lives, and not get stuck on grandiose claims and aspirations. Its quiet break from the confines of theoretical digressions and political puritanism is a good first step, but not enough by itself. From radical tax reform to solutions to corruption, from access to social services to a nationalization program, there are several areas where TP can make radical proposals for a future secular, democratic republic. This can allow it to lead public discourse, increase its stature, and develop a plausible vision of an alternative Turkey. It is also helped by a changing context: as social inequality soars and both the pandemic and misguided policies deepen the economic crisis, policies once deemed fanciful can strike a chord.

The future of the Turkish left may not be as rosy as it sounds. Its political reflexes and instincts for policymaking also went missing in the wilderness years, and this poses extra barriers, given its lesser resources under an oppressive regime with a stronghold over the media. It may be an exaggeration to expect any meteoric rise of votes or mobilization like some left-wing parties have seen in Europe. However, considering the historical precedents and troubles of the Turkish left, a new peak and a new start with a vision of what Turkey can be, and a voice that refuses to accept right-wing hegemony, may very well be on its way. TP, with the cooperation and support of HDP, can be a dark horse in the upcoming elections, a political force in the post-AKP era and possibly push the political center of gravity to the left.

See the article here:

After Decades of Repression, the Workers' Party of Turkey Offers Hope for the Left - Jacobin magazine

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The recent blockades in Canada were not about COVID-19. They were about white supremacy and extremism. The blockaders are not patriots nor are they oppressed. The blockaders are an irrational mob of thugs upset about injury to their individual entitlement and panicked about the erosion of their white privilege.

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Attending a protest to whinge about job loss resulting from a refusal to meet fitness to work requirements (i.e. vaccination against COVID-19) is the ultimate in privileged griping. Those who attended the blockades merely to bring about the end of COVID-19 were absurd one cannot protest a global pandemic to a conclusion. The blockade was never about COVID, vaccines, jobs, trucks, public health measures or anything remotely tangible. Worse, the blockaders, in my personal view, behaved like domestic terrorists.

Those paying attention will observe that the 2022 Freedom Convoy resembled and had similar participants as the 2019 United We Roll Convoy. That convoy, complete with yellow vests, chants of Make Canada Great Again, Confederate flags, hate speech and on-stage appearances by Faith Goldy and then-Opposition leader Andrew Scheer, rolled up to Ottawa to shout at the government about carbon taxes and other grievances. In Calgary, the United We Roll Convoy was preceded by regular Saturday protests throughout 2018. Those protests were characterized by signs that read Trudeau for Treason, some with a picture of the prime minister and a noose, and others with misogynistic, sexually violent language about Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus mother.

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Down in Coutts, Alta., the blockaders barked their grievances and demands for respect of their rights from their truck cabs, recreational vehicles and pickup trucks. Things these blockaders professed had been violated were not rights but rather entitlements. White privilege, while the norm for many since birth in Calgary, is not actually normal. It is, rather, the outcome of long-standing, legislated, racist norms that have existed for so long some now believe that a life lived under the benedictions of white privilege is indeed normal and that the resulting entitlements are God-given rights.

Anti-vaccination, anti-mask, anti-public health measures, anti-adulthood and white supremacist marches have occurred every weekend in Calgary since March 2020. Every weekend for 101 weeks. In some of the earliest marches, Calgarians saw tiki torches, yellow stars, Nazi flags, f*ck Trudeau flags, Confederate flags, anti-Asian coronavirus conspiracy posters, posters that disparaged the mayor, posters that disparaged the provincial chief medical officer of health, and deliberate displays of alt-right extremist and hate insignia. The marches featured hate speech and the physical presence of terrorist groups like the Proud Boys, Soldiers of Odin and their ilk. These marches continued and grew for two years and were policed by the Calgary Police Service at a cost of approximately $2 million in 2021 alone. This excludes the costs of investigating hate crimes and hate incidents that were inspired by each of the rallies.

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Canadians dont treat this white nationalism and alt-right extremism with the same pressing urgency as we treat terrorism that may manifest in racialized communities. Police across Canada try to avoid the radicalization of youth into terrorism, however, little focus is paid to white children being radicalized into known terrorist groups like the Proud Boys. Frankly, its all about youth engagement to prevent crime until a bunch of privileged white kids with full entitlement rock up to city hall with their f*ck Trudeau flags, Nazi flags, Three Percenters white nationalist flags and Confederate battle flags. Thankfully, in Calgary, the polices ReDirect program has increased its focus on preventing youth radicalization into alt-right extremism and white nationalism.

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The blockaders were treated differently than any other group that had marched for racial or social justice. When did Black people ever, in the history of Canada, while marching in the streets for racial justice, receive pamphlets and multiple notifications from the police kindly advising them in advance of their potential arrest? In contrast, Black people marching for racial justice, having experienced centuries of actual oppression, police brutality, street checks and inequitable application of the law, are met with police officers wearing Thin Blue Line patches on their uniforms, a visible challenge to a racialized community who are then left feeling unsafe and unserved.

Police officers across the country will react to this column with assertions that policing is really hard right now. Yes, it is, but so is nursing and nurses arent seen clanning together in solidarity and wearing racist insignia on their scrubs or uniforms while working to save the lives of the provinces COVID-19 patients. It is rather the opposite, given that front-line nurses with boots on the ground in Alberta were faced with the potential of both layoffs and pay cuts while continuing to work in debilitating conditions on the front lines of the pandemic.

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There is a distinct culture in policing and that culture was exposed in a transparent fashion during the blockades. Academic research has found that core pieces of police culture include suspicion, isolation, solidarity, conservatism, machismo, racial prejudice, pragmatism, sense of mission, cynicism and pessimism. This culture is further reinforced by the political ideology in Alberta.

The Critical Infrastructure Defence Act came into force in 2020 after some Indigenous people were protesting a pipeline. This legislation was therefore available to police for enforcement during the blockades. Police, aware that the blockaders were by all reports known agitators, majority-white, and pleading a cause that may have aligned with the shared values and culture of police members seemed hesitant to enforce the act, perhaps, I believe because of those same shared values and culture. It was not surprising when it was reported that the blockaders had negotiations, entente cordiale style, with the Alberta RCMP in the warmth and comfort of the Smugglers Saloon in Coutts.

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The blockades were never about COVID. These protests were laced with extremism, white nationalism, populism and racism. The blockaders, privileged and entitled, were nourished, nurtured and coddled in Canada. The blockaders are my neighbours and your colleagues and family. The alarm has been sounded for everyone to urgently eradicate white nationalism to restore peace, order and good government in Canada. And its loud and clamouring, like a deafening wailing truck horn.

Heather A. Campbell is a Calgary-based licensed professional engineer with a masters degree in energy law and policy. Ms. Campbell is a board director with Arts Commons, a member of the Advisory Council for Western Engineering, a commissioner with the Calgary police commission and the peoples warden at St. Stephens Anglican Church. She is the former co-chair of the Alberta Anti-Racism Advisory Council. The views expressed in this column are her own.

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Campbell: The Freedom Convoy blockades were never about COVID-19 - Calgary Herald

SOUTH Herefordshire MP Jesse Norman has backed the governments actions amid the horrendous and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia today (February 24).

Mr Norman said he wholeheartedly supports the governments promise to impose sanctions on Russia, after Russian forces launched a military invasion of Ukraine in the early hours of this morning after weeks of growing tensions.

And in standing behind Ukraine, Mr Norman said the country is standing up for the most fundamental principle of freedom.

This afternoon Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK and allies will launch a massive package of sanctions to hobble Russias economy.

Mr Johnson is due to outline the further economic sanctions against Russia in the Commons later today.

We are standing up for the most fundamental principle of freedom

Jesse Norman MP

Many years ago I ran an educational project giving away brand new medical textbooks to doctors across Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain, Mr Norman told the Gazette. So I recall very vividly the bleakness and oppression of life under the communism imposed by the Soviet Union.

In standing behind Ukraine against this horrendous and unprovokedRussian invasion, we are not only supporting a sovereign, free and independent European state. We are standing up for the most fundamental principle of freedom:that people should be able to mix, to speak, to worship, to be educated, to bring up their families and to prosper as they see fit under the rule of law, without threat or tyranny.

So I wholeheartedly support the Government in building international alliances against Russia, imposing sanctions, and taking whatever other measures may be required to make clear that this crime of aggression will not go unpunished and uncorrected.

Read more:

MP Jesse Norman backs government to clamp down on Russia after 'horrendous and unprovoked' invasion | rossgazette.com - Ross Gazette

Following the launch of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and after months of endless pro-war propaganda by Western governments and the corporate media, a chauvinist anti-Russian campaign is now underway in the US and Western Europe. Its targets include Russian musicians, conductors and singers.

Late Thursday, management at New York Citys Carnegie Hall announced that acclaimed Russian conductor Valery Gergiev would no longer be conducting the Vienna Philharmonic at the famed venue on Friday. Management also canceled a performance by respected pianist Denis Matsuev, who had been scheduled to perform Sergei Rachmaninoffs Piano Concerto No.2.

Gergiev, 68, is among the most accomplished and respected figures in world classical music today, a field in which Russian and formerly Soviet artists have excelled. His international career began during the Cold War with a performance in Britain in 1985, at a time when the Reagan administration had ratcheted up tensions with the Soviet Union to the extreme. A quarter century ago, Gergiev was made principal guest conductor of New Yorks Metropolitan Opera.

No reason was given for the removal of Gergiev from the program, but it was clearly carried out in retaliation for his support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Gergiev met in St. Petersburg in the 1990s shortly after the dissolution of the USSR. Protests were evidently planned to take place in front of Carnegie Hall during the performance, prompting management to buckle to pressure. The New York Times, one of the chief clearinghouses for CIA propaganda, noted the cancellation with cynical satisfaction, labeling Gergiev not a musician but an agent of Russian soft-power politics, a cultural ambassador who has built a busy international career while maintaining deep ties to the Russian state.

Gergievs other international engagements are also threatened as well, and the continuation of his international career is being made subject to modern-day loyalty oaths. Milans La Scala opera house has threatened to drop a March 5 appearance if Gergiev does not publicly denounce Russias invasion of Ukraine. Munichs mayor has given him three days to issue such a statement or face removal as chair of the Munich Philharmonic. Rotterdam is also reportedly considering canceling a Gergiev Festival scheduled for September.

There is staggering hypocrisy behind this campaign. It goes without saying that not a single figure in American music has ever faced any retribution for supporting the wars in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and the list goes on. The Times and the Democratic Party also make no attempt to reconcile their support for banning Russian musicians with their opposition to boycotts of Israeli intellectuals and academics for that countrys oppression of the Palestinians and recurring mass atrocities in the tiny Gaza Strip.

The claim is being made that Gergiev is being singled out not because hes a Russian, but because of his backing for Putin. Should every US musician, artist or scientist who ever visited the White House, or served on an advisory panel on cultural or scientific affairs, have his or her career ended because of the American governments vast crimes? Is every Hollywood celebrity who publicly endorsed Barack Obama responsible for his Terror Tuesday meetings where the president and other officials went over kill lists of potential drone strike targets?

Many other Russian classical performers now face similar threats, and the campaign has even expanded beyond individuals with any connection to Putin, to Russian music and culture in general. The Eurovision Song Contest has announced it will not accept entries this year from Russia, claiming the presence of musicians who happened to have been born in that country would bring the competition to disrepute. Various orchestras have even begun removing pieces by Pyotr Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers who died a century or more before the war in Ukraine began.

This disgusting spectacle is the product of war fever whipped up by the US government with the help of the pliant capitalist press, including the Times, the Washington Post and other pillars of what once passed for American liberalism.

This campaign to promote anti-Russian hatred has little popular support. It is largely centered in sections of the privileged middle class. Polls have consistently shown that the vast majority of the US public opposes war with Russia, or even significant American involvement in Ukraine, but one would have no sense of this by reading through the comments sections of the Times. The latter are dominated by furious statements blaming Putin for every conceivable social ill both foreign and domestic. Shamefully, hardly a single major academic, writer or intellectual can be found to oppose this.

This social layer has proven extremely vulnerable to this type of manipulation. For years, the affluent petty bourgeoisie has been in the grip of one witch-hunting campaign after another, which have destroyed innumerable careers on the basis of allegations and innuendo. This includes the #MeToo attacks on opera singer Placido Domingo and Metropolitan Opera director James Levine.

Dominating these campaigns are appeals to emotion, attacks on due process, the denigration and falsification of history and a worldview dominated by race and ethnicity, which have led to a shocking deadening of democratic consciousness within this milieu. But this outlook also reflects the class interests of this social stratum, which long ago made its peace with world imperialism.

Such people write and speak as though they lived the past three decades in a parallel universe in which the Global War on Terror and numerous wars of choice by American imperialism, all of them based on a torrent of lies and misinformation, never took place.

The attack on Gergiev and other artistsand this is only the starthas disturbing historical parallels. Some of the worst political crimes in 20th century US history were preceded by the creation of this type of frenzied jingoistic atmosphere. Vicious attacks on German immigrants occurred during World War I, including the murder of socialist coal miner Robert Prager in Collinsville, Illinois in April 1918. World War II witnessed the infamous mass internment of Japanese Americans by the Roosevelt administration.

These chauvinist campaigns also created the conditions for a wide-ranging assault on socialist opponents of war, including the arrest of Eugene Debs in 1918 and the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party in 1941.

There are currently 2.4 million Russian-Americans living in the US, including nearly 400,000 born in Russia or the former Soviet Union. Are they to be treated as well as potential enemy agents, organized and directed by Putin through RT and other Russian media outlets? Will they also be forced to publicly denounce the Russian government and its actions as a condition for keeping their jobs? Indeed, on Thursday Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell floated the possibility of expelling Russian international students from the United States as a form of collective punishment for the actions of theKremlin.

There is a disturbing similarity between the campaign against Gergiev and the attack during World War I on Karl Muck, the German-born director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Muck was forced out of his position, arrested at night and interned for 17 months as an enemy alien after a press campaign over his supposed refusal to perform the Star Spangled Banner before concerts.

In response, Muck pointed to the universality of music and rejected its subordination to nationalism, declaring, Art is a thing by itself, and not related to any particular nation or group. Therefore, it would be a gross mistake, a violation of artistic taste and principles for such an organization as ours to play patriotic airs. Does the public think that the Symphony Orchestra is a military band or a ballroom orchestra?

The campaign against Russian musicians is aimed at poisoning public consciousness and depriving people of the sensitivity and human solidarity that great music always encourages.

The exchange of musicians between the US and the Soviet Union played a role in alleviating tensions, and inculcating mutual respect for the cultural achievements of both countries, largely limiting the spread of the most visceral forms of anti-Russian hatred to the extreme right. This history includes tours by great Soviet musicians in the US and the renowned international tours by American jazz musicians. In 1958, Texas-born Van Cliburn made an enormous impact on the Soviet public when he won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Within the working class, a different attitude prevails. Decades of US invasions and wars, whose victims include American working class youth, have produced a deeply ingrained skepticism about Washingtons claims to be fighting for national sovereignty and human rights. Workers have learned through bitter experiences that behind such rhetoric lie the interests of the ruling elite. And they know, as always, it will be the workers of the world who will be made to pay the price.

The greatest danger, however, is that this latent opposition remains diffuse, unorganized and politically inarticulate. If the drive towards World War III is to be stopped, the working class must mobilize on a socialist, internationalist basis to stop it.

See the article here:

The campaign against Russian conductor Valery Gergiev: Middle-class hysteria in the service of war - WSWS

The fortuitous discovery of the court transcripts of the trial of freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi pierces the deliberate official silence of many years and thrusts this important historical figure right to the centre of British imperial history in Kenya.

Without a doubt, especially given the historical significance and centrality of Kimathi in the struggle for independence, there is a real possibility that the publication of this archival find (in the 2017 Julie MacArthur edited volume, Dedan Kimathi on Trial) could fling open the door to a grim and an uneasy past and bring into question not merely the skewed sense of British colonial justice but also the entire imperially inaugurated order and related issues of social and historical injustice. After all, the subjugation, domination, and social control of Africans, and the exercise of power in the allocation of resources and services under the colonial order, was through a flimsy and dubious cloak of legality.

Throughout human history, when the legal process establishes a right of one particular person, group, or institution, it simultaneously imposes a restraint on those whose preferences impinge on the right established. In this particular case, in the name of the law, the rights of white settlers were assured and their privilege entrenched even while the just and legitimate aspirations of millions of Africans were delegitimized, repressed, and extinguished without contemplation, with arbitrariness disguised as legality.

Moreover, the colonial order was contrived through legal prestidigitation. From the outset, the imperial legitimacy of power was, therefore, contested, and most segments of the African population in Kenya understood that the colonial order had been possible only through the legal production of illegality, that, indeed, colonial law cloaked illegitimate power.

Kimathi was convicted on two chargesunlawful possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of ammunitioncontrary to the Emergency Regulations of 1953, under which it was found that he threatened public safety and order, contravening a colonial order that rested on the rickety stilts of the legal production and social construction of illegality, which is what had inspired the Mau Mau threat in the first place.

It is, in fact, curiously surprising that Kimathis defence team never once argued, in entering its plea, as Mandela and Walter Sisulu, among other defendants, had in the Rivonia Trial. Making a formal plea, the former had courageously stated that it was the government that should have been in the dock and not him. The latter had stated, It is the government which is guilty, not me, adding, after being rebuked by Quartus de Wet, the presiding judge, who asked him to plead either guilty or not, It is the government which is responsible for what is happening in this country.

The oppressive colonial order resting, as it did, on the social and legal construction of illegality, was not on trial, which, in retrospect, casts a shadow of doubt on this case. In other words, it was a blatant miscarriage of justice.

As if this was not enough, as British colonial authorities were wont to do, Kimathi, the embodiment of anti-colonialism, and by extension, a fighter against all that was evil in the heady, violent 1950s, was ignominiously executed and buried in an unmarked grave, his remains forever lost. With this physical, psychic, and existential erasure, it must also have been hoped that his memory was evermore expunged from the face of the earth. He was not only to be humiliated and dehumanized but also to be forgotten.

As Ngg wa Thiongo observes, this can be seen as part and parcel of, generally, European, and specifically, British imperial dismembering practice of power intended, at once, both to pacify colonial subjects, and as a symbolic act, a performance of power, intended to produce docile minds. The commutation of capital punishment was an integral aspect of colonial networks of power and violence. In addition, Kimathis execution was a stark enactment of colonial power intended to reinforce an imperial order and impose the authority of the colonial state. And this enactment of power over Kimathi as a colonial subject meant even more: this feared and hated terrorist was dismembered from memory, what he stood for now choked off, and the dangerous ideas and memories that he carried, buried.

The man that colonialists wanted Kenya to forget became a byword for contempt and derision spoken only in hushed whispers. Kimathi, his image now besmirched, like that of many others whose lives were shamefully ended on the gallows, and his memory all but wiped from the public eye for at least half a century, was an ambiguous historical figure unlike self-styled but celebrated fathers of the nation. Even after independence, a street named after him was only a token honour. But the significant military role he had played in the fight for freedom stubbornly remained a part of the national metanarrative and of the school curriculum. For most people, he remained an unspoken hero.

But, as Simon Gikandi points out, there was a gradually spreading ripple of public acclaim emanating from Karunaini, Kimathis birthplace, which naturally became the epicentre of the sustained memorialization of the man and what he stood for, despite years of neglect in the Kenyatta and Moi years. In the immediate neighbourhood of Karunaini, numerous elementary and secondary schools are named after him, the highest honour paid to him by the Nyeri elite led by Mwai Kibaki, who in 1972 established the Dedan Kimathi University of Technology. After assuming the presidency, Kibaki then took the memorialization a notch higher by commissioning the Kimathi statue that stands at the head of the street named after him in the centre of the countrys political and commercial capital, Nairobi.

All this came at a time when Kenyans were witnessing a distantly related reincarnation of Mau Mau, the growing Mungiki movement among Gikuyu rural and urban youth. This then is what explains why, in an intimate conversation, in 2006 with two close friends from my church in Nairobi, one concerned observer expressed fear that the Kimathi statue would send the wrong message in the country and signal the return of his spirit. Whatever that might have meant, it was not far from the truth.

In my belated rejoinder to my friends remark and, appropriately using Biblical imagery, this recognition that came late in the day, was Kimathis haunting blood bitterly crying out to be remembered, and for justice, from an unmarked grave. His voice joined at least a thousand others whose micronarratives are effectively detailed by David Andersons Histories of the Hanged and thus continue providing witness to British colonial political oppression, exploitation, injustice, and police and military brutality from their graves.

This moment in Mau Mau history in general, and the commemoration of Kimathi in particular, marked the zenith of the retrieval from near oblivion of one of the most violent periods in Kenyas history that a few would rather not remember. That a small ripple could have reached such a national crescendo, and from the Nyeri region, which was particularly hard hit by the divisions and the violence that arose in the 1950s, and without the slightest demur from so-called loyalists, would warrant an urgent re-evaluation of what it meant to be a rebel or a loyalist in that decade.

It is quite remarkable that a young peasant of Kimathis humble background could have taken such a militant stance against the British, becoming such a formidable imperial headache. This did not happen simply because he, as then alleged, was a demonic, bloodthirsty rebel or a deranged psychopath hell-bent on violence. This sort of offhanded criminalization and obvious dismissal has clouded a clear view of the man.

Kimathis stature and resistance was achieved through an ever-widening circle, starting from self-identity to his relationship with, and organization of, key figures that he knew face-to-face (read: Mau Mau forest fighters). This was followed by his keen understanding of, and appeal to, a solidaristic collective organization from which he drew upon the consciously organized resources of a social movement in pursuit of his individual agency.

Furthermore, although this is also where he floundered, he did attempt to involve the organizational capacities of generalized agencies such as other global liberation movements, and exemplars of revolution and their publications, and local and international media, which he read or knew only remotely through their representations.

In the first concentric circle of Kimathis organization of resistance was a deep-seated resistance consciousness the spring of which was sufficient self-cognizance to enable him to act as a coherently organized individual or to exercise reflexive agency in power relations. Moreover, his inclination to join the nationalist movement; to become a member of the Kenya African Union (KAU), for which he served as the Ol Kalou branch secretary; and his subsequent involvement with the militant outgrowth of the Anake a 40 (Young Men of the 1940s)the Muhimumade up of ex-servicemen, urban gangs, and frustrated political activists from whose ranks he rose quickly to become a respected oath administrator and organizer, all must have stemmed from a solid base of intensive self-organization.

This sort of political activity demonstrates that Kimathi, as an individual, was organized enough to be able to seek to enrol, translate, interest, or oppose others in state-making as a public project of power. This demonstrates his existence under conditions of well-framed reflexivity. Kimathi well understood how power relations constituted his identity, which is what ignited reflexivity that propelled him to pursue possibilities of what he could be(come). This reflexive self-organization of himself as a resistant subject was based on framed knowledge about who he was and what he could or should be, which is what enabled him to take a stand against the established colonial order.

Kimathi lived at a crucial period of transition from African traditional ways to a racially hierarchical colonial modernityat a time, therefore, when the very private experience of having a personal identity to discover, and a personal destiny to fulfil, became a subversive political force of major proportions.

Moreover, he knew about and sought to exploit the deep, fertile soil of brewing African dissent and real grievances, and naturally, the latently explosive transcript of indignation hidden beneath it. Kimathis ambition was to animate the collective cultural fantasy and dreams of violent revenge of subordinate but long-suffering Africans who, however, never gave their personal hidden transcripts expression, even among close friends and peers.

At the level of analytical understanding, this is what should matter to us most. It matters little, then, the idiosyncrasies attendant to the pursuit of his stand or whether that stand was an act of outrage or rebellion, or an existential gesture. Equally, important as they are to our full understanding of the man, it matters little what ascriptions or variable representations and multiple interpretations his image attracted contemporaneously or thereafter.

Next, at the level of social organization, Kimathi was able to implicate other important players, some of whom he knew through face-to-face relations. Put differently, he was able to draw upon resources of social organization greater than, or beyond, himself, such as ecologies of local community networks, and, by extension, the forged alliance of ethnic kin- ship and enlarged moral imagination of the Gikuyu.

This level can be said to have been reached when Kimathi took to the Nyandarua Forest, where he rose to become one of the most important leaders of the Mau Mau rebellion. It is in the forest that he would found the Kenya Defence Council, and a freedom fighters Kenya Parliament as attempts to bring order, hierarchy, and centralization to the scattered Mau Mau forces. This could well have been the time when Kimathi, contemporaneously, started to attract and embody all manner of competing ascriptions and symbolize many of the contradictions represented by Mau Mau, Kenyan anti-colonialism, and nationalism writ large.

It is while in the forest that a relatively well-prepared Kimathi, as a resistant subject, a man of courage and practical power, launched his career properbefore, of course, taking the reins of state power. Having experienced, first-hand, misfortunes that he rightly attributed to the colonial structures of domination that resulted in systematic oppression, and having witnessed the wishes of the people, and judging himself to be a formidable man of will, Kimathi thought he knew how to come to their end, and, whispering to this friend, and arguing down that adversary, sought to mould society to his purpose.

Looking upon people as wax for his hands, he started to take command of them as the wind does the clouds, in order to lead them, in glad surprise, to the very point they would be. And as a leader of men, he was, for a time, followed with acclamation. But this stage also marked the beginning of his undoing.

After all, there are obstacles and limits to the construction of any collectivity, or people as a body. There is nothing automatic about the emergence of a people. With him were people who, while sharing certain substantive values, consisted of multiple selves, people constituting their identities in a plurality of subject positions. Although aspiring to forge the wishes of the people into a new polity of citizens, an ordered, lawful, and progressive society, as a leader of a loose coalition with divergent interests, Kimathi easily became a blank canvas upon which were inscribed various political demands and ends.

In addition, he was a suspended hegemon in the making without firm or well-established authority, a floating signifier rather than a fixed one that was pinned down, ordering the form of debate, irrespective of the content. Not having achieved fixity that avails hegemonic power, his authority was subject to the harsh audit of his peers. It comes as no surprise then that Kimathi was less known for his prowess as a field general than for his motivational speeches and his legendary obsession with the output of bureaucratic prose, a discursive practice that is a constant site of struggle over power.

In his power stratagem, Kimathi believed the pen was mightier than the sword. The power struggle was not just within the movement and its top leadership but also within the wider political frontiers of the colonial state. Ultimately, this is what defused the violent forest struggle for land and freedom, arresting the momentum of Mau Maus militant demand for independence. Competing loci of personal authority impaired collective action and blunted the first impulse of social obligation, muddling the core and shared substantive value between all Mau Maus as encapsulated by their central argument about moral economy.

Confrontations and divisions between forest fighters, and, specifically, challenges to Kimathis authority, no doubt affected the stories that these opponents of colonial power wanted to tell Kenya and the world. Furthermore, this fragmentation of resistance lacked all vital centralization and a shared quantifiable strategic objective. As a result, while initially successful in tapping into the energy, general mood of dissent, and resources of a movement that had discrete but wide support of the majority of people in Central Province, solidaristic organization there and elsewhere in the colony and beyond did not quite take root.

In spite of his prowess at drawing on global exemplars of revolution and political thought, Kimathis predicament was exacerbated by lack of success to connect with generalized others like such rvolutionnaires elsewhere in the world and media organizations. In the long run, the colonial state caught up with this central figure whose personal resistance had become the keystone upon which the struggle to defeat tyranny, imperial hegemony, and regime of colonial normalcy or order rested. Once the influence of the person at the centre of the Mau Mau rebellion was snuffed out, the back of the resistance was broken.

Thus ended the ambition of a man of courage and measured practical power to mould society to his purpose. But it is important to turn to the fulcrum on which this personal ambition and carefully cultivated identity turned: that is, various technologies of self-expression and, therefore, self-inscription and self-formation. Specifically, this refers to Kimathis identity-shaping disciplines and discursive practices through which he sought to transform himself into a formidable man of will and a practical man of action and power, and which also enabled him to assume, as a personal mission, the alignment of ordinary peoples everyday projects with authoritative images of the colonial social order.

As Derek Peterson has observed, Kimathis ensemble of representations and disciplines necessitating incessant writing, bureaucratic recording and record-keeping materials, typewriters, printing machines, and so forth were ways of imagining a counter-state. More than being a hobby or obsession, it does seem that Kimathi understood the nature and inner workings of powerabove all, that it is textual, semiotic, inherent in the very possibility of textuality, meaning, and signification in the social world. Moreover, his letter writing and record keeping can, and should, be seen as discursive resistance or discursive articulation of resistance that informed Kimathis sense of self-identity and purpose.

Kimathis identity-shaping disciplines and discursive practices were a way of engaging with social reality, which cannot be known unequivocally but only through its representation in language. He was exercising discursive consciousness by putting things into words or giving verbal expression to the promptings of action. His use of speeches, text, writing, cognition, and argumentation can, and should, be seen as reliance on language to represent possibilities, and to position possibilities, in relation to each other. In other words, he used language to define the possibilities of meaningful existence.

Although he was known to have written profusely, however, there is precious little that exists of Kimathis records to shed light on his thinking, what he understood his cause to be, and his stand. Nevertheless, it is worth making a gallant effort to reveal his thoughts.

For all his disrepute, Kimathis sharpness, illustrated in his few surviving historical records, is not in doubt. Indeed, there has not been a more comprehensive testimony to the mans intellectual acuity until the recovery of transcripts of his trial. Although meant to argue for the prosecution, an expert witness, a medical doctor, stated that Kimathi was a reasonably intelligent man, intelligent above the standard of a man of his education. This rings true in the pages of his scant writing. His is a feeble and isolated prophetic voice crying out from the wilderness of colonial oppression, that of socioeconomic neglect of African reserves and exploitation.

Nor was it a voice that was taken seriously. But what one deduces from the little writing available, and specifically that selectively adduced in the trial as evidence (Exhibits Nos. 22A, 23, and 24), is a person of more than average intelligence and a man wholly committed to a just cause, something that is echoed in Maina wa Kinyattis The Papers of Dedan Kimathi, the veracity, provenance, access, and translation of which, in academic circles unfortunately, is still much in doubt.

Scattered throughout are gems of Gikuyu wisdom from a man moved to action, not out of flippant emotions but from the depths of the experience of colonial injustice and the pressing need for redress. One gleans appeals to the colonial authorities to rely less on coercion or fear and more on truth; appeals for mutual trust, respect, and friendship, and mutuality in giving and acceptance; appeals for truth and justice; appeals for shared prosperity while appreciating that all people cannot be rich; appeals for the need for reconciliation; and appeals for peace and mutual coexistence and the hope that blacks and whites in Kenya be of one heart.

One also finds, in these few pages, a stunning tenacity in the justifiability of the cause for which he was fighting. The reading of the three Kimathi letters also shows a clear understanding of his cause: Kimathi and others were fighting for the country and its people, for wathi (self-mastery) and for truth and justice.

And, in this worthy struggle, surrender was out of the question. It was something that could not get into the minds of intelligent people. Indeed, it was preferable to sell ones soul instead of having to surrender it. Surrender would also not bring about an end to the war. It was also quite clear, in Kimathis mind, who Mau Mau were, and it was not just a matter of white and black as the problems that beset Kenya affected both races. As such, justice could not be expected from the barrel of the gun.

Mau Mau was the cry of a people suffering from poverty and exploitation. It was a vehicle to liberate Kenya, to regain the Kenyan soil that Europeans had occupied by force. The poor man was Mau Mau, and therefore, bombs and other weapons could not finish the movement. In fact, if the exploitation of the Africans did not stop, Kimathi said, it was to be expected that the war in Kenya would continue for a long time.

Violent confrontation between the two sides could not bring about fairness or truth. Only peace could hold the Kenyan house together, as opposed to ruling Africans with the colonial whip in their faces. There was need for reconciliation (iguano), and mending of the paining part of the colonial body politic, beyond the rift occasioned by the war. The fight was not one of everlasting hatred but was, rather, a necessary but regrettable pause calling for the creation of a true and real brotherhood between white and black, so that the latter could be regarded as people, as capable and equal human beings.

All said, one may be forgiven for seeing, in Kimathi, a quite different kind of man from these letters. A Kimathi who was not a mastermind of evil and a militant man of violent action but also an understanding diplomat in his own right, especially considering his constant appeals for peace.

Nonetheless, Kimathis cause and what he stood for, his thinking about the colonial order and his action(s) against it, and his appeals, were not taken as seriously as he would have wished. Indeed, because of it, his letter writing and record keeping, and the content therein, even proffers of peace, were met with a closed double riigi (door)that of the colonial authorities on the one hand, and that of sections of the forest Mau Mau and their leadership on the other.

Kimathi faced opposition from his fellow forest fighters over strategy revolving around his peace efforts as well as challenges to his authority. This rift stemmed from literacy, which in the forest often became a dividing line, especially among the movements leadership. While exercising identity-shaping disciplines and discursive practices, Kimathi elevated himself over his peers, whom he was often given to criticizing as unlettered. They, in turn, accused Kimathi of having been poisoned by Christianity and Western education. It is not surprising that the modestly educated, like Kimathi, and the highly educated, like Karari Njama, were disturbed by traditional Gikuyu practices and superstitions, for instance, precolonial oath-taking elements, yet tolerated them for their utility.

In due time, those who clung to traditions and superstitions, deeming themselves to be authentic Gikuyus, retreated to the house of Gikuyu customs and closed the woven door (riigi) behind them. These Kimathi critics were weary of his bureaucratic Kenya Parliament with its incessant writing and record keeping and talks of making peace that they found untrustworthy. They accused Kimathi and other educated Protestant leaders of using their illiterate followers for their own selfish ends.

On the other hand was the riigi of the colonial authorities. The colonial authorities, and the court, chose to look beyond Kimathis motivations, what he stood for, and what he was fighting for. That mattered little. It is little wonder that Kimathi was tried within the narrow legal parameters of a court of Emergency assize. Why he was in possession of both an unlicensed revolver and six rounds of ammunition was not in question.

Kimathis proffers of peace and appeals for redress of pressing African grievances; for the colonial authorities to rely less on coercion or fear, and more on truth; for mutual trust, respect and friendship, and mutuality in giving and acceptance; for shared prosperity while appreciating that all people cannot be rich; for the need for healing and reconciliation; for peace and mutual coexistence, and the expression of hope that blacks and whites in Kenya be of one heart; and for justice and truth, came to naught. Indeed, what he represented, the truth of the weak spoken in the face of power, was inadmissible and unacceptable.

Kimathis insubordination against the constituted colonial order and its laws, and the insurrection that he had led, had breached the bounds of established rules of structured consensual interaction, including whatever conflict existed between the imperial authorities and their lawful African subjects. His war sought to reconfigure the socioeconomic formation of the state, the political order within it, and its power structure. The violence and its envisioned objectives went beyond ordered conflict within the structured rules of interaction that colonial authorities oversaw.

What is more, Kimathis truth and knowledge were at loggerheads with the ideas and beliefs that had (re)produced the colonial political, economic, and social structure. Structurally, what Kimathi stood for was dangerous to the systemic colonial structure and had to be rooted out and crushed. What Kimathi stood for was, therefore, feared by, and undesirable for, the colonial authorities. He was the paragon of radical and revolutionary thought that demanded far-reaching reforms and fundamental decolonization.

The door to this dangerous road had to be firmly shut, even if it meant granting flag and political independence to Kenya. Indeed, independence was one way of preventing this possibility: it was a safety valve that ensured that the madding crowd of have-nots could not at any time leap over the barriers and invade the pitch of sanitized politics of law and order, as they had in 1952.

In death as in life, Kimathi represents the deep politics of moral ethnicity that continues to pit the haves against the have-nots, that is, at once a dynastic, factional, and generational game. This, then, is what explains why he continues to be the revolutionary touchstone by which radical politicians such as J.M. Kariuki, writers acutely sensitive to social and political forces and relations of production, and socially conscious musicians, evaluate politics in Kenya.

Kimathi remains, perhaps more than any other public figure in Kenyas history, the focal point of nationalism, the smouldering embers of which promise to glow brighter into an ever-shining dawn of the quest for popular statehood.

The emerging image of Kimathi is that of a simple man who acted with courage when he experienced systematic colonial oppression. It is this courage that propelled him to take a daring stand and to fight as a David against an imperial Goliath for basic human rights and shared prosperity, dignity, truth, justice, mutual respect, and coexistence. In so doing, he exemplified Ralph Waldo Emersons three qualities of greatness, which conspicuously attract the wonder and reverence of mankind.

First, Kimathi demonstrated a purpose so sincere that it could not be sidetracked by any prospects of wealth or other personal advantage. It is this virtue that steeled his nerves as he waited for his end and must have enabled him to embrace self-sacrifice. It is such self-sacrifice that made renowned heroes of Greece and Rome such as Socrates, Aristides, Phocion, Quintus Curtius, and Regulus.

Second, he was a man of practical power who sought to memorialize and, therefore, immortalize, the thoughts of powerless peasants in sculptures of wood and stone, brass, and steel.

Third, Kimathi excelled in courage, which no imperial terrors neither bombs from the sky nor the gallowscould shake. His own truth and knowledge were the antidote of fear. Kimathi had the conviction that the imperial agents with whom he contended were not necessarily superior to him in strength, resources, and spirit. A self-made field marshal, his speeches motivated his itungati (troops of young soldiers) reminding them that they were men and that their enemies were no more. It is this same sacred courage that steadied his pen as he scribbled his last letter, addressed to a Father Marino (from a Catholic mission in Nyeri). From a stoic pen flowed words of a man who was persuaded that he had attempted to accomplish the cause that he was put in colonial Kenya by the Creator to do.

Penning these last words, I wonder whether, as a professing Christian, Kimathi thought he was indestructible. Whether his only fear was facing his final judge, the Almighty, and not those who could kill the body but were unable to kill the soul or destroy his legacy. Otherwise, how could he have taken on the British unless he believed he was more than a match for his antagonists then and in the long sweep of history? Was death his final hope for escape from the imprisonment of an oppressive colonial architecture of legal strictures and exploitative policies; from the manacling of individual and collective wills; and from imperial spatial deletion and delimitation constraining the individual field and basis of action and, therefore, African agency? And how could he have been impenitently so busy and so happy preparing for heaven on the very eve of his execution (by hanging by the neck until dead) unless he was consumed by the best and highest courages that are the beams of the Almighty? Did he believe himself to have fought the good fight, to have run and finished the race and remained faithful to a just cause that had, for him, shone like the noonday sun?

We may never know the full answers to these questions. But one thing is without doubt: there was once a man in a leopard skin jacket and hat under a castor oil tree in the thick tapestry of sickly wafting mist of the Nyandarua Forest of the cold Aberdare Ranges of Central Kenya. A man who consigned himself there because he loved the idea of a free country more than anything in the world, even his life. A man who, aiming for neither wealth nor comfort, ventured all to put, in one act of violent resistance, the invisible thought in his mind. A man who is in anybodys eyes and for all times will remain, a liberator, for he sought the ideal of self-mastery and freedom stemming from the restoration of alienated African lands.

This man, Kimathi, must stand like a Hercules, an Achilles, a Rstem, or a Cid in the mythology of the Kenyan state; and in its authentic history, like a Leonidas, a Scipio, a Caesar, a Richard Cur de Lion, a Nelson, a Grand Cond, a Bertrand du Guesclin, a Doge Dandolo, a Napoleon, a Massna, and a Ney.

But this is now a matter before the court of public opinion, which must decide this now reopened case: one between what Kimathi stood for and his stated cause, and that of Mau Mau, versus an obsolete, and unjust and legally illegal British colonial justice system.

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