Re-Constructions

Film programme in the Activist Club

03/12/2009

19:00

Location: Van Abbemuseum: Room B2.06

On Thursday 3 December at 19.00 a film programme will be screened in the Activist Club (2007(2009)) by Chto Delat, from B2.06 on the second floor of the Nieuwbouw (New building).

This night is the start of a programme of videos and lectures with presentations by both local and international artists and activists. This programme is composed by the guest curator Galit Eilat, director of the Israeli Center for Digital Art, in close collaboration with the artists of Chto Delat.

New videos and/or lectures can be seen every month. The next film programme will be on Thursday night 17 December, the theme for this night will be announced in due time.

The Activist Club has room for about 25 people, so please reserve your seat timely.

Programme 3 December:

19.00 – introduction by Galit Eilat, director Israeli Center for Digital Art
19.15 – screening of films with the theme Re-Constructions

The video works in the Re-Constructions screening program deal with the construction of consciousness in Israeli architectural and textual space, where the violent notion of “burning into the consciousness” (a term that was introduced during the second intifada describing the purpose of the Israeli Army actions against the Palestinians as a process of burning their consciousness so that they will give up the idea of resisting the Israeli occupation) or “facts on the ground” that the Israeli politician use has entered Israeli media and public discourse, replacing expressions such as “building consciousness” or “constructing consciousness. ”Some of the video works chosen for this program deal with Re-Constructions of reality through simulation methods, methods shaping the reality of the present. In all the works, psychological borders are externalised in different degrees and made physical.

The following films will be screened on 3 December:

Avi Mograbi, Details 11-13, 2009 [11’30’’]
Yael Bartana, Wild Seeds, 2005 [6’40’’]
Nira Pereg, Sabbath, 2008 [7'30'']
Amir Yatziv, Detroit, 2009 [15'00'']
Yossi Attia en Itamar Rose, Darfur, 2008 [4'00'']
Malki Tesler, Playground, 2008 [8'00'']

All films are from the archive of the Israeli Center for Digital Art.

Activist Club – part of Rien ne va Plus

The Activist Club (2007 (2009)) by Chto Delat, a collective of artists, critics, philosophers and writers from St. Petersburg and Moscow, is is part of the exhibition Rien ne va Plus, in the first part of Play Van Abbe. Rien ne va plus displays a number of installations and projects from the museum’s collection during the period 1966 up to the present, by artists who tackle social issues in an explicit dialogue with the museum context. The emphasis is on the story of the artists who involve the visitor in their ‘game’.

In the Activist Club, Chto Delat, a collective of artists, critics, philosophers and writers from St. Petersburg and Moscow, is concerned with topics in the field of tension between art, political theory and activism. They designed a small cinema with a study and discussion area and use the museum as a public place in order to initiate a discussion about the position of art in our society.

Israeli Center for Digital Art

The Israeli Center for Digital Art is a dynamic platform for thinking, researching, producing, presenting, and analyzing contemporary art, as well as providing a meeting point for exchange between contemporary artists, curators, critics and the public. Its Video Archive is unique in that it is the only media and video art archive open to the public in Israel. It is distinguished by a concentration of local and regional Middle East and Balkan works and by creating work contacts with similar bodies worldwide based on the exchange of information, knowledge, and work collections, enabling the expansion of the archive and the investigation of contemporary Israeli artistic production. A sister project to the Video Archive considers how to make the archive dynamic and valuable to different audiences; as a result, the “Mobile Archive” is slated to travel for three years internationally, receiving up to twenty five works from each host.

The Video Archive includes over 1,750 video art works, sound works, films, and documentation of performances, installations, and conferences that have taken place in the framework of the center’s activities. The materials in the Video Archive facilitate key discussions on Israeli identity and explore issues of nationalism, militarism, and human rights. Many offer alternative narratives.

Videos by B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) present oft unseen documentation, video artist and filmmaker Avi Mograbi raises debate about the responsibility of soldiers in the IDF. International artists like Artur Zmijewski, Filipa Cesar, and Marcus Coates, offer a look into Israeli society from the outside-in.

The catalogue also includes video works from neighbouring Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran and Turkey; the materials cannot be found elsewhere in Israel. Providing access to them is an effort made by the Israeli Center for Digital Art to enable otherwise impossible cross-cultural exchange and to deconstruct the image of the ‘other’ in Israeli society.

Avi Mograbi, Details 11-13, 2009, duration: 11’30’’

In the newly edited Details 11/13 in Avi Mograbi’s Details series, we are in a vehicle,with a few men driving in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The recognised voices belong to Avi Mograbi, Miki Karzman and Gideon Levy. Gideon Levy is a journalist for Haaretz newspaper. He is a prominent left-wing commentator and publishes the weekly column “Twilight Zone”, together with the artist and photographer Miki Kartzman.

In both films we are listening to the discussion inside the car of how far to enter the territory; as journalists, unlike other Israelis, they can enter the Palestinian Territories’ Zone 1. Yet even with the permission of the IDF, they are not sure when the soldiers will start to shoot at them. They advance slowly and cautiously, not afraid of the Palestinian police but from their own army.

Yael Bartana, Wild Seeds, 2005, duration: 6’40’’

Yael Bartana’s Wild Seeds was shot in the Occupied Territories, in the beautiful mountainous landscape of the Prat region. It is based on a simulation game called “Evacuation of the Gilad Farm Outpost” created by a group of young Israeli leftist activists, conscientious objectors for the most part, shortly before their IDF recruitment.

The original installation consists of two video channels, one features an image (the aforementioned simulation game), and the other – a text in English. In this screening the image and the text are united on one channel. The soundtrack belongs to a female Reform cantor singing about the love of God. The text is not a simultaneous translation of the participants’ cries; instead it is edited in relation to the image, anchoring it in the Israeli political context, acquainting us with the terminology of leftist demonstrators: “Join the refusniks, you fascist,” “police state,” “give up, you fascist.”

Nira Pereg, Sabbath, 2008, duration 7′30”

In Sabbath 2008, Nira Pereg documents the closing of ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods in Jerusalem to automobile traffic before the Sabbath enters. The delineation of the streets creates an enclave, separate from secular lifestyle. This transitive border for 24 hours, once the barriers are erected, ensures that no cars are allowed into Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox neighbourhoods. The city is thus topologically transformed into two cities – with and without cars. Building on this ritual, Sabbath 2008, Jerusalem, is a photographic ritual that can only be performed at a designated time and in designated places. Although the value of these somewhat rickety barriers may appear above all symbolic, their presence is a source of friction and conflict; they delineate a clear cut boundary between the sacred and the everyday.

Amir Yatziv, Detroit, 2009, duration: 15′00”

In Detroit, Amir Yatziv presents a map of an IDF-built Arab village to architects who aren’t aware that it was built as a military training area. They analyse the influence of the city’s structure on its imaginary inhabitants. The title of the video is borrowed from this training area near Ze’elim in the country’s southern region. “Detroit” is a 1:1 simulation of a Palestinian city of identical area. The simulation generates an alternative reality which conceals the true reality.

The training city “Detroit” was intended to prepare soldiers for combat in a built-up area. It resembles a Muslim quarter, thus meeting the users’ needs in a simulation which would furnish them with a fantasy of an Arab city. The essence of this city is replaced by its fictive image. “Detroit” even contains live targets. A private company supplies extras with an “Eastern” look to play the Palestinians in the simulation. Is “Detroit” a simulation that went out of control during the operation in Gaza? The Gazan “Detroit” is devoid of flowering gardens; the city’s residents are mere extras, and the houses contain no books or any other sign of life.

Yossi Attia and Itamar Rose, Darfur, 2008, duration: 4′00”

In Darfur, Yossi Attia and Itamar Rose test how Israeli passersby would react if they were standing on the Egyptian border and had the power to decide whether to allow Sudanese refugees to cross the border or leave them on the other side and thus seal their fate.

Since the year 2000 refugees from Africa have been seeking refuge in Israel. Up to now the state of Israel has no clear, agreed upon policy on how to handle the refugee phenomenon. As such, Israel must be involved in a solution for the Darfur refugees. One of the main obstacles in finding a solution inside Israel is Israel’s role as a nation-state, a Jewish state, and not a state ffor all its citizens. Yossi and Itamar’s short film simulates the physical border which must be traversed in order to measure psychological borders in Israeli public opinion in their reaction to the asylum seekers in Israel.

Malki Tesler, Playground, 2008, duration: 8′00”

In Playground, Malki Tesler conquers a slide in a children’s playground. She sits on it and refuses to move. The film evolves mainly around the reactions of the parents whose children’s play has been interrupted. The reactions develop into near-violence, exposing the absurd gravity and speed by which the situation deteriorates the moment a blockage is entered into even the most playful of Israeli landscapes.

Re-Constructions – Film programme in the Activist Club is part of: Chto Delat – Activist Club

Van Abbemuseum | Bilderdijklaan 10 | 5611 NH Eindhoven | Netherlands | t +31 40 238 10 00 | f +31 40 246 06 80 | e info[at]vanabbemuseum.nl |

Opening times: Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00 to 17:00. The museum is closed on Monday, with the exception of public holidays. The museum is closed on New Year’s Day, Christmas Day and Carnaval’s Tuesday. The Van Abbemuseum is open until 21:00 on Thursday evenings, admission to the museum is free from 17:00 on those nights. Also the museum cafe is open until 21:00 on Thursday evenings.

Last year around this time, we posted Sergey Chernov’s interview with filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell when he was a guest at the Side by Side International LGBT Film Festival in Saint Petersburg. The focus of their conversation was the vigorous attempt on the part of the local authorities to close the festival down. Yesterday we received from festival organizers a quite curious press release, in which they describe what seems to have been attempt by a local NTV news crew to cause a provocation involving fascist thugs at a festival event. One of the thugs has been tentatively identified as a member of a group calling itself Soprotivlenie (“Resistance”). If you check out this groupuscule’s program, you will find that point no. 13 of that breathless document reads: “We demand a ban on all propaganda that undermines the foundations of the family: pornography, ‘free’ and same-sex love.” And here you can see the family-values-loving lads and lassies of Soprotivlenie at what is identified as a “martial arts seminar for white Europeans,” in Belgium in May of this year.

So why was the NTV news crew hanging out with these fascists? Or are the fascists just big fans of Igor Kon?

************************

Side by Side International Film Festival 2009

Side by Side Organizing Committee Expresses Its Regret to NTV

Igor Kon

Members of "Resistance"?

NTV's Viktor Chernoguz Reads a Book Entitled "Vodka"

In connection with the cancellation of Igor Kon’s presentation, the organizing committee of the Side by Side LGBT Film Festival expresses its regret that NTV and its employees are forced to resort to provocations in order to cover the events of the festival. We would also like to declare our openness to all the mass media. Esteemed

The "Resistance" Will Be Televised

 Side by Side Festival Organizing Committee

Festival website: www.bok-o-bok.ru

Telephone: +7 (812) 313-93-41, +7 964 390 85 43. E-mail: info@bok-o-bok.ru, pr@bok-o-bok.ru

Don't Let This Man into Your LGBT Film Festival

A chief editor at a local television channel called homosexuality an “abomination” in a caustic reply to an open letter written by an insulted viewer. The viewer, St. Petersburg resident Maria Yefremenkova, had earlier held a one-woman protest against what she described as a “homophobic” broadcast that “discriminated” against sexual minorities.

Valery Tatarov, the editor of 100TV’s public affairs talk show “Bridge of Freedom,” refused to apologize for the broadcast, as requested by Yefremenkova. Instead, he informed her, in an e-mail dated July 1, that he would not apologize unless a court ordered him to do so.

In closing, Tatarov expressed “the deepest disrespect for homosexuality and other abominations” and wished Yefremenkova “the best of luck in studying the law as well as civil rights and liberties.”

The program that sparked Yefremenkova’s campaign was broadcast on 100TV on May 22. [It can be viewed in full here.] The topic debated by the show’s in-studio guests was “Is homosexualism [sic] a crime against childhood?”

The Hip Priest: Kurayev

The phrasing of the topic was inspired by a statement made by the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox priest Andrei Kurayev, one of the church’s most visible public figures. When asked about a planned gay pride event in Moscow in May, Kurayev slammed what he called the “propaganda of homosexuality.”

During the course of the fifty-three minute program, anti-gay guests and interviewees argued several times that the aim of gay rights protests was to recruit minors into the homosexual community by making homosexuality “fashionable.” “Is homosexuality a fashion or a psychiatric disease?” one of the presenters asked a guest.

The terms gomoseksualism and gomoseksualist, seen as inappropriate by gays because they suggest that homosexuality is a disease or a form of deviancy, were used consistently throughout the entire program.

Yefremenkova found remarks made by journalists and guests, as well as pre-recorded video sequences aired during the program, insulting to sexual minorities.

“As a member of Russian society, I am deeply outraged by this instance of discrimination against sexual minorities. It’s intolerable,” Yefremenkova said by phone last week.

In a letter she wrote to 100TV’s general director and editor, Andrei Radin, after she received Tatarov’s response last week, Yefremenkova alleged that the “hosts and creators of this program violated the rights, honor and dignity of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community.”

She also wrote that the presenters “spread rumors disguised as reliable facts; [they] presented information on homosexuality in such a way as to demean this category of citizens, ignite intolerance and contribute to the rise of hatred in society.”

Yefremenkova accused the show’s hosts of “fabricating facts” and allowing the program’s guests — Igor Knyazkin (introduced as a doctor of medicine), political analyst Alexander Konfisakhor of St. Petersburg State University, and historian Yury Sokolov — to threaten and insult sexual minorities.

“Don’t write on your t-shirt that you’re a faggot, and nobody will touch you,” said Knyazkin, who also described homosexuality as a “social disease.” Konfisakhor seconded him: “In my youth, you would get punched in the face for [openly expressing homosexuality] — long, hard, and so that it hurt.”

In response to a post on the channel’s web forum that read “Gay culture is being exported from abroad. The goal is the destruction of Russia,” Sokolov said, “Strange as it may seem, this might be true.” ”That’s right,” an off-screen voice was heard to say in reply.

Moreover, guests repeatedly compared homosexuality to bestiality, necrophilia and pedophilia.

Although there were two speakers on behalf of sexual minorities in the studio, the show’s general tone was hostile. When Valery Sozayev, an activist with the LGBT rights organization Vykhod (Coming Out) asked his opponents and the presenters to imagine how they would react “if [their own] children turn[ed] out to be gay,” presenter Svetlana Malinina sarcastically retorted, “God forbid!”

Journalist Andrei Klyushev concluded the broadcast by remarking that a person should not speak publicly about his or her sexual orientation.

“In the U.S. army […] they have arrived at a very simple slogan — ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ That is, sexual orientation is everyone’s personal affair, but you shouldn’t speak about it publicly. I think that is a rather healthy idea,” Klyushev said.

What Klyushev did not mention, however, was that the Pentagon’s controversial ban did not extend to civilians, and that several recent surveys have shown that the vast majority of Americans are against the ban.

Last year, during his presidential campaign, Barack Obama pledged to work with military leaders and Congress on repealing the law that bans openly gay men and women from serving in the military.

At the end of the broadcast, the results of a viewer call-in poll were shown on screen. Those who agreed that “homosexualism” was a “crime against childhood” outnumbered those who disagreed by an overwhelming margin — 7,263 to 1,298, or 85 versus 15 percent.

On Monday, the program’s web site showed that a video of the controversial broadcast had been viewed over 13,000 times since the May 22 airing. Other recent broadcasts in the series, which airs three times a week, have garnered just over a thousand online re-viewings at most.

Maria Yefremenkova

Yefremenkova wrote that the facts she cited in her letter constitute “evidence of discrimination against sexual minorities by employees of 100TV” and were thus violations of Russian and international law.

On June 6, Yefremenkova held a picket near 100TV’s studios, near Petrogradskaya Naberezhnaya. She held up a placard that read, “Against discrimination toward sexual minorities in the media. 100TV is a homophobic channel.” She also distributed leaflets in which she demanded that the channel apologize to the LGBT community.

Under the Soviet legal code, male homosexual acts were criminal offenses, punishable by terms of five to eight years in prison. This law was abolished in 1993, two years after the Soviet Union collapsed, during the administration of President Boris Yeltsin. During Soviet times, the subject of homosexuality was strictly banned from print and broadcast media.

Speaking by phone this week, LGBT rights activist Sozayev talked about what he called the “lack of professionalism” of 100TV’s journalists.

“In a debate, the hosts should not take sides, whatever their personal views are, but these hosts demonstrated their homophobia in a very obvious way,” he said.

“Many thoughtful people I spoke to, people who are able to think for themselves, said the program had the opposite effect on them,” Sozayev added.

“If the editor wanted to use this program to incite homophobia, he failed. As one woman wrote in her blog, ‘For the longest time I couldn’t explain to my husband why LGBT rights have to be protected. After watching this program he understood why.”

Radin, who heads 100TV, said he had not received the letter when called on Monday and declined to comment.

End the Terror Against Social Activists in Russia!

Public Statement on the Attacks against Social Activists

Recently, criminal attacks against the leaders of trade union and social movements have clearly increased. Among the latest such incidents, we should note the attacks against Carine Clément, a member of the working group and a leader of the Union of Coordinating Councils; Alexei Etmanov, leader of the labor union at Ford-Vsevolozhsk; Mikhail Beketov, leader of the movement to defend the Khimki Forest; and Sergei Fedotov, leader of the deceived land shareholders of the Moscow Region. In addition, a great many activists fighting the infill construction that is happening in all our cities have been attacked. There have been murders, in particular, of antifascist activists.

This is not a random phenomenon, but a clear trend: active citizens who try to restore justice and defend their legal rights are more and more often subjected to brute force. With no other arguments at its disposal, the opposite resorts to criminal methods. While it is clear that in each situation it is a different group of people who commissions these crimes, the overall tendency demonstrates that excellent conditions for the further escalation of this brutal method of “social dialogue” have been created in Russia today. These conditions include lawlessness, the lack of criminal liability for violations of the law by state officials or members of the ruling elite, universal corruption, and the hypercentralization of authority in the absence of any form of control from below. Many cases of “political” attacks on activists have still not been investigated, and the guilty parties not be found, which gives the assailants a sense of impunity and thus provokes further crimes.

We say, Enough!

We demand a maximally thorough and swift investigation of all assaults against all social activists, the transfer of these cases into a separate category, and the creation of a special investigative group within the Ministry of the Interior. We also demand that the public be kept informed about the course of these investigations.

We demand that the assailants be punished according to law whatever high-ranking patrons might support them.

We declare that we will not be intimidated by the method of violence and terror. We will continue our struggle for the social rights of our country’s citizens.

We appeal to the state authorities, who position themselves as the guarantee of “public order,” to make sure that “public order” is not violated by government officials. As it is, all we observe now is the arrests of old women and young activists at various assemblies, demonstrations or strikes, while we hear very little about arrests of corrupt state officials or unscrupulous employers. Down with this politics of double standards!

We declare that, given the situation, we consider it our right to use methods of self-defense and that we will use all possible means to assist and protect our comrades.

14 November 2008

Union of Coordinating Councils of Russia (SKS): Izhevsk, Perm, Tiumen, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoobsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk, Astrakhan, Kurgan, Moscow Region, Surgut, Kaliningrad, Saratov, Samara, Penza, etc. (There are twenty-seven regional coordinating councils in all.)

This statement has been supported (as of November 17) by the following organizations:

***

We ask all networks, movements, and initiative groups to support our appeal. You may send your collective or individual signature to: info@ikd.ru

The Leader of the Movement of Deceived Land Shareholders of the Moscow Region Is Assaulted

The violence against social activists is escalating. We have learned that yesterday, November 13, at 6:45 p.m., Sergei Fedotov, the leader of the movement of deceived land shareholders of the Moscow Region, was attacked.

The incident took place in the village of Mikhalevo (Moscow Oblast), near Fedotov’s workplace. Fedotov was getting into his car when two young men armed with a baseball bats and a spray can ran up to him. One of them managed to spray tear gas into Fedotov’s face before Sergei could close the door and drive away. His glasses saved him.

The movement of deceived land shareholders of the Moscow Region, which represents twenty-eight settlements in Moscow Oblast, has for the last five or six years fought for the restitution of land shares stolen by raiders. The movement’s last well-publicized action was a picket in downtown Moscow on September 5, during which Sergei Fedotov was detained by police.

This was the third in a series of vicious assaults on social activists yesterday. As we have already reported, Mikhail Beketov, an opposition journalist from the city of Khimki, is now in the intensive care ward. On the morning of November 13, he was found unconscious in the courtyard of his home in the village of Starbeevo (Khimki District).

That same day, Carine Clément, director of the Institute of Collective Action, was attacked in Moscow by two young men who used a syringe to inject her with an unidentified substance.

For more information, call: +7-906-099-31-77 (Sergei Fedotov)

Another Assault on Alexei Etmanov

Last night (November 13) another assault was made on Alexei Etmanov, the leader of the trade union at the Ford-Vsevolozhsk plant outside of Petersburg. An unidentified man was waiting for Etmanov with a metal club in the entryway of his building. Alexei and his wife miraculously escaped harm.

Alexei Etmanov is known for his work as the leader and chair of the of the union at the Ford plant in Vsevolozhsk, Leningrad Oblast, which has won fame for its successful strikes. Etmanov is also the co-chair of the Russian Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA), which represents workers at auto plants and related production facilities in Moscow, Kaluga, Taganrog, Yaroslavl, Leningrad Oblast, and other regions.

Alexei is an active member of the Petersburg-based Committee for Solidarity Actions (KSD), which unites trade union and leftist political activists and is the organizer of the support campaign for the workers union at the TaGAZ plant, which is affiliated with the ITUA. The attacks on Etmanov could be linked to his work on this campaign. The ITUA has demanded recognition of the trade union at TaGAZ, the reinstatement of union committee chair Sergei Pinchukov and other members of the organization who were illegally dismissed, and the investigation of the three attacks, this past summer, on activists Alexei Gramm and Sergei Bryzgalov, who were likewise ambushed by persons unknown after they got off work.

We should remind our readers that this was not the first attack on Etmanov: on the night of November 8, three unidentified men attacked him as he made his way from a parking lot to his home. Although the bandits were armed with brass knuckles, during the struggle Alexei managed to pull out his stun pistol: the shot he fired frightened his attackers, and they ran away. The following day, Etmanov’s deputy chair, Vladimir Lesik, received an anonymous phone call. “You got a mild scolding. If you keep making trouble for us, you’ll pay with your life,” said the caller. We have just learned that other members of the KSD got similar calls.

The unions will press for a swift and complete investigation of these incidents.

Russian union leaders attacked

IMF calls for an immediate and transparent investigation into the recent assaults and threats against ITUA leaders and activists.

RUSSIA: Alarming news was received from the Russian Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA), an affiliate of the International Metalworkers Federation regarding a recent attack against Alexey Etmanov, ITUA co-chairman and chairman of the ITUA primary organization at Ford enterprise in Vsevolozhsk.

 

Etmanov was assaulted on the evening of November 8 when he returned home from the second shift at the Ford plant. He parked his car and was walking in the direction of his home. On the street, three assailants armed with brass knuckles ran towards Etmanov and without a word assaulted him.

During the scuffle Etmanov managed to remove his rubber bullet gun and made a shot. The assailants escaped. Originally, Etmanov believed these were ordinary robbers. However the next day the deputy chairman of Etmanov, Vladimir Lesik, received a call on his mobile phone and was alerted that the night incident had no relation to a robbery or a plunder. “You were softly scolded. But if you continue to create obstacles for us, we will take away your life”, threatened the anonymous caller.

Earlier, on June 24 and July 26, Alexei Gramm and Sergei Bryzgalov, activists of the ITUA primary organization at Taganrog enterprise OAO  “TagAZ” producing Hyundai cars, also became victims of  assault after their participation in a picket at the entrance of the enterprise. Gramm and Bryzgalov were trying to get  information about wages and compensations as well as demanding  management to recognize their union.

In a statement regarding the assaults, IMF General Secretary Marcello Malentacchi warned of IMF’s grave concern over “the authorities’ indifference to violations of fundamental human and labour rights and the failure to act promptly and effectively to ensure these rights are fully upheld and protected” and demanded “an immediate, unbiased and transparent investigation into the facts of attacks against trade union leaders Alexei Etmanov, Alexei Gramm and Sergei Bryzgalov, as well as the death threats made to Vladimir Lesik.”

Click here to read the full text of the statement.

IMF is urging affiliates to send letters calling for an immediate and transparent investigation into these attacks to:

Mr. Yuriy Chaika 
General Public Prosecutor of Russian Federation
125993, Moscow, GSP-3, 15a B. Dimitrovka str. RUSSIA
Fax: +7 (495) 692-96-00  

Mr. Sergey Romanyuk 
Public Prosecutor of Leningrad region 
194044, Saint Petersburg, 
av. Lesnoi, str. 20, kor. 12
RUSSIA
Fax: +7 812 542 00 15

Mr. Valeriy Kuznetsov
Public Prosecutor of Rostov region
344082, Rostov region
Rostov-na-Donu, per. Bratskiy, 11
RUSSIA
Fax: +7 863 262-45-25

Ms. Tatiana A. Golikova
Minister of Health Care and Social Development
127994, GSP-4, Moscow, per. Rahmanovskiy, 3
RUSSIA
Fax: +7 495 628 09 48  

To send solidarity support letters to the ITUA, email: profkom@ford-profsoyuz.ru

Khimki Oppositionist Severely Beaten and Near Death 

Carine Clément, Director of the Institute of Collective Action, Is Attacked in Downtown Moscow

Today (November 13) Carine Clément, [a Moscow-based French sociologist and social activist, and] the director of the Institute of Collective Action, was attacked in downtown Moscow. The incident took place around 11 a.m. near the Bilingua Club, where Clément was to take part in a roundtable on the crisis. According to the victim, two young men ran up to her from behind and stabbed her with a syringe containing an unidentified substance. The men uttered no threats, demands or any other words that would have made it possible to understand their motives.  As Clément underscored, the appearance of the assailants was not marked by any characteristic ethnic traits or other distinguishing features.

We should note that this is the third assault on Carine Clément in the past month, and it would be illogical to write it off as a commonplace incident of hooliganism. Two weeks ago Clément was beaten and mugged near her home on Mosfilm Street. An unidentified man, whose appearance the victim was unable to remember and who was waiting for her near her house, struck her and grabbed her bag. He then escaped in a car driven by an accomplice.

This past week the whole world has been buzzing, celebrating, and puzzling over the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency. Will his presidency usher in a new era of peace, friendship, and social justice the world over? Or his advent just new window dressing on a bad game that is getting worse? This week’s reader is devoted to skeptical voices on the left who wonder whether we all haven’t been sold a bill of goods. Featuring: Simon Critchley, Judith Butler, Louis Proyect, Alexander Cockburn, Ralph Nader, Unión del Barrio, Richard Seymour, Howard Zinn, Mike Davis, and Tariq Ali.

Simon Critchley. The  American void. There is something desperately lonely about Barack Obama’s universe. One gets the overwhelming sense of someone yearning for connection, for something that binds human beings together, for community and commonality, for what he repeatedly calls “the common good.” Of course, this is hardly news. We’ve known since his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that “there’s not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America.” Obama’s remedy to the widespread disillusion with politics in the U.S. is a reaffirmation of the act of union. This is possible only insofar as we restore a sense of community to the nation. That, in turn, requires a belief in the common good. In the face of grotesque inequality, governmental sleaze, and generalized anomie, we need “to affirm our bonds with one another.” Belief in the common good is the sole basis for hope. Without belief, there is nothing to be done. Such is the avowedly improbable basis for Obama’s entire push for the presidency.

Judith Butler. Uncritical Exuberance? Very few of us are immune to the exhilaration of this time. My friends on the left write to me that they feel something akin to “redemption” or that “the country has been returned to us” or that “we finally have one of us in the White House.” Of course, like them, I discover myself feeling overwhelmed with disbelief and excitement throughout the day, since the thought of having the regime of George W. Bush over and gone is an enormous relief. And the thought of Obama, a thoughtful and progressive black candidate, shifts the historical ground, and we feel that cataclysm as it produces a new terrain. But let us try to think carefully about the shifted terrain, although we cannot fully know its contours at this time. The election of Barack Obama is historically significant in ways that are yet to be gauged, but it is not, and cannot be, a redemption, and if we subscribe to the heightened modes of identification that he proposes (“we are all united”) or that we propose (“he is one of us”), we risk believing that this political moment can overcome the antagonisms that are constitutive of political life, especially political life in these times. There have always been good reasons not to embrace “national unity” as an ideal, and to nurse suspicions toward absolute and seamless identification with any political leader. After all, fascism relied in part on that seamless identification with the leader, and Republicans engage this same effort to organize political affect when, for instance, Elizabeth Dole looks out on her audience and says, “I love each and every one of you.”

Louis Proyect. Progressives for Obama: Still Intoxicated. Now that the intoxication of the Obama victory is over (or should be over), one wonders how long it will take the pro-Obama left to wake up to a hangover. For the last few days, news reports should have given them an Excedrin-sized headache. Instead of ushering in a new New Deal, Obama seems to be all about ushering in Bill Clinton’s 3rd term but in this case we are dealing with America’s first real Black president rather than the claim made on Clinton’s behalf by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in 2001 that he “took so many initiatives he made us think for a while we had elected the first black president.”

Louis Proyect. President Obama, Governor Paterson and Ayn Rand. Last night as I was listening (or trying to listen) to Obama’s vaporous victory speech, I heard a steady procession of young people walking up Third Avenue cheering and yelling “Obama” over and over. For all practical purposes, it was just the kind of display that attends a World Series or Super Bowl victory by a New York team. This is understandable given the way that the presidential campaign is understood by the average person. Their candidate is like the home team and the primaries amount to playoffs leading up to the championship game.

Louis Proyect. Obama wins over the ‘decent left.’ Leaving aside Obama’s “change” mantra, the foreign policy of the new administration will most certainly hew closely to that of the Clinton administration. If you keep in mind that much of the “decent left” emerged out of the pro-war fervor during the Clinton years among Western journalists and intellectuals who convinced themselves that Milosevic was the new Adolph Hitler, it is not that surprising that the same people are coming home like the Prodigal Son. After all, in the final analysis, it has been the blood-drenched Wilsonian idealism of the WWI era that has united hawk and dove alike in its determination to police the world in the interests of multinational corporations under the banner of human rights.

Alexander Cockburn & Ralph Nader. Hail to the Chief of Staff. The first trumpet blast of change ushers in Rahm Emanuel as Obama’s chief of staff and gatekeeper. This is the man who arranges his schedule, staffs out the agenda, includes, excludes. It’s certainly as sinister an appointment as, say, Carter’s installation of arch cold-warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski as his National Security Advisor at the dawn of his “change is here” administration in 1977. Emanuel, as Ralph Nader points out in my interview with him below, represents the worst of the Clinton years. His profile as regards Israel is explored well on this site by lawyer John Whitbeck. He’s a former Israeli citizen, who volunteered to serve in Israel in 1991 and who made brisk millions in Wall Street. He is a super-Likudnik hawk, whose father was in the fascist Irgun in the late Forties, responsible for cold-blooded massacres of Palestinians. Dad’s unreconstructed ethnic outlook has been memorably embodied in his recent remark to the Ma’ariv newspaper that “Obviously he [Rahm] will influence the president to be pro-Israel… Why wouldn’t he be [influential]? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House.”

Obama-Mania at the Universities: Interview with an activist at an American university about the situation before the elections. Obama’s historic campaign has attracted two-thirds of college students who are looking for something different than the failed polices of George Bush. In the last year we have seen a huge growth in the level of politicization on our campus, with the Democrats spending thousands of dollars and working hundreds of hours reaching out to kids who want something—anything!—besides Bush. “Obamania” seems like a personality cult. Obama stickers, t-shirts, posters, and flyers litter the campus and create the illusion of the campaign as a grassroots movement. The hyper-optimistic organizers who work on the campaign have done a great job registering voters, hand-making signs with peace symbols, and also masking the oppressive nature of bourgeois politics.

Unión del Barrio on the U.S. Presidential Election. Real change will only come from those who struggle for dignity, justice and self-determination. With the historic election of Barack Obama as President of the United States we can say with certainty that there has been a paradigm shift in the mythology of capitalist white rule. Without a doubt the backwards concept of race superiority has suffered a blow, but the transfer of political power from one capitalist party to another should not be taken lightly. Race relations has entered a new level of discussion in an empire that has built its existence on the genocide of indigenous people, the theft of African labor and the premise of expansionism under the ridiculous assertion of divine intervention to settle land and conquer people. The significance of the 2008 U.S. presidential election is that for the first time in the history of capitalism, the most powerful country in the annals of human history will be led by a black man. This phenomenon signals a decline in the ability of white power capitalism to rule openly and viciously as it has since its inception; but more importantly it signals the need for those that financed the Obama campaign to promote president elect Obama as the beacon to keep alive this unjust and decadent capitalist system. In short, president-elect Obama was formed by the elite and will rule with the elite, but the historical feat of a black politician winning the presidency of the United States cannot be taken for granted.

Richard Seymour. The Furnace of American Mythology. When Obama ‘reaches out’ to Republicans and starts blustering about bipartisanship, and when he appoints someone like Robert Gates as his secretary of defense, there will be no excuse. If he fails to carry out even his most limited reforms, he has no scope for blaming the Right. If he doesn’t close Guantanamo and restore habeas corpus, he has no one else to blame. All I’m saying is, to those hundreds of thousands of people marching and dancing in the streets, be prepared to be back on the streets soon. The system is designed to lock you out as quickly and quietly as possible.

What next for struggle in the Obama era? Millions of people have been waiting for Election Day 2008, when the Bush regime would finally fall. The book is about to shut—or slam, more like it—on eight terrible years of Republican rule in the White House. As people on the left celebrate the end of a rotten regime, it’s also time to ask: What kind of change will an Obama administration bring? SocialistWorker.org brings together a roundtable of activists and writers on the left to discuss what new openings they see with an Obama administration in power—and what challenges still lie ahead for social justice movements. [Featuring Howard Zinn, Mike Davis, Tariq Ali, Rosi Carrasco, Anthony Arnove, Camilo Mejía, and others.]

Knuckledusters as an Instrument of “Social Dialogue” in Contemporary Russia

Who Is Bothered by Alexei Etmanov? 

Reprisals against union leaders have, unfortunately, ceased to be merely a part of the ancient history of the trade union movement. They have more and more often become a reality of labor relations in today’s Russia.

On the night of November 8, when Alexei Etmanov, chair of the union committee at Ford-Vsevolozhsk and co-chair of the Russian Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA), returned home after his shift, he was attacked by three armed bandits. It is clear that the people who sent them wanted to ensure numerical superiority. Here, however, their calculations ran afoul: Alexei managed to force his attackers, who were armed with knuckledusters, to retreat in shame.

However, in order to dispel any doubts as to the motives for the attack, the “organizers” of this piece of brigandage telephoned another union leader at Ford, Vladimir Lesnik, and threatened reprisals if the Ford unionists “didn’t stop getting in [their] way.”

Over the past two years such attacks have happened more than once: labor activists have been savagely beaten in Kaliningrad, Togliatti, and Taganrog. Each time the targets were union activists who challenged the complete sway of their employers and thus all employers who recognize no one’s rights other than their own sovereign right to dictate the work conditions and the lives of “their” workers.

Each time the reprisals followed a heightening of conflict at the respective factories. Despite the fact that police investigators have still not managed to solve any of these crimes, there can hardly be any doubt as to the names of the people who really commissioned them since it is much too obvious whose interests were threatened.

In this case everything is more complicated. The attack on Alexei Etmanov, leader of the Ford workers and an iconic figure for the reborn labor movement and independent trade unions in Russia, happened a year after the last, widely publicized strike at the plant, at a time when passions had cooled and the union was preparing for what has become an ordinary affair—negotiations over the next collective bargaining agreement. But, lo and behold, it turns out that the Ford union has interfered with someone’s plans to such an extent that the enemies of the workers are prepared to commit crimes. They openly announce that they won’t stop at anything in order to “remove the question” of the free labor and trade union movement from the agenda.

The attack on Etmanov is, without a doubt, a challenge. It is a challenge to all the healthy forces that have dared to raise their voices in defense of the interests of workers in today’s Russia. This challenged has been thrown down by those find inimical the very idea that hired workers have a right to self-organization, a say in their own working lives, a right to negotiations and equal dialogue with their employers. Their name is legion. It is not important who, in this case, gave the ignoble orders or the number of the telephone in Vsevolozhsk, Taganrog, Togliatti, Petersburg or Moscow from which the scum got the call. We know whom the free trade unions bother. And we can answer their challenge by closing our ranks and demonstrating general solidarity. For today the bell tolls not only for Etmanov and Ford, but for us all.

Let us prepare ourselves for the battle!

—A. Lyapin, Union Activist