Review: Five Broken Cameras (Palestinian documentary)

July 3, 2013 by
Director Emad Burnat's son Gibreel, featured in the documentary.

Director Emad Burnat’s son Gibreel, featured in the documentary.

Directors: Emad Bernat, Guy Davidi

Distributed by: Kino Lorber
Release year: 2011
Review: Ian Anderson

Screened as part of Aotearoa/NZ’s first national Conference on Palestine, Five Broken Cameras portrays the resistance of a Palestinian village (Bil’in) to the expansion of Israel’s Separation Wall and settlements. Strictly the wall is illegal in international law, and the settlement expansions are dubious even in Israeli law however  no amount of paper resolutions will stop the advance of colonisation. Only popular resistance can slow, and ultimately stop, this monster.

The film’s narrative is structured around co-director Emad Burnat’s titular five broken cameras, home video cameras. Emad uses these cameras to capture both the resistance of his own community, and the brutality of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF)  which destroys both the hardware and the people which records them. Given the level of access the cameras have, it’s apparent that editors Guy Davidi and Véronique Lagoarde-Ségot used other footage to flesh the narrative out; five additional photographers are credited.

These cameras document an intensely personal and political story: the  story of Emad and his community in Bil’in. Focusing on this community’s experience as part of the wider Palestinian struggle, the film largely leaves macro-level political questions of statehood and the nature of Israel to the audience. Surrounded by soldiers, military vehicles and Caterpillar bulldozers, the men of this community march down to the encroaching wall each week, joined at times by international activists. At home, Emad’s wife Soraya Burnat soldiers on despite the constant threat to herself and her family. Bil’in’s resilience in the face of an expanding military machine embodies the slogan “resistance is existence.”

The film also reflects on forms of resistance. Bil’in’s resistance is largely guided by principles of non-violent civil disobedience. Palestinian youth throwing rocks pales  in comparison to the US-funded military machine which has faced them since birth. At one point, Emad’s narration reflects, “It’s hard to maintain non-violent principles when you’re surrounded by death.” After another Palestinian death, Emad’s son Gibreel asks why he does not stab an IDF soldier, and Emad responds that they would shoot him. Although taking a non-violent tactical position, this is a far cry from the liberal Western humanitarianism which moralistically treats only certain forms of resistance as legitimate.

The film was co-directed by a Palestinian (Emad Burnat) and an Israeli (Guy Davidi). Their collaboration has caused controversy, with the Israeli embassy in the US claiming it as an Israeli film, and the directors stating that it is “first and foremost a Palestinian film.” Norman Finkelstein, a critic of the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) of Israel, has criticised the BDS campaign for hypocrisy in not boycotting the film. However, the film actually does not meet the campaign’s criteria for a cultural boycott, because it did not receive direct funding from the Israeli state and Israeli co-director Guy Davidi is critical of the occupation.

In fact, this is an exemplary case of cross-cultural work to challenge colonisation and support resistance. It is not enough, but it’s well worth seeing.

Filed Under: Reviews

Istanbul to Brazil: neoliberalism, democracy and resistance

July 2, 2013 by

turkey mcdonalds

From a talk given by Andrew Tait. Originally printed by the International Socialist Organisation (Aotearoa).

Three weeks ago, police moved in to clear a protest camp out of an inner-city park, to make way for a shopping mall.

The protesters were a mixed bunch: leftists, environmentalists, even architects,who felt they had no other option than direct action to stop the destruction of another piece of history, another park, another shared social space. The police moved in with brutality, with near-lethal force. Images of their violence were shared on the internet and instantly sparked outrage from hundreds of thousands of people, especially youth. After three weeks of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, the police have managed to clear and hold the city square and protests are quietening down. But after the police moved in, council workers followed, planting trees and flowers – a sign perhaps that the mall development has been abandoned.

Elsewhere, a demonstration against public transport fare rises was attacked by the police, sparking an outpouring of anger and copycat protests and riots. In one city, a police facility was burned and the City Hall was attacked. The government backed down and the price hikes were scrapped, but protests are continuing – now against the spending of billions on hosting a sports event instead of funding health and education.

The first country is Turkey and the second is Brazil. The same events could have taken place in almost any developed country – in Auckland, Jo’burg, Paris, Beijing. Although each country has its own culture and history, there is a massive political convergence underway from Istanbul to Brazil.

One reason often suggested for this convergence is the internet. The ability to share not just messages but images, movies and music has eroded the traditional boundaries between young people in different countries and has broken the stranglehold of monopoly media.

But important though this new technology is, there is a deeper reason: neoliberalism has globalised production, meaning work and wages are similar across more countries than ever before, and neoliberalism has deprived democracy of real content because “there is no alternative” to the market and austerity. There are more supposedly democratic countries in the world than ever – but the range of political choices and citizen engagement is declining.

Both Brazil and Turkey are “new democracies”, which only emerged from military dictatorships in the 1980s. Both have booming economies. Brazil has emerged from Third World semi-colonial status to become the seventh largest economy in the world. It is often cited, alongside Russia, India and China, as an emerging power. Turkey, although smaller, has also enjoyed double digit GDP growth recently but the benefit of this growth, as in Brazil, has been unevenly shared. It is now one of the most unequal countries in the OECD. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Internationalism

What is work? Wage labour, unpaid work and feminism

June 29, 2013 by
Labour is central to a Marxist view of history

Labour is central to a Marxist view of history

Ian Anderson, Fightback coordinating editor. With contributions by Kassie Hartendorp.

Labour, or work, is central to historical materialist (or Marxist) views of history. Stereotypically, this means only caring about men wearing overalls and working in factories. However, factory labour is only one form of wage labour, which in turn is only one form of labour.

Labour is the sum total of human activities that reproduce social existence. Work keeps us alive, nourished, able to participate in human society. In The German Ideology, Marx argued that the “first historical act” is the “production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself.”

Labour includes, but is not limited to, wage labour. Unpaid labour in the home – cooking, cleaning, caring for children, the sick and elderly – reproduces our social existence. This unpaid domestic labour, including housework, has been termed “reproductive labour.”

Women still do the bulk of reproductive labour under capitalism. Surveys of unpaid work are not collected often, showing the priorities of the ruling class. However, 2009/2010 Time Use Surveys show that while women and men perform similar hours of work, the majority of men’s work is paid, while the majority of women’s work is unpaid.

Given the onslaught of attacks on both paid and unpaid workers, it is necessary to understand the relationship between wage labour, unpaid work, and unemployment. As women work the majority of unpaid hours, this understanding is also necessary to reconciling socialist and feminist demands. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Women

June issue of Fightback online

June 28, 2013 by

june 2013 fightback cover

Welcome to the June 2013 issue of Fightback, publication of Fightback (Aotearoa/NZ). Fightback is a socialist organisation with branches in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch.

On Queens’ Birthday Weekend, 31st May-2nd June, Fightback held its annual public conference in Wellington. In this issue we include the text of two presentations given during the conference, Grant Brookes’ “Workers, Unions and Class Struggle Today” (page 10) and Daphne Lawless’ “Green is Red: The case for eco-Marxist politics (page 20).

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory, and Fightback actively supports workers in struggle. From pages 10-15 we cover the struggles of unionised McDonald’s’ workers for improved pay and conditions in Aotearoa/NZ. This includes an overview of the campaign, a response to homophobic bullying by management, reports on a Wellington strike and a report on a Fightback action supporting the campaign. The struggle against capital is international. Therefore we also reprint a report from a union campaign against McDonald’s in Detroit, USA.

In May we highlighted the role of mainstream political racism in fostering working-class racism. In an article originally printed in an Australian paper The Socialist, Jared Phillips reports on the appointment of Susan Devoy as Race Relations Commissioner for Aotearoa/NZ, and argues the need for solidarity in overcoming racism.

Fightback member Polly Peek suggests mental health advocacy and radical politics can be mutually complimentary.

Finally, we cover local government issues in Auckland (page 23) and the need for workers’ action to overcome the failings of the Health & Safety system (page 24).

2013 June Fightback

 

Filed Under: Print edition PDFs

Papua New Guinea may pull out of trade agreement

June 26, 2013 by

Byron Clark, Fightback coordinating editor

Richard Maru

Richard Maru

Papua New Guinea (PNG) looks likely to pull out of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER), the trade agreement between Australia, New Zealand and the island nations of the Pacific. This comes as the latest round of talks for ‘PACER Plus’ a new pact aiming to replace the current PACER agreement, have failed to secure key demands of Pacific nations, such as labour mobility in the region.

PNG Trade Minister Richard Maru has stated he would prefer to focus on strengthening the Melanesian Spearhead Group Trade Agreement, a sub-regional preferential trade agreement which includes PNG, Vanuatu, The Solomon Islands and Fiji. Excluding Australia and New Zealand the MSG bloc includes over 90% of the Pacific population.

Maru has described the PACER agreement as “a waste of time”

“Right now if we enter into such an arrangement it will be one sided all the goods will be coming from Australia and New Zealand into the Pacific market. At the moment we are not really doing much trading with Australia and New Zealand. We can’t even sell taro there, we have no capacity to sell our greens it’s all one sided traffic so what’s the point of going into a trading arrangement with Australia and New Zealand”.

Other Pacific leaders sympathise with PNG’s position. Solomon Islands Prime Minister, Gordon Darcy Lilo said “I don’t blame them for saying that… there is potential for much more meaningful trade cooperation within the Melanesian sub-regions of the Pacific”.  Fijian Minister for Trade Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum, told Radio Australia that Fiji sees a lot of merit in PNG’s position. Khaiyum has also spoken of the need to re-examine the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA) which includes Polynesia and Micronesia.

Adam Wolfenden & Maureen Penjueli of the Pacific Action Network on Globalisation (PANG) have suggested the Pacific region look to overseas examples such as The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) a trade agreement set up in South America by Venezuela under Hugo Chavez as an attempt at regional economic integration based on a vision of social welfare, bartering and mutual economic aid.

“Instead of pitting the countries against each other like PACER-Plus would, ALBA looks at ways that countries can help each other in the spirit of solidarity with guaranteed benefits for all those who participate…[A] far cry from what is currently on the table…PNG is right to want to walk away from PACER-Plus,”

The aims of the MSG trade agreement are not dissimilar to those of ALBA, the preamble for the agreement mentions “the overriding need to foster, accelerate and encourage the economic and social development of [Melanesian] States in order to improve the living standards of their peoples” and states that “the promotion of harmonious economic development … calls for effective economic cooperation”

This is unsurprising given one of the founding members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group was Walter Lini, the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Vanuatu, an advocate of “Melanesian socialism” who believed that the principles of socialism were inherently compatible with  Melanesian societies and customs.

Australian and New Zealand business interests, which have often used the Pacific region as a market for goods and a source of cheap labour, will likely be at odds with this growing regionalism in Melanesia, led by Papua New Guinea, a nation which has in recent years gained more control over its natural resources following decades of colonial and post-colonial exploitation. The people of the Pacific however are likely to benefit.

“Papua New Guinea is not boasting about its richness over the world in their resource abundance that they have.” Gordon Lilo told Radio Australia, “It is all about sharing the fortunes that they have for the development of a broader Melanesian region. And that is what we are getting out of it, a region that is committed to human development, and expansion of the space and the environment between the Melanesian region for all of our citizen to be able to prosper.”

Filed Under: Pacific
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