Tag: imperialism

After Gaza?

~ The Koboi Project

Historian Rashid Khalidi explains how early Zionism was a self-identified Colonial project, a European colonial project backed by British imperialism (see Democracy Now interview below). He points out that up until 1958, an official Jewish Colonization Agency was tasked with the settler colonial transformation of the British Mandate by a systematic dispossession of the Palestinian population. Khalidi claims that the formation of Israel is a unique phenomenon in the annals of Colonialism in that is paradoxically a Nationalist project and a settler Colonial project at the same time. Europeans forcibly settled Arab lands while Jews established an indigenous nation-state, the Europeanness of the settlers being subsumed in their Jewish nationalism.

Today, while Gaza is being decimated and depopulated in what Khalidi has called the ‘last colonial war of the modern age’, the settlement of the West Bank continues at an accelerated pace. While I agree with Khalidi that Israel is a settler-colonial nation and that the assault on Gaza is a colonial war, I wonder if he is right about it being the last such war in the modern age – remember Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. There is nothing to suggest that more colonial incursions are not forthcoming. Perhaps Khalidi meant to say ‘the last settler-colonial war of the Modern Age’, which I think is a more apt characterization, on the basis of his own premises. Given the extent of Israel’s ongoing aggression in Palestine, and given the history of colonial and neo-colonial incursions in the Middle East, I am surprised at the lack of meaningful opposition and intervention by the other Arab nations.


https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-12-02/israel-gaza-palestinian-american-history

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/27/israeli-settler-violence-in-west-bank-escalates-huwara

https://historyguy.com/list_of_wars_middle_east.html

Mahathir’s Heuristics

~ The Koboi Project

Mahathir Mohamed, unquestionably Malaysia’s most successful politician and impactful leader, is still in the game at the ripe old age of 98. He is a strident anti-imperialist and an unapologetic ethnocentric nationalist who, in his heyday, was loved by Malaysians of all races. In fact, he is lauded in the Arab world and all across Asia for his outspokenness and statesmanship in championing regional causes. Equally, he has been despised and derided by all Malaysian communities, Malays included. He is not well-liked in the West and is even seen as an exemplary antisemite.

In a recent engaging and wide-ranging interview on episode 65 the Keluar Sekejap podcast, Mahathir showed that he has lost neither charm and charisma, nor his wile and guile. I learnt many things about the man in watching this episode attentively, but the most salient insight was into his political means. Mahathir is a man of many generalizations, essentialisms and simplifications. Key giveaways about his underlying approach are found in these ideas exposed in the interview-
1) Successful Malays are the exception proves the rule (12:22)
2) We have to characterize the Jews, not by the just minority, but in terms of the majority, who unquestioningly support Israel (1:58:36).

Indeed, his is a heuristic approach – a method of reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making based on approximation. As evidenced by his career highlights and pitfalls, it is a method that can be efficient and effective, but that can also be prone to error, bias, and failure. Here is a list of what I suggest are Mahathir’s primary heuristics, each of which is presented along with some associated secondary generalizations –
1. Malays are Lazy (Non-Malays are industrious)
2. Non-Malays are Immigrants (Non-Malays don’t want to Assimilate, There is a communal zero-sum game, and The Malays are in danger of losing primacy on their Tanah Melayu)
3 The West is Imperialist (Malaysia should look East, China is not necessarily a threat)
4. Jews Rule the World (Jews are Zionists, )
5. Mahathir is always right (Anwar is unsuitable, Najib is unconscionable, Badawi is incapable, Mahathir does no wrong)

Ukraine: A Rebuttal of Chomsky’s View

~ The Koboi Project

A group of Ukrainian academics has written an open letter to Noam Chomsky critiquing his commentaries on what they categorically define as the “Russian war on Ukraine.” The critique is in fact addressed to Chomsky and “other like-minded intellectuals.” As I have featured many of these intellectuals and their views on my blog, I feel it is important to share this critique.

7 key errors are identified –
#1: Denying Ukraine’s sovereign integrity
#2: Treating Ukraine as an American pawn on a geo-political chessboard
#3. Suggesting that Russia was threatened by NATO
#4. Stating that the U.S. isn’t any better than Russia
#5. Whitewashing Putin’s goals for invading Ukraine
#6. Assuming that Putin is interested in a diplomatic solution
#7. Advocating that yielding to Russian demands is the way to avert the nuclear war

While I recognize the validity of this critique, and the nobility of the national perspective it represents, I would like to suggest that this view might be tempered by the acknowledgment of the enmeshment of Ukraine, by virtue of both history and geography, within the geopolitics of Imperialism, both Russian and American. I suggest that this crisis arose as a result of a disregard or misjudgment, by all responsible parties, of the forces at play. I further suggest, that there can be no solution, no peace, without a realistic reconciliation and containment of the now unfurling forces. The longer the conflict ensues, the more it deepens, and the more irreconcilable the situation becomes.

Image: https://apimagesblog.com/russia-ukraine-war-drafts/2022/4/6/day-42-rows-of-body-bags-in-ukraines-bucha

https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2022/05/19/open-letter-to-noam-chomsky-and-other-like-minded-intellectuals-on-the-russia-ukraine-war/

It’s Time to be Clear 8

~ The Koboi Project

The King is Dead, Long Live the King (also lets not forget the Queen). As Paul Street puts it, “It’s hard to get overly excited about Joe Biden on the Left.” as his ascendency to the Presidency of the highest power on the world stage, is premised on an “extremely low bar : he’s not a malignant fascist sociopath.” Street goes on to explain what he describes as Biden’s “corporate, imperial, white-supremacist, and patriarchal record.”

Biden’s second in command, Kamala Harris is, like me, Tamil. She is also African American. Indeed, she represents the present inclusive phase of the ever cycling identitarianism of American exceptionalism. However as Fawzia Afzal-Khan suggests, the identity politics of her election as the first female vice-president of the United States of America has, thus far, been only skin-deep. It is not, she insists, something we should “tout as a badge of honor or pride.” She furthers asserts that what we need instead, is an affiliative identity politics, rather than one that is merely skin-deep. While I sincerely wish America and Americans well in this dawning presidential cycle, I am not very optimistic.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/22/why-biden-may-be-less-evil-than-obama-and-clinton-and-why-this-may-not-matter-all-that-much-in-the-end/

https://counter-currents.com/2017/06/what-is-identitarianism/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/21/will-kamala-do-the-right-thing/

It’s Time to be Clear 2

~ The Koboi Project

So what is Fascism? In The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton defines fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

While there is no doubt that Donald Trump and by implication the Republican Party have been flirting with White Supremacy, and thereby bringing the USA within the ambit of Paxton’s definition, as a Malaysian Tamil who has lived in the UK, I can not but think of the analogous forces that have given us Brexit, Ketuanan Melayu and Hindutva.

Further, as an immigrant to Canada and as a resident of British Columbia, I struggle to disentangle my new, welcoming and multicultural home from its White Supremacist provenance, and I wonder about the future.

http://libcom.org/files/Robert%20O.%20Paxton-The%20Anatomy%20of%20Fascism%20%20-Knopf%20(2004).pdf

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist151/Paxton_Fascism/Paxton%20Anatomy%20of%20Fascism%20Chap8.pdf

The Discoveries!

~ The Koboi Project

“To celebrate the men who achieved great deeds for the nation, it is also necessary to celebrate the mothers who carried in their arms the children killed by the men who achieved great deeds for the nation.” This photo performance at the site of the Monument to the Discoveries in Belem, Lisboa presents the award winning show Aurora Negra which will run between September 3 and 14, at the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Lisboa.

The Koboi Project intervened at this same site in 2018 as part of a set of photo-performative street actions, which resulted in the series Kaza Nunteng Porta (House Without a Door).

https://www.facebook.com/MidiaNINJA/photos/a.164308700393950/1968374329987369

The Discoveries 3

~ The Koboi Project

Please visit Koboi Project series – Kaza Nunteng Porta.
https://koboibalikkampung.wixsite.com/nuntengporta

A terrific discovery for the Koboi Project – a photograph from the 3rd October, 1902 inauguration of the monument to Afonso de Albuquerque, the second governor of Portuguese India, in the D. Fernando Square, Belem. (renamed for Afonso de Albuquerque following the republican revolution of 1910) This square is located in front of 18th-century Belém Royal Palace. The delight of this image of the preparations for the arrival of King D. Carlos and the Royal Family for the ceremony is that it is shot from the same point of view as the images of the Kaza Nunteng Porta series highlighting the ‘The fall of Malacca’ relief. The other 3 three reliefs represent the ‘The Delivery of the keys of Goa,’ ‘The Reception of the Ambassador of the King of Narcinga’ and ‘The defeat of the army of the king of Hormuz.’

Image : Bellem | Belem: Reguendo da Cidade

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pra%C3%A7a_Afonso_de_Albuquerque

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=https://paixaoporlisboa.blogs.sapo.pt/o-monumento-a-afonso-de-albuquerque-86368&prev=search

Performance Masterclass

~ The Koboi Project

vexillationOr perhaps ‘Post Photo-conceptual Performance’ … a tag I have been developing to locate my practice at the junction of photography and performance. While the tag needs much refinement, I think the praxis itself seems now, after 5 years of the Koboi Project, to be reasonably developed. I had the privilege of delivering a Masterclass in Performance Art as Faculty at the International Ismaili Diamond Jubilee Arts Festival in Lisbon, which ran from the 5-9 July 2018.
See https://koboibalikkampung.wixsite.com/nuntengporta/masterclass

In this class, I shared my preparations for two impromptu photo-performances that took place at the Alfonso De Albuquerque Monument and the Discoveries Monument in Belem on 7th and 8th July 2018, respectively. I took the workshop participants, who were amateur and professional artists from the global Ismaili diaspora through my preparations for the two street interventions. They participated in my search for a meaningful action. We began the class within the designated presentation space and finished outside absorbing the architecture Portugal Pavilion and the masterclass itself into the spectacle and symbol of the event. In the light of his exercise and the images it produced, I have clarified for myself the stations of my process and have articulated them in a set of 12 words and images.

Discoveries Monument

~ The Koboi Project ~ 1 Comment

Ulagam Ulagam

UPCOMING: Impromptu Koboi performances will take place at the Alfonso De Albuquerque and the Discoveries monuments in Belem, Lisbon betwen 7- 9th of July 2018. For details please visit https://koboibalikkampung.wixsite.com/nuntengporta

The monument to the Discoveries was initially a temporary edifice built for the Portuguese World exhibition of 1940. It was reified as a permanent monument to Portuguese marine adventure and power by the far-right imperialist Second Republic government that ruled Portugal from 1933 to 1974. It was completed in 1960. I will erect my Kabali banner in the vicinity of the monument and in my performance, make reference to a rather different representation of mastery over the world by way a song from MGR’s Ulagam Suthum Valiban (World Perambulating Young Man), a blockbuster of Tamil cinema from 1973. On a personal note this intervention brings together fragments of knowledge and memory from my childhood in Malaysia – history lessons, local tourism, globetrotting relatives … indeed, I was taught about the great European voyages of discovery and conquest. The film song I use, Ulagam Ulagam, and its visual elements are also resonant for me – Subang International airport in Kuala Lumpur, Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore and Expo 70 in JApan … one of my uncles went and brought us some souvenirs. The idea of globalization was just taking shape in the time of the film’s release tourism and it seems to me MGR was looking back up the marine telescope of Discovery via his images of global tourism.​

Ulagam
Azhagu kalaigalin surangam
Paruva chilaigalin arangam
Kaalamey odivaa
Kaadhaley thedivaa

World!
A cavern of beautiful art
A hall of youthful forms
Time … advance on me
Love … come seek me

​Mundo!
Uma caverna de arte bela
Um salão de formas joviais
Tempo… avança em mim
Amor…venha me procurar

 உலகம் அழகு கலைகளின் சுரங்கம்
பருவசிலைகளின் அரங்கம்
காலமே ஓடிவா
காதலே தேடிவா