O ETERNO SÉCULO DE HOBSBAWN

==> Sugiro a leitura acompanhada da trilha sonora do filme "Nós que aqui estamos, por vós esperamos", de Marcelo Masagão. Inclusive, acho que este filme, como um todo, é uma das expressões artísticas mais representativas da rebeldia moderna de Hobsbawm.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwl_CdjW3sw&feature=BFa&list=PL53DFB8F2EEA7BBC5>

O ETERNO SÉCULO DE HOBSBAWM

Morreu a primeira página de meu livro de história

velinha, já estragada,

mal se lia nela o passado...

entre seus traços esquecidos

brotavam

sozinhos,

qual ervas daninhas a consumirem o lar dos Buendia

sonhos de um velho

socialista

que agora lá está e,

por nós,

espera.

Um homem de seu tempo e

além dele,

um socialista

e além dele

um sonhador

e além dele

um realista

e além dele

nós.

de sonhos grandes

e sonhadores miudos

dos temas eternos

e dos maestros fugazes

das canções que confortam eras

e mudam mundos

e entoam lamentos

goela abaixo

dos poderosos

e dos violentos

e dos brutos

e dos homens

       -  dos vencedores

       -  dos senhores

Por ti os sinos dobram,

hoje e amanhã

e para sempre

sob o badalo dos que tem frio

e fome

e sede

de justiça

e um dia viraram as páginas da história

pelas Eras de Hobsbawm

e além

Choram por ti

as Pessoas Extraordinárias

num jazz silencioso

numa Marselhesa de Sans Cullotes

e sem direitos

e sem saida

e sem amores

e sem medalhas

e sem história

…

agora herdeiros de uma rebeldia,

que lá está e por nós

espera...

Estranho sentir-me assim tão afetado, pela perda de alguém que nunca conheci.

Pela perda de um mestre, do qual hoje discordo tanto: Razão pessimista, trajédia europeia, o absurdo do homem branco...

são críticas

severas

que hoje posso entoar

contra ele inclusive

porquê nas páginas doces daquele Breve Século XX

me perdi

pra nunca mais

me encontrar.

BECAUSE I'M INNOCENT, I SCREAM!!!

BECAUSE I'M INNOCENT, I SCREAM!!!

Its still time to stop the bloodbath. If USA was concerned about Jews they wouldn't deny their identity as they do while forcing Jews into Zionism. Why campaigning to overshadow Judaism through Zionism? If the USA was concerned about Jews would they bomb Iran, the biggest Jew population in a Muslim country? Would they bomb the the biggest Jew population of the Crescent Fertile after Israel? Would they bomb those Jews that choose to be living in Iran despite the tempting money offered for them to migrate to Israel?

If the USA was worried about Jews, would they foster a political identity wherein the leadership is played by the Queen of England, Catholic elites of France or Christian sects of the USA - as is the case with Zionism? Let Jews be ahead of their identity! Let Jews be Jews, instead of Zionists!

Zionism is just another pretext for the Imperialist powers to carry on with their global looting!

Many Iranians want and deserve more than what their current leaders and political systems can offer; just like most people from the USA also deserve a better democracy than their two-party system of marked cards and lobbyist mafias; and most British people also deserve escaping Feudalism and Hereditary Autocracy.

But I would risk saying: hardly if any Iranian still believe its through the criminal hands of Imperialist forces that the democracy they deserve shall come. Maybe they are skeptic because they have a good memory, and they remember before 1979 there was 1953, and they remember Rumsfeld and Saddan shook hands, and they remember Iran Contra, and they remember the weapons of mass destruction provided to Iraq by Bush Dad were just not there for the Bush Kid because they had been fully spent against Iranian soldiers.

Besides, the present also doesn't inspire much optimist that the USA and their Gang could possibly do any good for Iranian democracy. We have seen Western Empires blowing the moment of transformation all over the third world, smuggling their dirty interests on the critical agendas and turning transition movements into paths for the Dictators of tomorrow. That's how it killed the Arab Spring and that's how it is trying to kill a political society which struggles to take Iran out of the Autocratic hole it was forced by USA and England in 1953.

An innocent shall pledge full support to the Iranian democracy, and therefore shall stand unbreakable against any project of democracy export/ imposition! An innocent says NO to the Zionist force pushing the USA to bomb Iranians! An innocent screams NO to the Imperial Power's support to Israeli unilateral attack over Iran! An innocent seek all the possible means to stop Iranian skies from get red with peoples blood! AN INNOCENT REVEALS THE GUILT OF THOSE WHO REMAIN IN SILENCE!

ABSTRACT ON ARAB NATIONALISM

ARAB NATIONALISM

• Started against the Otoman Empire in the aerly XX Century, with some 'help' of the British, but they soon had their autonomy jeopardized as the British fostered their isolation through supporting zionism.
• The Pan-Arabist, Al-Fatat ("the Young Arab Society") was created in 1911 and launched the Arab Congress of 1913, originally for autonomy within the Otoman empire but due to persecutions it sharpened into independence.
  • In 1919 the young cadres of Al-Fatat launched the Al-Istiqlal (Arab Independence Party) with a somehow more nationalistic than pan-Arabistic claim for independence of other Arab countries
    • Created a subtle tension between nationalists and pan-Arabists
    • Undeclared sponsoring from Ibn al-Hussain of Iraq.
• Under the command of the Sharif of Meca, supported by the British, the Otoman power was overthrown during the 1st world war, but the British fostered fragmentation as they dettached Iraq under the rule of one of his son's Faysal Ibn al-Hussain, and east Palestine (Transjordania or contemporary Jordan) under the rule of his other son, Abdulah I of Jordania.
• The relative independence of Egypt (1921*), Iraq (1920*), Saudi Arabia (1920*) and North Yemen (1918*) encouraged Arab nationalists to put forward programs of action against colonial powers in the region, what was sharpened in the 1930's due to the threat of Zionism.
• It's peak was after the World War II, under the leadership of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser
  • Opposed to the British control of the Suez Canal Zone and concerned at Egypt becoming a Cold War battleground Nasser pushed for a collective Arab security pact within the framework of the Arab League. A key aspect of this was the need for economic aid that was not dependent on peace with Israel and the establishment of U.S. or British military bases within Arab countries. Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and directly challenged the dominance of the Western powers in the region.
  • The humiliating defeat in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War strengthened the Arabs' resolve to unite in favor of a pan-Arab nationalist ideal.[7]
  • With the advent of Palestinian nationalism, a debate circled between those who believed that pan-Arab unity would bring about destruction of Israel (the view advocated by the Arab Nationalist Movement) or whether the destruction of Israel would bring about pan-Arab unity (the view advocated by Fatah)
• Decline of Pan-Arabism after the 1967 war
  • The Arab Nationalist Movement shifted from Pan-Arabism to Marxist-Leninism
  • the elimination of many of the irritants that stoked nationalist passion as imperialism and pro-Westernism waned in the Arab world during the 1950s and early 1960s;
    • The British presence in Egypt and Iraq had been eliminated; the Baghdad Pact had been defeated; Jordan's British chief of staff, Sir John Bagot Glubb, had been dismissed; Lebanon's pro-Western president, Camille Chamoun, had been replaced by the independent Fu'ad Shihab; and the Algerians, sacrificing a million dead in a heroic struggle, had triumphed over French colonial power.[45]

• regional attachments such as Iraqi president Abd al-Karim Qasim's "Iraq first" policy;

• attachments to tribes and "deeply-ingrained tribal values";

• suspicion of Arab unity by minority groups such as Kurds in Iraq who were non-Arab, or Shia Muslims in Iraq who feared Arab nationalism was actually "a Sunni project" to establish "Sunni hegemony";

• the Islamic revival, which grew Arab nationalism declined, and whose adherents were very hostile towards nationalism in general, believing it had no place in Islam;

• lack of interest by the movement in pluralism, separation of powers, freedom of political expression and other democratic concepts which might have "resuscitated" the ideology in its moment of weakness

• Attempts of unity were made by Nasser until 1971, and since them from Gadaffi, but none of them succeeded.

PROFILE OF THE WEST ASIAN COUNTRIES AND SUB-REGIONS

Egypt – 1919, first revolt. 1922, independence under British security forces. 1936, anti-zionist protests lead to the restoration of its constitution. From 1958 to 1961 Egypt merged with Syria and attempted to join Iraq and North Yemen into United Arab Republic (the name would be kept for Egypt untill Nasser's death in 1971). In 1963 Ba'at party won in Iraq and Syria, and they signed to merge with Egypt, but riots and disagreements lead to the withdrawn of the agreement before it could be impemented. In 1972 Lybian president Muammar Gadaffi attempted to join with Egypt and Syria to form the Federation of Arab Republics, but it crashed in 1977. In 1974 Gadaffi attempted to unite with Algeria in a Federation of Arab Republics, but it also didn't work as Argelia joined the Arab Maghreb Union.

CRESCENT FERTILE

Lebanon – 1920 to 1946 under French Mandate.

Iraq – 1920 to 1932 under British Mandate (King Faisal, son of Sherif Hussein). In 1941, however, the supporter of Pan-Arabism, King Ghazi, died in a 'car accident', and his non Pan-Arabist successor was soon overthrown by Pan-Arabists, what lead the UK to invade Iraq again as the German support expected by Iraqis never came. In 1945 the British forces left Iraq and the share fo Iran they occupied, whereas the Russians remained in Iran. Iraq however was immediately tied up by the US's Cold War CENTO.

Syria – 1920 to 1946 under French Mandate, with first great revolt in 1925. In 1936 the anti-zionist protests lead to deeper ngotiations of independence with France.

Palestine – Splat into a western part under direct British administration – which is pretty much nowadays Palestine; and an eastern Kingdom (Abdulla, son of Sherif Hussein) – Transjordania - responding to the British, untill the propose for creation of Israel in 1947

Jordania – the Kingdom of Abdulla – Transjordania - was completely splat from palestine and got independence in 1946, being renamed Jordania in 1951 only.

Saudi Arabia – was conceded to Ibn Saud (a British allie) in 1920 and become an independent Kingdom in 1932

ANATOLIA

Turkey – Carried the Political authority of previous Otoman empire, was it's inheritor in 1923 Lausane Agreement.

SOUTH CAUCASUS OR TRANSCAUCASUS: Was created in 1918 as a plit from Otoman Empire, but at the same year it was splat again between Azerbajan, Armeny and Georgia – all those further attached by the Sovietic Republic and independent again in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

Azerbajan – 1918

Armeny – 1918

Georgia – 1918

MEDITERRANEAN SEA

Cyprus – Was lended to the British at the last years of the Otoman empire and remained British protectorade untill 1960, when it got independence

PERSIAN GULF (ARAB PENINSULA + IRANIAN PLATEAU)

IRANIAN PLATEAU

Iran – 1905 – 1921 Iranian Constitutional Revolution which settled a Parliamentary Monarchy which was overthrown by the UK/US in 1953 as the Prime MinisterMossadegh nationalized the Iranian oil contesting the British colonial monopoly. As a result Sha Reza Parlevi established an autocratic government with the support of the USA which just fall in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution.

ARAB PERNINSULA

Kwait – Under British proctetorate until 1961

Oman – Under British direct colonization until 1971

Yemen – North Yemen is independent from the tomans since 1918, but only in 1967 that South Yemen was attached and become independent from the British. The island of Socotorá in the strategical entrance of the Gulf of Aden was just incorporated in 1967

United Arab Emirates – Since 1953 it was under a Trucial Sheikhdom client to the British, and full independence just come in 1971 (when the agreement expired)

Bahrein – Independent of the Persian Empire since 1783, but turned into a British client in the XIX century and just leaving the condition of proctetorate in 1971, after the agreement expired in 1970.

Qatar – Having been dominated by Persians, Otomans and under British protectorate untill 1970, it just become independent in 1971, after its client agreement expired.

ABSTRACT ON WESTERN COLONIALISM

• Portugal – Sultanate of Mallaca 1511
• Dutch (East India Company) took over Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641 and set enclave in Jacarta, while Spain began to colonize the Philippines (named after Philip II of Spain) from 1560s.
• British (East India Company) just come in the XIX Century, settling bases in Penang (Malasya) and Singapore as they advanced over Dutch areas during the Napoleonic wars.
• Since 1850 the UK and Holland signed a colonial agremment which settled 'peace' to geared development
• By 1913, the British occupied Burma, Malaya and the Borneo territories
  • Burma secured their independence from Britain in 1948
  • After suppressing the communist insurrection during the Malayan Emergency from 1948 to 1960, Britain granted independence to Malaya and later, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak in 1957 and 1963 respectively within the framework of the Federation of Malaysia
  • Britain ended its protectorate of the Sultanate of Brunei in 1984
• the French controlled Indochina
  • the French were driven from Indochina in 1954 after a bitterly fought war (the Indochina War) against the Vietnamese nationalists
  • The United States intervention against communist forces in Indochina during a conflict commonly referred to in the United States as the Vietnam War meant that Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia had to go through a prolonged and protracted war in their route to independence.
    • By the war's end in 1975, all these countries were controlled by communist parties. After the communist victory, two wars between communist states — the Cambodian-Vietnamese War of 1975-1989 and the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 — were fought in the region.
• the Dutch ruled the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia)
  • Indonesia declared independence in 17 August 1945 and subsequently fought a bitter war against the returning Dutch until Sukharno took power (backed by the USA) and proceeded the genocide of 500.000 communists in the country
• Portugal managed to hold on to Portuguese Timor
  • In 1975, Portuguese rule ended in East Timor. However, independence was short-lived as Indonesia annexed the territory soon after, just regaining independence in 2002

Filipino revolutionaries declared independence from Spain in 1898 but was handed over to the United States despite protests as a result of the Spanish-American War

ABSTRACT ON VIETNAM

• Became independent from Imperial China in 938 AD, following the Battle of Bạch Đằng River.
• Successive Vietnamese royal dynasties flourished as the nation expanded geographically and politically into Southeast Asia, until the Indochina Peninsula was colonized by the French in the mid-19th century.
  • The French maintained control of their colonies until World War II, when the war in the Pacific led to the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in 1941 – which was a base for military interventions on British territories.
  • In 1941, Viet Minh – with leader Ho Chi Minh, started guerrilla, which succeed after Japanese defeat in 1945
  • 1946, French vessels bombarded the port city of Hai Phong, and the Viet Minh's guerrilla campaign against French forces began soon after. The resulting First Indochina War lasted until 20 July 1954.
• The First Indochina War eventually led to the expulsion of the French in 1954, leaving Vietnam divided politically into two countries. Fighting between the two sides continued, with heavy foreign intervention, during the Vietnam War, which ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975.
  • The 1954 agreement pointed to a provisory division of the country into two, the south under the pro-French forces, and the north under Viet Minh forces, but the south pushed elections and the north started guerrilla against the pro-colonial south to unify
  • The Vietcongs gained ground as the government of the south got very instable having coup after coup
  • In 1965 US forces engaged in ground combat against the north
  • 1968 tet offensive against key spots on the south, shoking the US
  • Vietcongs got supply through the Ho Chi Minh trail across Lao and Camboja, and the US bombed those countries without even consulting the US Congress
  • US starts getting its forces out in 1973, Saigon is captured in 1975 and the unification is formalized in 1976
  • In 1978, the Vietnamese military invaded Cambodia
    • This action worsened relations with the Chinese, who launched a brief incursion into northern Vietnam in 1979.
      • This conflict caused Vietnam to rely even more heavily on Soviet economic and military aid
• In the aftermath of the war, the unified Communist nation was politically isolated and economically backward. In 1986, the government initiated market-based economic and political reforms which began a path towards integration into the world economy – “doi moi”.
• By 2000, it had established diplomatic relations with most nations, including the US and WTO in 2007.

ABSTRACT ON MIANMAR

• Pagan Empire in the 1050s – Burmese language, , Theravada Buddhism
• The Pagan Empire fell due to the Mongol invasions (1277–1301), and several warring states emerged
• In the second half of the 16th century, the country was reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty which for a brief period was the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia.
• The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area that included modern Burma as well as Manipur and Assam.
• The country was colonized by Britain following three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824–1885).
  • Burma lost Arakan, Manipur, Assam and Tenasserim to the British in the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826).
  • In 1852, the British easily seized Lower Burma in the Second Anglo-Burmese War.
  • King Mindon tried to modernize the kingdom, and in 1875 narrowly avoided annexation by ceding the Karenni States. The British, alarmed by the consolidation of French Indo-China, annexed the remainder of the country in the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885

• Throughout the colonial era, many Indians arrived as soldiers, civil servants, construction workers and traders and, along with the Anglo-Burmese community, dominated commercial and civil life in Burma. Rangoon became the capital of British Burma and an important port between Calcutta and Singapore.
  • Burmese resentment was strong and was vented in violent riots that paralysed Yangon on occasion all the way until the 1930s.
• On 1 April 1937, Burma became a separately administered colony of Great Britain, with nationalist pro self-rule Ba Maw as prime minister (was soon arrested)
• In 1940, before Japan formally entered the Second World War, Aung San formed the Burma Independence Army in Japan.
  • During the war Japan invaded Myamar for a while and set Ba Maw in rule
    • Minorities and opposition ehtnic groups set alliances with the US side. Eg: The Burma Independence Army and the Arakan National Army fought with the Japanese from 1942 to 1944, but switched allegiance to the Allied side in 1945
• Following the World War II, Aung San negotiated the Panglong Agreement with ethnic leaders that guaranteed the independence of Burma as a unified state. In 1947, Aung San became Deputy Chairman of the Executive Council of Burma, a transitional government. But in July 1947, political rivals[36] assassinated Aung San and several cabinet members
  • The geographical area Burma encompasses today can be traced to the Panglong Agreement, which combined Burma Proper, which consisted of Lower Burma and Upper Burma, and the Frontier Areas, which had been administered separately by the British
• Becme an Independent republic in 1948, it did not become a member of the Commonwealth. A bicameral parliament was formed, consisting of a Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber of Nationalities,[38] and multi-party elections were held in 1951–1952, 1956 and 1960.

• Since independence in 1948, the country has been in one of the longest running civil wars among the country's myriad ethnic groups
  • From 1962 to 2011, the country was under military rule. The military junta was dissolved in 2011 following a general election in 2010 and a civilian government installed.
  • In 1989 the junta changed the name from Burma to Myanmar, but US doesn't recognizes, however the UN and others do

• On 2 March 1962, the military led by General Ne Win took control of Burma through a coup d'état and the government has been under direct or indirect control by the military since then.
• Between 1962 and 1974, Burma was ruled by a revolutionary council headed by the general, and almost all aspects of society
• From 1974 to 1988 it was a one-party system, and become one of the most empoverished countries in the world
• In 1988, unrest over economic mismanagement and political oppression by the government led to widespread pro-democracy demonstrations throughout the country known as the 8888 Uprising. Security forces killed thousands of demonstrators, and General Saw Maung staged a coup d'état and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)
• Elections were established in 1989, but as opposition forces won for 80% the general kept the SLORC untill 1997, changing it to State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) until its dissolution in March 2011
  • 2007 Saffron revolution; 2—8 cyclone;
  • Constitutional change from Union of Myamar to Republic of the Union of Myamar, and set ellections to 2010, which were fraudulently won by the militars (80%)
    • Surprisingly, the militaries made some democratic flexibilizations
    • Hilary Clinton visited the country in 2011
    • 2012 elections were followed by international observance, being tolerable, and electing 43 ou of 45 seats to the pro-democracy party.
• Get's accepted in ASEAN in 1997.

JAPANESE INVASIONS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

• The 1938 concept of, New Order in East Asia, restricted to Northeast Asia, was turned into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (1940) aimed at forming a bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers
• After the World War II the concept emerged as an Asian equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, especially with the Roosevelt Corrolary. The regions of Asia, it was argued, were as essential to Japan as Latin America was to the U.S. - Asia for asians.
  • It's historically rooted on the Asian puppet governments responding to Tokyo from 1895 (the first sino-japanese war, when Japan annexed Taiwan and forced China to accept Korea's independence) to 1937 (the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War)
    • The Second Sino Japanese war was the conflagration of a total war after many skemishes happening all over the previous century, including partial coloniztions of Manchuria through client landlords.
    • In 1937 Japan bombed Beijing and the KMT decided to stop concessions and engaged on full war
      • Marco Polo Bridge and Nankin massacre (rape of nankin)
    • Initially Japan invaded China, which was supported by Germany and URSS since before the war, but soon Hitler shifted the support to Japan and Stalin made assumed neutrality due to an agreement avoiding confrontation with Japan in Siberia
    • In 1940 Hitler betrayed Stalin and forced him to focus his power at the western front, while Japan invaded north Indochina to prevent China of being supplied by the allies. In 1941, as Japan extended the domination to south of Indochine, the allies imposed an oil embargo which lead Japan to declare war through attacking pearl harbour and aligning Hitler.
    • Japan also dominated Thailand, though the Thai government maintained nominal independence by signing an armistice (hours after the battle only) and supporting the japanese side, even declaring war to the US and UK
      • It was strategical to bomb Malasya and Burma of British
      • From 1942 to 1945 Japan occupied Burma and set it independent under Ba Mao
    • A key alliance between China and the allies focused on liberating the Burman road through which China could be supplied, what just happened in 1944
    • China seek alliance with Indochinese nationalist groups, mainly Vitnamise Viet minh, which were under Japanese conquest. Kaishek even refused Roosewelt proposal to get Indochina after the war.
    • In 1946 China was against the French re-colonization of Vietnam and even mentioned war, settling an agreement of mutual desocupation at that year
    • After the Allied victory in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur ordered all Japanese forces within China (excluding Manchuria), Formosa and French Indochina north of 16° north latitude to surrender to Chiang Kai-shek, and the Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on September 9, 1945.
• In 1943 there was even a summit with leaders of local political organizations of territories which further become modern southeast asian countries

ABSTRACT ON ASEAN

• ASA (Association of Southeast Asia) turned into ASEAN (1967) - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand + Brunei (1984), Burma (Myanmar) (1997), Cambodia (1999), Laos (1997), and Vietnam (1995)

• Aimed at assuring sovereignty and independence as the region was affected by the cold war interventions destabilizations in a moment of descolonization
• Suffers US pression through APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Forum), having the EAEC (East Asia Economic Caucus) initiative (1990) suppressed due this reason
• The ASEAN way – economically aimed, not-intervein, is criticized for being to tolerant with Burma
• Is organized through track I, II and III neglecting civil society to the III one, which is more observantive than deliberative
• Summits were originally from 5 to 5 years, in 1992 turned to 3 to 3, since 2001 it happens every year, and since 2009 twice a year + the informal and comemorative meetings; the EAS (East Asia Summit); ARF (Asia Regional Forum); ASEM (Asia Europe Meeting); and Asia-Russia meeting
  • ASEAN + 3 and ASEAN + CER (Australia and New Zeland) happen along with the ASEAN Summit.

• CEPT (common effective preferential tariff) (1992) was proposed in 1992, and would later be developed after the 1997 economic crisis. Since 2007 to AEC (Asean Economic Comunity) aiming free zone area untill 2015. It includes the following measures:
  • Comprehensive Investment Areas
  • Trade in Services
  • Single aviation market
  • Free trade agreements with other countries – China, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and most recently India. Is negotiating also with the European Union (most of those since 2010).
  • shift from CMI (Chiang Mai Initiative) – proposed in 2000 to create a multinational bank to prevent further economic crisis – to ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic and Research Office (AMRO), which will also survey to prevent crisis.
    • Operates since 2011, and aims at doubling its resources to inspire more confidence
  • FDI, however China has 3 years of high inflation and Japan is recovering from Tsunami, what challenge investors – most of them from the EU.
  • Intra-Asean travel, is of 40% and is about to have common passport.
  • Intra-ASEAN trade, which is week since just Laos and Burma (Myamar) have regional-oriented export-import policies
• In 1995 a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone was propsed, and finally concluded in 2001
• ASEAN + 3 (China + Japan + South Korea) (1997), also an attempt to balance the USA intervention presence, an attempt to get countries which hate each other together through a new space.
• Since 2006 East Timor is in process of admission, and the formal letter was forwarded in 2011
• In 2008 it launched a charter shifting to a more integrative organization, almost like the shift from European Community to European Union, however with much less deepening. Anyway, there's still central concern of preserving sovereignty.
  • Some say it was due to pressures, mostly European, to increase humanitarian and democratic umbrella, what is directly aimed at Myamar.
• Many critics say its just a talk shop since it's stimulus, the cold war, is gone. Others criticize its neoliberal aspect.

ABSTRACT ON WHITEHEAD'S “MATERIALIZING BODIES”

ABSTRACT ON WHITEHEAD'S “MATERIALIZING BODIES”

• Few feminist approaches work revealing the materialization of the male body, but mostly pointing to the body as a field of social determinations.
  • Some pledge that objectification of males bodies has equaled with female's one
  • Adonis complex – crisis of masculinity makes man pursue through muscles the lost masculinity
    • He opposes the equality of the objectifications on bases of the different power equations informing one and other.
• His first purpose is to explore some of the ways in which men's sense of themselves as embodied agents serves to inform their physical presence in, and relationship to, the world and to others.
• A second purpose is to consider the notion that the material form of the male body is inevitably inscribed with masculinities
  • Male's sense of embodiment informs and shapes their multiple physical-discursive materializations and relationships – to their own bodies, to others' bodies (male and female), to the spatial field in which they find themselves.
    • None of this is received or experienced unproblematically. He is rejecting both:
      a) The essencialist notion of sexed bodies;
      • He follows the third wave of feminists on analysing the ways in which identity and materiality connect with the body, both to constitute it and to discoursively exercise power and resistance upon and through it
      b) The discourse of harmony leading certain sexed bodies to fit certain gender categories.
      • His point is that all male bodies are places upon which masculinities become inscribed, but not in any predictable or linear fashion
        • He reveals how the gaze is policing the problematic development of one such relation
          • For that he highlights how notions of the male body are historically differentiated, temporally and spatially located and highly specific to cultural sites
            • “The bifurcation of women and men as embodied beings took a particular turn during the period of the Western Enlightenment, when the belief in the Cartesian body-mind dualism served to reinforce the biological essentialism at the heart of male power, not least by depositing a 'universal voice of reason' on sex difference”
            • He points that understanding the body can no longer rely on sociobiological accounts only, but should also include pressures of postindustrial capitalism, commodification, gendered experiences, cultural significations, and psychoanalitical processes, to produce a body in flux, frequently rendered anxious, yet always subject to some level of external regulation.
    • He refers to Merleau-Ponty phenomenology (study of the formation of the consciousness) of the body as the original subject that constitutes space.
      • If this is the case, then there is no space within the public-private that is not already prefigured by (gendered) bodies, marking out territories for inclusionand exclusion of the female and male
        • Irigary understands that not on the basis of essentialist bodies prviously determining spatialities but, instead, as an evidence that the body itself is a contested terrain to the extent that its own formations will settle all the fenomenological consciousness, all the other spatialities.
          • According to this understanding the appearance of the male body as a 'whole and complete' steams a powerful semiotics of presence in the social world which turns its illusion into materiality
            • This process, however, does not succeed on being hegemonic as Foucault proposes that the body is not unified but is a site of struggle between opposing discursive power regimes:
              • “Genealogy, as an analysis of descent, is thus situated within the articulation of the body and history. Its task is to expose a body totally imprinted by history and the processes of history's destruction of the body” (Foucault)
              • For Foucault the body is the ultimate surface upon which power and resistance operate
                • Foucault move us away from the Enlightenment split between body and mind
                  • Whitehead, however, problematizes which usage of Foucault suits better feminism as eventually the body is not seen as the starting point, as proposed by Merlau-Ponty, but rather the final point.
                  • He also problematizes using Foucault for his riginal concern was to understand the effects of capitalism and labour on their interconnections with the body.
                  • Thus he follows through the Foucauldian approach of Iris Marion Young and Judith Butler, who matches with Ponty's phenomenology to provide insights into the gendered body in ways that introduce the body as a contested plce, yet materialized in the social world through the dynamics of gender.
• Iris Marion Young
  • Young's argument is that most women experience their body as an object subjected to the gaze of another, as a fragile thing positioned in a gendered space, which serves to inform the degree and the extent ti which she may use it, exercise it, express it and receive it.
    • Her notion of space owes much to Merlau-Ponty to what ontology and subjectivity are located in the body, primarily through its orientation to the world
    • Young applies Beauvoir's existential feminism to Merlau-ponty's concept in order to produce an undertanding of feminine bodily existence – woman's motility and spatiality – as immanently positioned in a male dominated culture, where her very sense of being, self and subjectivity as Other arises from the fact of her bodily presence and entity being subject to restrictions and inhibitions
      • Basically the Beauvorian notion is that of 'women as man dennied to be', which is opposed to Butler's view of women as something unintelligible to the phallogocentric language.
        • Beauvoir posits woman and man as distinguished into one same linguistical system, while Butler claims that the very linguistic systems are distinct, and that woman are not intelligible to the masculinist language – they are abjected bodies.
      • Masculine ontology - dominant masculinities, and the sense of bodily presence and existence they suggest, do not position the male/masculine subject as timid, careful, restricted
        • Refers to the example of male kids playing through creating space for them (restricting space for others) while the women plays through intrsospection
      • She's not suggesting that behaviors are essentialists, but simply that gender constructions departs from a body contruction under the mark of lack, woman as the no-man. Thus she foresses the possibility of overcoming such differences as long as those body marks are not respected anymore.
        • Woman can escape one such typical situation of impediment in various degrees and respects.
      • She points that many man cannot sustain the display of their masculinities according to the ideal masculinist discourse upholding the masculinist spatialities they enjoy
        • The point, however, is less that certain man fail to have a constant symbiotic relationship between their bodies and dominnt discourses, but more about their permanent attempt to do so.
      • Young presents, in the overall, a clear link with gendered subjectivity, power, embodiment and materiality, but Whitehead prefers to shift her Beauvoirean understanding of woman towards a less essentialist and more discoursive approach which he considers capable of unfolding much more fragilities on the reproduction of masculinism. For that task he resorts to Butler.
• Judith Butler
  • Sex-gender distinction is an artifice
    • There's no pre-discursive sexed body
      • In feminist postructuralist terms, this binary operates in the service of a field of power relations through which is concealed the cultural invention of such truths and knowledges
    • She criticizes Beauvoir on what her – Beauvoir – suggestion that one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one implies a degree of agency, wherein choice of gendered embodiedness is avaiable
      • Irigary, who argues that the phallogocentric logic of a masculinist signifying economy, emcompassing both ontological and espistemological structures, signals that woman is 'marked off' from the domain of the signifiable; her very existence is mediated through men whereby she emerges as 'masculine woman'.
        • Butler moves beyond and criticizes even Irigary on what she proposes a non-definable “feminine feminine” representation, which offers women the opportunity to stablish a discursive space outside the dominant phallic epistemology
          • Butler questions any claim to a universal womanist epistemology
          • Butler sees the body in Foucauldian terms – materialized through power.
            • He stresses that Foucault and Bulter are not strictly constructivists on what, for them “there is no power that acts, but only a reiterated acting that is power in its persistence and instability (…) a process of materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter”
            • Materiality designates a certain effect of power or rather, is power in its formative and constituting effects
              • In poststructuralist terms the 'I' that speaks has no presence and is not knowing beyond its discursivity. However, the 'I' that speaks does occupy a political position, for in speaking it makes claim to forms of knowledges that are themselves associated with particular political categories
                • These categories are discursive and, thus, enabling and not simply regulatory. And they are categories which, in extreme situations (for example, full gender reassignment), bodies can move across.
                • But for the most part they are categories, or power regimes, into which discourses materialize an embodied entity, not a unity of identities and not a stable, constant sovereign subject, but a politicized physical presence nonetheless.
                  • From this standpoint Whitehead moves to debate how, despite its existential status as Subject, the male body has other potential inscriptions, many of which render ir precarious and serve to position as Other (in such cases the male body shifts from the observer on the panopticon to the individual being observed)
• In gender terms we can see the gaze applied to both women's and men's bodies, whereby the discursive subject comes to discipline and manage her/his body as self-surveillance
  • The gaze itself is not neutral but invested with powers, in so much as it comes with a set of moral, social and cultural codes or assumptions; an economy of looks that places values on the body
    • While accepting that for many feminists the authoritative gaze is male, it is also important to recognize that male bodies are not outside of he gaze, but, indeed, also subject to multiple gazes, including that of the female
    • He proceeds revealing some examples:
      • Race man
        • For black men, stylizing their bodies can be understood as the exercise of power and the practice of resistance. However, the notion of a singular black masculinity is problematic, not least because it can be used to naturalize differences between black and white men
          • The black subject is idealised as the embodiment of its aesthetic ideal
            • He point to the gendered processes by which modes of thought surrounding African American men acquire dominance
            • 'Race man', Carby argues, becomes a black signifier of American society, but it is a signifier constructed from male-centered assumptions leaving women, sexuality and gender as a 'decorative function'
              • This signification of the black through the Race man keeps the phallogocentric discourse reifying woman's Otherness unaltered.
              • This signification also keeps the black man located as the Other through the institutional and authoritative gaze of the white male
                • Despite the multiplication of ideals of white man on current times, and the creation of a black male, the white male far from being displaced from the centre of discourse by a myriad of postmodern voices continues to predominate in the control of the image.
                  • The power of the gaze lies on its multiplicity, for it is through these multiple authoritative gazes that the paradoxes of embodied masculinity become apparent, as much for those who gaze as for those who are gazed upon.
      • A gay body of men
        • He points that the gaze of the gay body of men exemplifies how subversive potentials can underlie the regulatory mechanisms themselves
          • It's subversive potential lies on what it can makes strange and blurs stereotyped views.
            • Photographer Robert Mapplethorp is known for his evocative portrayals of black gay nude males
              • The imagery is almost impossible to categorize, for it depends on the gazer's subjectivity as to whether one sees the photographs as erotic, pornographic, aesthetic, emotive or simply beautiful.
              • Similarly the black male models can be understood to be both objectified and dignified by the process of being gazed upon
              • His pictures are a site of struggle, the arena being dominant notions of representation and truth, the contestants being both the gazed upon and the gazing
              • Mapplethorpe's photographs do not provide an unequivocal yes/no answer to the question of whether they reinforce or undermine commonplace racist stereotypes – rather, he trows the binary structure of the question back at the spectator, where it is torn apart in the disruptive shock effect
                • I find this reactionary on what he neglects the horizons of gender directing the shocking effects to homofobic reactions.
          • Gay men can occupy numerous meterialities, some of which may, apparently, conform to dominant understandings of how gay man might position himself as an embodied presence in the world.
      • Men's aging bodies
        • Whatever men's responses to growing older, it can be stated with some confidence that if men's bodies and the masculinities inscribed upon them are made precarious by multiple gazes, then they are, like women's bodies, rendered particularly insecure through aging. For if masculinity is about occupation, vigour, activity, mastery and overcoming space, then aging is the inevitable process that puts under question such dominant representations of maleness
          • Masculinity is not static and unchanging over a male's life; it changes just as the body moves in time and space
          • Some man are privileged with means for aging but still keeping virility, strenght and, in such cases, having the additional benefit of free time
            • This however is the privilege of a minority
          • Apart from economics and health, a further and related key variable in the ability of older men to manage later life transformations appears to lie in their sense of masculinity and its inability to acknowledge dependency on the help of others
• Thus the gze is not simply about reifying bodies; the gaze politicizes bodies, rendering them into numerous political fields of truth and knowledge, of which race, sexuality and age are but three.

ABSTRACT ON SHAW AND DARLING'S 'STRATEGIES OF BEING FEMALE'

ABSTRACT ON SHAW AND DARLING'S 'STRATEGIES OF BEING FEMALE'

• She points how the biological arguments for gender distinction in analogy to nature animals behavior is fallacious as the so called male active role on mating, as opposed to female passivity, is the outcome of how researchers just look at males behavior and even interfere in the female species to turn it into a blank sheet where the male can draw its agencies (e.g. female cats being ripped out of their ovaries and submitted to sex-inducing drugs at the convenience of the studies interested on the male behavior)
  • A paradigmatical case shifting this stereotyped trend came in 1970 as the Shiner Perch, a little fish revealed that females are strongly active on mating, and more, that they do so even without the 'hormonal imperative' of reproducing, as they don't reduce their sexual intercourses even after getting pregnant
    • And the females even perform sexual migrations after being already pregnant
    • The females of this species are promiscuous as they mate a variety of males
      • This species also reveal activity on what the females choose and regulate their pregnancies by keeping the sperm without fecundation so that her conception of babies could be in the time of abundance of food
    • The sexist persistence to this case was the concept of “sex role reversal”, referring to females which reverse a 'natural supposed to be' by the [heterosexual] scientific culture.
      • It's an arbitrary concept as natural becomes a cultural presumption and the nature it self is said to be reversing it. The very source of naturality is abjected by the heterosexual panopticon
      • This is a way to carry on examining nation from the males viewpoint
      • They resort to gametes to forge some natural distinction between the sexes claiming that male gametes, sperms, are active, while the women gametes, ovules, are passive receptacles
        • Besides the arbitrary of presuming the whole biological construct from the original gametes, and to carry on forging cultural differences on this base, recently there was a discovery on Nature Magazine which revealed how female gamets vary like the sperm and that the adaptations of females sexual organs are definitive to induce the sperm activity.

• The authors follow an investigation line presuming that animals have no culture, therefore whatever they behave is not according to any immanent cultural universe to which sexists resort on pointing the males are more active than females. Thus, she points that animal variety reveals completelly different behaviors of females which our cultural background could classificate as patriachalist or feminist, but in fact they are non for animals don't have culture, and just do whatever is necessary to stay alive and assure the species survival.
  • I disagree of this approach on what it keeps the biology-culture duality still alive, but simply deconstruct claims that heterosexual sexism has biological roots. I'm more favorable of destroying the very duality itself, which suits more Irigary and Butler critique on the phallogocentrism and the economy of the phallus. I think that neither animals not human beings should be hailed in terms of rather they have culture or not, and to what extent does it relate to biology.

• The authors carry on giving more examples of how animals biology, which are assumed to have no cultural links, can manifest in ways opposed to the essentialist nature construct of heterosexual sexism.
  • Species of which only sexual distinction are the gamets: Clams, oysters, starfish, sea urchins, snails, and fishes.
    • They also just abandon their eggs on the sea, without anything resembling 'maternal care'
  • Species of which females actively mate and perform mating ceremonies: Seabirds, rats
    • The Pelican also shares domestic 'bliss' on an equal time basis
    • Female rats is more active than the male on satisfying sexual apetite
    • Female Phalaropes and 'Jesus Birds' are colored to mate, pursue an active sexual position and patrol their own large land-holdings where she allows (patronizes) males to stay in exchange for sexual mating at her convenience.
      • They made the males take care of the eggs by smuggling it while males are not aware.
  • Species og which females are bigger than males: Many insects and certain mammals:
    • Spiders (some kill and eat the males)
    • Rabbits, hamsters, baleen whales, bats
    • Deep-sea angler fish which captures the males bad of testis to reach self-dependency
    • Female hyena even has a fake penis and scrotum (which is bigger than males one)

CHAPTER 8 (THE MYTH OF MATERNALISM)

• She deconstructs the myth according to which females are better nurturing than males because of the biological fact that they lactate
  • She notes that the stereotype is not so strong on species which doesn't have to care of its eggs, simply abandoning it. Therefore she focus on revealing nurturing behaviors of nonlactating animals and, at the same time, reveals not-caring behavior of mammals, or male nurturing on mammals
  • Nurturing behaviors of nonlactating animals: 90% of bird species – among songbirds (Passerines) – have alike caring provided by both female and male
    • Swifts, swallows, magpie geese, pied kingfisher, king penguins, bushits, nuthatches, wrens, grosbeaks, tanagers, jays, woodpeckers, terns, murres, and cuckoos all form cooperatives for the feeding of the young
    • Certain woodpeckers and pygmy nuthatches show that excess males which are not mating exercise nurturing roles in nests of others.
    • Anis cuckoo has communal nests
    • European cuckoo deposits its eggs in other species nests and when the offspring emerge it pushes the other eggs out of the nest to keep alll the care and attention to itself.
    • Jesus Bird females allows males to live under her territory to assure its sexual appetite and so that they can nest the eggs as she simply deposits it around.
  • Non-nurturing behavior of female mammals:
  • Nurturing behavior of male mammals
    • The male beaver watches the bith of the baby and shares everything but nurturing, including baby-sitting when the famale leaves the nest
    • Typically, one-third of carnivores, all of which are social species (e.g., dogs, hyenas, foxes, martens, mangooses), the males socialize, feed, guard, groom, huddle, and baby-sit for the young
      • Wild-dog males even regurgitate food for the pups and the female is more expendable than the male on the nurturing of them after the lactation period – in some cases of females death males managed to grow pups even without lactation.
    • In 40% of primates, males care for the young.
      • Among marmoset and tamarin monkeys, its hard to say who is the primary caretaker. Males even help on the birth of females, and they keep the nurturing behavior way after the females give up.
      • Male nurturing is most common among monkeys of the New World
      • Old World monkeys don't much seek contact and they are also kept distant from the youngs by the females, though they do come on rescue of the pups in moments of distress.
        • Baboons have a strong female authority as they have the last word on most aspects, and the male appearently doesn't involve much with pups because the females deny such access. But when given opportunity the male baboons seem to be good cares as well.
        • Female chimpanzees exclude males from family circles.
        • Female langurs keep passing the baby from female to female, but not allowing the male to approach pups. But after pups get independence from their mothers control males usually develop caring relations.
        • A widespread reason for non-nurturing males is that certain females species mate and leave the male company
    • The author suggests that man, in fact, have as much potential to be 'mothers' as females, and that developing that is pretty much about having contact with the babies and being given the opportunity to develop that.
      • She recalls the curious fact that most societies follow this woman role of motherhood maybe because men are kept distant from the moment of birth itself, what she suggests to have long term effects. Thus she proposes that men should be part of the birth moment (and of the early days as well).
      • Offspring creates caretakers too!
  • Communal nurturing behavior among mammals
    • Among Old and New World monkeys, newborn langurs are communaly taen care, spending around 50% of its time sucking different grown ups regardless of whether they lactate or not
    • Young lions are notorious for demanding extra-milk around their pride
    • Coatis have some mother-baby reclusion of 5 weeks, but afterwards they rejoin the groups and the baby starts being collectively nurtured.
    • Wild pigs not only share nursering but sometimes have communal nests
    • In all-female herds of Elephants those who need demand nursing from any member
    • Rodent rats doesn't even seem to be able to distinguish between their particular youngs, and nurture all communally
      • males also share everything else but lactating
    • Ann Oakley points to the occurrence of communal breast-feeding among preliterate peoples like the Samoans, Dakotas (sisters lactate collectively), Bororo and Arrenta
  • Equal nurturing behavior among male mammals in certain circunstances
    • In laboratory experiences, male rats and non-mother female rats develop nurturing behavior if in contact with the pups, even though in the presence of a nurturing female male rats are rather aggressive towards the pups.
      • They also noticed that if pups are always changed for young ones as they grow the nurturing behavior will not cease.
    • In laboratory experiences, rhesus monkeys, of which males are otherwise indifferent to pups, develops nurturing behavior once they get close to the pups – what usually doesn't happen as the females don't allow their presence close to the pups.