Re: <nettime> what if we were all right but all wrong?

[Andreas Broeckmann <ab@mikro.in-berlin.de>]

armin, folks,

i agree that it is urgent to complement the important humanistic
concerns with a re-politicisation of the so-called crisis; it is
important that we understand that the current arrival of refugees in
(some) european countries, as much as the turbulences on the global
financial markets, are the symptoms of political decisions that have
been taken elsewhere, and at other times. it is good to demonstrate
for a humane treatment of refugees and for open border politics, but
it is also important to intervene politically into the systems that
create the hardship which forces people to flee from their homes
- whether it is military interventions, or the support of corrupt
elites in the countries where the refugees are now coming from, or the
imposition of TTIP-style trade agreements through which EU-produce
is destroying local food markets in africa, forcing the young people
who worked in agriculture off their land, and into the refugee boats,
looking for the work in the very countries where the food is coming
from that is destroying their livelihood at home, for instance in west
africa.

to act on these systems is not a matter of clicking like-buttons,
and it cannot be done in innocently white t-shirts on the streets of
a shopping mall in vienna. (you may need a tie, or worse...) it may
mean, for instance, to protest and work to dismantle not only TTIP,
but also all the trade agreements that the EU has struck or wants to
strike with 'weaker' countries... :

http://www.euractiv.com/sections/development-policy/eu-africa-free-trade-agreement-destroys-development-policy-says-merkel

regards,
-a


Am 01.09.15 um 09:33 schrieb Armin Medosch:
> On the other hand it reminded me a bit of that anti-Iraq war demo in
> London where 1.5 million went. It was this "not in my name" feeling,
> something to do with post-christianity and not wanting to be guilty
> of inhuman behavior, but an absence of any deeper political analysis.
> Last night's demo had no slogans except for "love", "together" and
> "refugees are welcome here" and the speeches also dwelled on such
> simple humanistic themes. On one hand slogans probably need to be so
> simple to mobilize so many, but on the other hand the absence of any
> deeper political analysis means that those 30.000 will not form the
> nucleus of a new political movement ... which made me a bit sad in the
> end ...





#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org