Sommer

Schön ist es im Sommer, abends am Waldrand.
Hörst du die Grillen vielstimmig zirpen?
Sie singen laut, von der Hitze erregt,
die noch in der Dämmerung glühend und dumpf
auf ihren schwirrenden Flügeln liegt.

Sappho (Σαπφώ, ca 630 vuZ – 570 vuZ)

Neues aus den Archiven der radikalen (und nicht so radikalen) Linken

ältere Archiv-Updates und Hinweise zu weiteren linken Archivalien unter „Sozialistika“ und im Download-Archiv … Poumista erinnert an George Orwells Flucht aus Spanien 1937 undd an seine Geburt vor 107 Jahren, eine Webseite erinnert an den vor 65 Jahren verstorbenen Sozialisten und Antifaschisten Max Braun und die Verdrängung der Erinnerung an ihn im Saarland nach 1955:

Anarchosyndikalistische Flugschriftenreihe:

* Camillo Berner: Der Krieg als kollektives Verbrechen (1928, pdf-Datei)
* Helge Döhring: Nation oder Klasse? Zusammenarbeit des ADGB mit den Nazis (2008, pdf-Datei)
* Ahto Uisk: Syndikalismus – eine Ideenskizze der reformistisch-syndikalistischen SAC (1971, pdf-Datei)
* Johann Most: Protestantische Finsterlinge (1875, pdf-Datei)
* Werner Braeuner: Protestantismus und Sexismus (2003, pdf-Datei)
* Peter-Paul Zahl: Der glückliche Arbeitslose (1979, pdf-Datei)
* Manifest der glücklichen Arbeitslosen (~ 2000, pdf-Datei)
* Kasimir Malewitsch: Die Faulheit als tatsächliche Wahrheit der Menschheit (1921, pdf-Datei)
* Karl Roche: Faulheit als politisches Kampfmittel (1919, pdf-Datei)
* Paul Lafargue: Das Recht auf Faulheit (1880/1883, pdf-Datei)

Rassembler, diffuser les archives des révolutionnaires (RaDAR, ehemals ASMSFQI):

* Opposition communiste: Contre le courant, 31. März 1928
* IVe internationale: IVe internationale, März-Juni 1949
* Parti communiste internationaliste (PCI): La Vérité des travailleurs , Juli-August 1954
* Parti communiste internationaliste (PCI): Appel au travailleurs (1947)
* Ligue des communistes (LC): Bulletin intérieur,15. September 1934
* Parti communiste internationaliste (PCI): Bulletin intérieur „La Vérité“, Oktober 1949

Big Flame 1970-1984:

* POSITION ON INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY (Miscellaneous Big Flame Documents no 4)
** International Solidarity Work (1980, pdf-Datei)
** Towards a New Approach to International Solidarity Work (1980, pdf-Datei)

La Bataille Socialiste:

* Alexandra Kollontaï: L’Amour dans la Société Nouvelle (1923)
* Alexandra Kollontaï: Entretien avec Marcel Body (1922)
* Nikolai Ossinsky: Sur la construction du socialisme (1918, Auszug)
* Boris Souvarine: Oppositions ouvrières en Russie en 1923 (1935)
* Rafail Abramovich-Rein: On the Menshevik Trial in Moscow (1931)
* Martin Thomas: Débat dans la gauche iranienne et irakienne (2004)
* Mansoor Hekmat: End of the Cold War and Prospects for Worker-socialism (Radio KPFK’s Interview with Mansoor Hekmat) (1991)
* Buick: Le chavisme (2007)
* Helmut Wagner (Rudolph Sprenger): El anarquismo y la Revolución española (1937)
* Karl Marx: Socialisme césarien et réalisme politique (lettre sur Lassalle à A. Kugelmann) (1865)

Kollontaï und Dybenko

Marxists Internet Archive (MIA):

* C.L.R. James: Reflections on Pan-Africanism (1973)
* Leo Trotzki: Once again on the causes of the defeat in Spain (1939)
* Paul Mattick: A Revolução Bolchevique foi um Fracasso? (1938)
* Joachim Retzlaff: Om Ernst Blochs naturuppfattning. Några anteckningar (1981)
* Two Members of the Bolshevik Tendency: Nationhood or Genocide: The Struggle of the Native People Against Canadian and American Imperialism (1975)
* Harry Quelch: Liberalism and Labour. Introduction (1903)
* H.M. Hyndman: Liberalism and Labour. Part I (1903)
* Harry Quelch: Liberalism and Labour. Part II (1903)
* Belfort Bax: Liberalism and Labour. Part III (1903)
* Jean-Patrick Manchette: Toast to Dash (1980)
* Mansoor Hekmat: Conseils ouvriers et syndicats : les questions cruciales de la discussion (1986)
* Mansoor Hekmat: Nos différences (1989)
* Mansoor Hekmat: Le marxisme et le monde actuel (extrait) (1992)
* Mansoor Hekmat: Quelques mots en commémoration de la révolution de 1979 (1995)
* Mansoor Hekmat: Sous le voile de la répression (1998)
* Mansoor Hekmat: Le 20 juin 1981 : 20 ans après (2000)
* Fjärde Internationalen nr 2-1972
* Världssocialism nr 6 – Kapitalism och kriser (1972)
* Sven-Erik Liedmann: Kunskaps- och vetenskapsteoretiska teser (1972)

La Presse Anarchiste:

* L’idée anarchiste n°1, 18. März 1924

LibCom:

* The Russian constructivists and anarchism (2008)

The Cedar Lounge Revolution:

* Revolutionary Struggle: Rebel, Juli 1981

Centro de Documentación de los Movimientos Armados (CeDeMA):

* Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN): Comunicado sobre la retención de las „chicas de acero“ (1998)
* Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN): Ejecución del Coronel Roberto Armando Rivera (1989)
* Frente Francisco Garnica: Acuerdo final entre el Gobierno nacional y el Frente Francisco Farnica (1994)

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF):

* Esther Vivas: The antiwar movement in Spain has been one of the most active (2005)

Workers’ Liberty:

* Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin: Lessons of the Commune/ In Memory of the Commune (1908/1911)
* Leo Trotzki: On the suppressed testament of Lenin (1932)

The Irish Election Literature Blog:

* The Workers Party: Linda Kavanagh – Dublin Central (1997)
* Irish Anti War Movement: IRAQ -Stop the US War & Torture Machine (2006)

Espace contre ciment:

* Benjamin Péret: Das Wort hat Péret (1943, Auszug)
* Michael Löwy: Karl Marx – Vom Selbstmord (1846) (200?)
* Bergson [Grace Lee Boggs]/Chaulieu [C. Castoriadis]: La question russe (1948)
* Martin Glaberman/Seymour Faber: Qu’est-ce que la classe ouvrière ? (2002)
* Paul Jorion: L’éthique protestante et l’esprit du capitalisme (2007)
* Jonathan Swift: Ein bescheidener Vorschlag, wie sozialbenachteiligte Kinder ihr ganzes Potential am Besten ausschöpfen könnten (1729)
* Alain Bihr: Les origines du capitalisme selon Max Weber I (2006)
* Alain Bihr: Les origines du capitalisme selon Max Weber II (2006)
* Maurice Blanchot: Die drei Sprachen von Marx (1971)
* Alexandre Kojève: La dialectique du maître et de l’esclave de Hegel (1947)

Archive.org:

* A Communist: The work of the Soviets and the unconfessable war (1919)
* John Reed: Red Russia : the triumph of the Bolsheviki (1919)
* Friedrich Engels: The Peasant War in Germany (1850, mit Anmerkungen von David Rjazanov, 1925)
* Wiiliam English Walling: The socialism of to-day; a source-book of the present position and recent development of the socialist and labor parties in all countries, consisting mainly of original documents (1916)
* S. Stepniak (Sergei Michailowitsch Krawtschinski): Pidzemna Rosyia (1888/1901)

Kasama:

* Frederick Douglass: What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? (1852)

Luxemburger Anarchist:

* George Orwell: Can socialists be happy?/Why socialists don’t believe in fun (1943)

League for the Revolutionary Party -Communist Organization for the Fourth International (LRP-COFI):

* Sy Landy: Behind the Black/Jewish Confrontation. Racist Offensive Heightens (1991)

Vermischtes

1.) Aus der Studierendenbewegung in Marokko:

* Fédération syndicale étudiante (FSE): In Morocco as elsewhere repression won’t stop the revolt against anti-social policies. The FSE demands the release of the imprisoned students (ESSF)
* Revolutionary Students’ Trend: For a broader solidarity against political repression in Morocco (International Viewpoint)

2.) Farooq Sulehria: Jihad by petro-dollars (Viewpoint)

„According to several estimates, Islamic organisations, many of which are linked to armed groups, can draw from a pool of money ranging from $5 billion to $16 billion, the Saudi government alone donates $ 10 billion via the ministry of Religious Works every year“, Italian journalist Loretta Napoleoni claims in her book “Modern Jihad“.

3.) Neues aus der Wahnwelt des protestantischen Fundamentalismus in den USA und Umgebung auf Talk to Action:

* Oregon GOP Congressional Candidate Sells Racist Book Comparing Africans To Imbecile Children
* Christian Book On Manly Aggression Inspires Violent Mexican Fundamentalist Narco-Cult
* Dueling „Godly Smiting“ Theories Blame Gulf Oil Disaster On Gays, Not Supporting Israel
* God sends Bears & Killer Whales to attack us for neglecting Bible, says FRC speaker

dazu passend:

4.) Religiöser Nationalismus im Nordosten Indiens, Mitglieder der Naga Students Federation (NSF) (dem National Socialist Council of Nagaland – Isak-Muivah (NSCN (IM)) [sic!] nahestehend, eine Organisation die nach der Devise „Gott mit Uns“ (laut Nagaland Post) handelt) blockierten 65 Tage lang zwei essentielle Zufahrtswege in den (mehrheitlich hinduistischen) Bundesstaat Manipur, Ziel der Aktion:

Naga rebels led by Mr Muivah, who conducted India’s longest-running insurgency until a ceasefire in 1997, claim several Manipur districts as part of their extended territory in order to establish a larger “Nagaland for Christ”.

Quelle: Irish Times

5.) eine Recherche von Searchlight hat offenbar herausgefunden, bei wem es sich um den selbsternannten Führer der English Defence League (EDL) wirklich handelt:

„Self-proclaimed EDL leader Tommy Robinson is really Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, from Bedford.

In 2004 he joined the BNP with a family membership. In the same year he assaulted an off-duty police officer who intervened to stop a domestic incident between Yaxley-Lennon and his partner Jenna Vowles. During the scuffle Yaxley-Lennon kicked the officer in the head.“

6.) Ein Artikel zu den Problemen, welche Nazis mit der Fussball-WM haben auf NPD-Blog:

„Der wahre Deutsche jubelt also nur bei bestimmten Toren der Nationalmannschaft, schwenkt die schwarze Fahne des “Nationalen Widerstands” oder unterstützt Ghana. In sich alles schlüssig, wenn man ein fanatischer, völkischer Ideologe ist.“

7.) ein wenig Musik, weil es so schön war noch einmal jenes Lied: Walter Sparbier is innocent von B-Test

8.) Und mehr von Sofahead: Barbie & Ken (Go To The Seaside)

hwp und verschwörung russland – Referrerhits der letzten Tage

Mehr aus der Rubrik „suchen und nicht finden“:

- „hwp und verschwörung russland“
- „tupac authorisierter held“
- „welt`s bester striker music noten“
- „sturz bewegung hang material“
- „satellitendaten astronomen verweigert“
- „weiber auf dem land nackt“
- „sex tube nadeln“
- „seefahrt in teheran“
- „pfandflaschen erkennen“
- „deformierter arbeiterstaat kambodscha“
- „die rückkehr der strategie“
- „moskau mit humor“
- „was kostet nolte avida?“
- „suche link für fussballspieler in sex“
- „fallingbostel verheiratet mit einem briten“

Sozialistische Betriebsgruppe Esslingen: Was Tun im Betrieb, Nr. 2, 1972

Die Was Tun im Betrieb, Nr. 2 (pdf-Datei, 2,03 mb) der offenbar der GIM beziehungsweise der RKJ nahestehenden Sozialistischen Betriebsgruppe Esslingen aus dem Sommer 1972, u.a. mit Artikeln zur RAF, zu einer eingeforderten klassenkämpferischen Gewerkschaftspolitik, zu Frauen in den Gewerkschaften und zu den olympischen Spielen in München:

Ermordung von Zeinab Jalalian durch den iranischen Staat droht unmittelbar

Meldungen von Révolution en Iran (hier auch ein Textvorschlag für ein Protestschreiben) und Street Journalist zufolge ist die kurdische politische Gefangene Zainab Jalalian, die unter dem Vorwurf der Mitgliedschaft in PKK/PJAK und der „Feindschaft gegen Gott“ zum Tode verurteilt worden war, heute morgen in einen Spezialtrakt des Evin-Knastes verschleppt worden, was bedeuten kann, dass ihre Ermordung für die nächsten 48 Stunden geplant ist.
Währdessen wurde Julias Blog zufolge vom „Zentrums für soziale Prävention und Bürgerschutz in der Provinz Kordestan“ verlautbart, das weitere 20 Gefangene in Iranisch-Kurdistan im Rahmen einer „Drogenfreien Woche“ unter dem Vorwurf des Drogenhandels zum Tode verurteilt worden sind, die gleiche Webseite berichtet auch, dass Zoya Samadi, die Schwiegertochter des inhaftierten Gewerkschafters Mansoor Osanloos, auf Grund des brutalen Angriffs vor einigen Tagen durch Regierungsschläger eine Fehlgeburt erlitten hat.

Zeinab Jalilian

Marg bar jomhuriye eslami!

Musik zum Sonntag … Sofahead

Out There

Valium Housewife

My Life As A Corpse

Peter Drucker zu Queer Politics

Quelle: ESSF

The New Sexual Radicalism

Peter Drucker

FROM ITS BEGINNING in the 1990s in the United States, a “queer” activist current has gradually spread to other countries, including in recent years in Western Europe. In decades when the prevailing trend in LGBT movements has been to orient to legal reforms by parliamentary means, queer activism has constituted a third wave of sexual radicalism, [1] emphasizing visibility, difference, direct action, refusal to assimilate to the dominant culture, and the fluidity and diversity of sexual desire.

What are the social origins of queer? Does this current have a vision — whether implicit or explicit — of sexual liberation, and if so, what is it? What is its relationship to such emancipatory projects as feminism, antiracism, global justice and socialism?

I come to these questions as a socialist, whose own socialist activism and LGBT activism have been linked for 30 years. The year I came out as a gay man, 1978, was also the year I became active on the socialist left — more specifically, the socialist-feminist left. The two things were closely linked in my mind and in my life, and still are. So the questions I bring to queer activism are very much the questions of a socialist and feminist gay man.

They are also, for better or worse, the questions of an outsider. Although I was active in ACT UP, the milieu from which the queer current first emerged, in San Francisco and New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this current didn’t exist in the Netherlands when I moved here in 1993. In recent years, when a queer activist current has emerged, I have related to it as a sympathetic observer and occasional supporter, but not as a real participant.

I would like to emphasize that the questions I’m posing really are questions. I don’t claim to know the answers; I’m not sure anybody has definitive answers yet. I think queer activists will have to come up with the answers as their politics continue to evolve. My hope is that asking the questions will help stimulate discussion on them within the queer current.

Another point I’d like to stress is that my questions concern queer activism, not the body of largely academic thought that’s called “queer theory.” My impression is that queer activism emerged a few years before the key works of queer theory were published. In later years some queer activists have been influenced by queer theory; but many queer activists are not particularly theoretically minded, and those who are can be influenced by other approaches.

Queer theory is itself a complex, contradictory, evolving body of thought, on which I don’t have any claim to be an expert. I do think there are criticisms to be made of queer theory, [2] but I don’t think they all necessarily apply to queer activism. Although queer activism has emerged only recently in the Netherlands, internationally it is almost 20 years old. The first queer group, Queer Nation, was founded in New York in 1990. [3] In fact the first wave of Queer Nation groups in the United States rose and receded within a few years. Only a few groups, like OutRage! in London (founded only a month after Queer Nation in New York) around its controversial leader Peter Tatchell, have managed more or less to survive through the intervening years. Some of the most active queer-identified groups today are in Southern Europe, like the French and Portuguese Pink Panthers, and have emerged only in the past decade.

Lack of organizational continuity makes the current hard to pin down. Although there are various international queer events, like the “queeruption” that took place annually from 1998 to 2007 in a different country and city, the queer current is also very decentralized, with no permanent national or international structures or decision-making bodies.

Many queer activists define themselves as anarchists, leaning towards the tendency within anarchism that is suspicious of organization; DIY (“do it yourself”) is widely seen as a queer principle. This too contributes to the difficulty in defining queer politics. Finally, queer-identified activity sometimes raises the question of how “politics” should be defined, since much of it consists of cultural and sexual events that make little or no effort to reach non-queer-identified people. The shape of queer activism probably has something to do with its social origins. Before discussing the strengths and limitations of queer activism, therefore, I would like to analyze the emergence of the queer scene more generally.

Fordist to Post-Fordist Gay Identities

The emergence of queer can be explained to a great extent in class terms, I think, starting from John D’Emilio’s analysis of the emergence of gay identity under capitalism. [4] Roughly following his analysis, I would argue that modern lesbian and gay communities are largely a product of the development of capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, and on a mass scale particularly a product of the long expansive wave of capitalism from 1945 to 1973.

It is by now nothing new to link the rise of what might be called classic lesbian/gay identity to the rise of a “free” labor force under capitalism. This has developed over the course of centuries, and historians have generally looked at it as a long process. But gay identity as we know it, particularly on a mass scale, is in fact amazingly recent, more a question of decades than of centuries.

On closer examination the emergence, consolidation and spread of gay identity took place to a large extent during what some Marxist economists refer to as the expansive long wave of 1945-73. It emerged gradually from the waves of political and social repression (in Europe fascism and Stalinism; in the United States the aftermath of Prohibition followed by McCarthyism) [5] that had begun with the 1930s depression. Gay identity was dependent on the growing prosperity of the working and middle classes, catalysed by profound cultural changes from the 1940s to the 1970s (from the upheavals of the Second World War [6] to the mass radicalization of the New Left years) that prosperity helped make possible.

This means that gay identity was shaped in many ways by the mode of capitalist accumulation that some economists call “Fordism,” specifically by mass consumer societies and welfare states. After 1945, working-class living standards in capitalist countries went up dramatically under the Fordist order, in which increases in labor productivity were matched to a large extent with increasing real wages that sustained increasing effective demand, and many forms of social insurance cushioned the blows that hit working people during dips in the business cycle.

As a result, for the first time masses of working-class people as well as students and others were able to live independently of their families. Working-class family structures and gender roles also changed. For the first time since the family wage became a cherished ideal, and sometimes a reality, for broad working-class layers in the mid- to late-19th century, World War II made waged work at least temporarily normal for even respectable working-class and middle-class women. This transformation made a dent in the pronounced gender polarization that had been characteristic of both working-class heterosexuality and homosexuality in the first decades of the 20th century. Higher funding for education and expansion of a social safety net (in the imperialist countries at least) decreased people’s economic dependence on parents to support them as students or young people, on spouses to help pay the rent, and on children to save them from poverty in old age. Rapid growth of service and leisure industries in developed countries created more jobs, for men if not for women, in which gender expectations were in some cases less rigid than in blue-collar sectors.

The combination of increased economic possibilities and more questioning of gender roles helped many more people in the 1950s and ’60s defy convention and form lesbian/gay couples and communities. What remained to prevent people from living openly lesbian/gay lives were the constraints of the law, police, employers, landlords, and so on. The lesbian/gay movements of the 1960s and ’70s rebelled against these constraints, inspired by a wave of other social rebellions: black, youth, antiwar, feminist, and (at least in some European countries) working class.

The second wave of feminism was key in virtually finishing off (or at least driving underground) the butch-femme patterns that were still largely hegemonic in 1950s lesbian subcultures. The first lesbian/gay legal victories in the 1970s made mass, open lesbian/gay communities possible in the imperialist countries for the first time in history.

The conditions that initially shaped emerging lesbian/gay identities did not last. The depressive long wave that began by 1974-75 was met by the late 1970s with a neoliberal offensive. This offensive has included (to be incredibly schematic): a shift to “Toyotist” production techniques and to “lean production” generally; economic globalization, liberalization and deregulation; an increase in the wealth and power of capital at labor’s expense; an increase in inequality among countries (through the debt crisis and structural adjustment policies) and within countries (through regressive tax and welfare “reforms” and attacks on unions), and luxury consumption that has increasingly replaced mass consumption as a motor of economic growth.

This offensive has among other things fragmented the world’s working classes. Big differences have grown up between better- and worse-paid workers, permanent and temporary workers, native-born and immigrant, employed and unemployed. The relatively greater homogeneity of national working classes in the 1960s, which was the backdrop to the rise of lesbian/gay identity, is a thing of the past. Like the rise of Fordism, its decline has had implications for LGBT identities, communities and politics. There is of course no one-to-one correspondence between economic and social developments and shifts in sexual, cultural and political identities. In lesbian/gay communities, as in the world at large, there is a whole set of institutions that produce (among other things) lesbian/gay ideology and identity and mediate the underlying class and social dynamics. But there are some trends that correspond to changing class dynamics in lesbian/gay communities and are expressed in a shifting relationship of forces within them. On the one hand, commercial gay scenes and sexual identities compatible with these scenes have advanced and been consolidated in many parts of the world. Particularly among some middle-class and upper-working-class social layers that prospered in the 1980s and ’90s, especially but not only in the imperialist countries, commercial gay scenes continued to grow, continuing to undergird lesbian/gay identity. [7]

Market-friendly lesbian/gay identities have prospered in commercialized spaces, in the construction of two-income households among better-off gays and to a lesser extent lesbians, and in the tolerant public space fostered by gay rights victories. Many relatively better paid lesbian/gay people who have benefited from both economic success and gay rights reforms have some cause to be contented with the progress they have made: “Inside a cozy brownstone, curled up next to a health-insured domestic partner in front of a Melissa Etheridge video on MTV, flipping through Out magazine and sipping an Absolut and tonic, capitalism can feel pretty good.” [8]

The ideological and cultural sway of gay identities in LGBT communities extends beyond the more privileged social layers in which people’s lives most comfortably fit these identities. In the imperialist countries, despite the proliferation of websites and zines defining identities and subcultures for minorities within the minorities, the most widely circulated books, periodicals and videos tend to be those most closely linked to the new, predominantly middle-class gay mainstream. Even poor transgender and queer people, whose lives are most remote from the images of the gay mainstream, often incorporate aspects of gay mainstream culture into their aspirations and fantasies.

Three aspects of the lesbian/gay identity that stabilized by the early 1980s fit well with the increasingly conservative social climate: the community’s self-definition as a stable minority, its increasing tendency towards gender conformity, and marginalization of its own sexual minorities. A higher degree of gender conformity among lesbian/gay people has fit with their incorporation into a neoliberal social and sexual order.

Lesbians and gay men’s self-definition as a minority group expressed a profound social fact about lesbian/gay life as it took shape in the 1970s. To the extent that lesbians and gays were increasingly defined as people who inhabited a certain community (went to certain bars, bathhouses and discos, patronized certain businesses, and in the United States at least even lived to some extent in certain neighborhoods), they were more “ghettoized” than before, more clearly demarcated from a majority defined as straight.

The tendency of many early theorists of lesbian/gay liberation to question the categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality, emphasize the fluidity of sexual identity and speculate about universal bisexuality tended to fade away with time as the community’s material reality became more sharp-edged. The lesbian/gay rights movement accordingly ran less risk of seeming sexually subversive of the broader sexual order.

The decline of butch/femme role-playing among lesbians and of camp culture among gay men also contributed to normalizing lesbian/gay identity. The drag queens who had played a leading role in the 1969 Stonewall rebellion found, as social tolerance of lesbians and gays in general began to increase in the 1970s, that social tolerance for gender nonconformity in many queer spaces if anything decreased. Drag often seemed anomalous and even embarrassing in the context of androgynous imagery that was in vogue in the early 1970s.

Despite growing levels of consciousness and self-expression among transgender people, lesbian/gay communities increasingly defined themselves in ways that placed transgender people and other visible nonconformists on the margins if not completely out of bounds. The decline of Fordism was accompanied early on by a shift among gay men from the largely androgynous imagery of the early 1970s to the more masculine “clone” culture that took hold by the early ’80s. Feminine forms of self-presentation that lesbian feminists once frowned on, using the label “lipstick lesbians,” had become more common and acceptable by the 1990s.

The Social Origins of Queer

Commercial scenes, however, have not been equally determinant for the lifestyles or identities of all people with open same-sex sexualities. In the dependent world many poor people simply have a hard time taking part in commercial gay scenes. In the imperialist countries, while commercial scenes are more accessible to even lower-income queers, growing economic inequality has meant increasingly divergent realities in lesbian and gay people’s lives. Criticism has mounted among LGBT people of the over-consumption increasingly characteristic of many aspects of the commercial gay scene, which inevitably marginalizes many LGBT people and alienates many others.

Alternative scenes of various sorts (not always less commercial) have proliferated, creating space for queer identities more or less outside the mainstream commercial scene. Contrary to much right wing anti-gay rhetoric, the prosperous couples focused on by glossy lesbian/gay magazines were never typical of queers in general. Data gathered by the U.S. National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey in the 1990s suggested that lesbian and bisexual women were still far less likely than other women to have professional or technical jobs and more likely to have service or craft/operative jobs, while gay and bisexual men were more likely than other men to have professional/technical, clerical/sales or service jobs but less likely to have managerial jobs. [9]

Whatever the causes (less ability or willingness to meet gendered job expectations, migration to more competitive job markets, discrimination), the net result (contrary to unfounded claims made not only by anti-gay ideologues but also by some gay publications) was that at least in the United States, both gay men and lesbians were and are underrepresented in the higher-income brackets (with family incomes of $50,000 or more), while gay men in particular are over-represented in the lower-income brackets (with family incomes of $30,000 or less). Another set of data showed that after taking differences in education, age and other factors into account, gay and bisexual men earned 11-27% less than comparable straight men. [10]

The expansion of queer communities centred on gay commercial scenes has not improved the situation of lower-income queers. Particularly in imperialist countries like the United States and to a lesser extent Britain, the welfare state has been shredded by Reaganism and Thatcherism, unions have been very much weakened, and inequality has grown rapidly. Economic inequality is presumably as characteristic of LGBT communities as of the broader societies within which they exist.

Lower-income queers, transgender people, street youth and queer people of color have been under assault in various ways, as attacks on poor people and minorities have become more prominent in politics and society generally in recent decades. Queers are also more likely to be cut off from broader family support networks and, as the social safety net has frayed, inequalities resulting from wage differentials have affected queers with particular intensity.

Brutaler Angriff auf Mansoor Osanloos Schwiegertochter

Quelle der nachfolgend dokumentierten Meldung: Julias Blog

Mansour Osanloos Schwiegertochter entführt und brutal misshandelt

25. Juni 2010 von Julia 

Veröffentlicht bei Iran Labor Report am 25. Juni 2010
Quelle (Englisch): http://iranlaborreport.com/?p=958 

Die Organisation Human Rights and Democracy Activists in Iran [HRDAI] berichtet über die brutale Entführung und Misshandlung der Schwiegertochter des Gewerkschaftsführers der Teheraner Gewerkschaft der Busbetriebe in Teheran „Vahed „, Zoya Samadi in Karaj. Die gewaltsame Verhaftung erfolgte am 23. Juni um 17:30 Uhr am Metro-Terminal in Karaj, als Zoya gerade auf dem Nachhauseweg von der Arbeit war. Zeugen sahen, wie Zoya von Sicherheitsagenten an den Haaren aus dem Waggon gezerrt wurde, wobei sie laut rief: „Ich bin die Schwiegertochter von Osanloo“. Die Angreifer verklebten ihr daraufhin mit Klebeband den Mund und nahmen sie mit. 

Drei Agenten brachten Zoya Samadi im Auto an einen unbekannten Ort, wo sie sie in einer Zelle mit Handschellen und Ketten fesselten und ihr die Augen verbanden. Sie banden sie fest und folterten sie über lange Zeit. Sie wurde brutal geschlagen, zumeist ins Gesicht und auf den Kopf, ihr Kopf wurde mehrfach gegen die Wand geschlagen. Sie erlitt Verletzungen am Zahnfleisch, an den Zähnen, am Kopf sowie Schnitte an den Armen und am rechten Bein. Ihr gesamter Körper weist Anzeichen der erlittenen Folter auf. Die Sicherheitsagenten, die sie folterten, schrieen auf sie ein: „Du musst versprechen, dass Osanloo nicht hierbleibt und nichts tun wird, wenn er aus dem Gefängnis freikommt.“ 

Nachdem sie gefoltert und körperlich schwer misshandelt worden war, wurde Zoya gegen 21:45 Uhr unter der Seyyed Khandan-Brücke in Teheran ausgesetzt. Ihr wurde gesagt, dass sie sich nicht beschweren und mit niemandem über das Erlebte sprechen dürfe. 24 Stunden danach hatte sich Zoya Samadi noch immer nicht von dem Schock erholt. Sie hatte monatelang Drohbotschaften von Sicherheitsagenten erhalten und war ein Mal von Abteilung 14 des Revolutionsgerichts vorgeladen worden.
Das Gericht bestreitet, Zoya damals vorgeladen zu haben. 

Im letzten Jahr war sie bereits geschlagen worden und war nur knapp einer Entführung entgangen. 

Deutsche Übersetzung: Julia, bei Weiterveröffentlichung bitte Link angeben

Archaeology Today

1.) Die These, das die BewohnerInnen des minoischen Kretas womöglich aus der Levante stammten, gar eine semitische Sprache gesprochen haben könnten, kommt bei griechischen NationalIstinnen nicht so gut an, wie Nera Ide auf ChronoLogs berichtet (Hat Tip to kritische Geschichte) … anzumerken ist, dass der Begriff „Semiten“ und „semitische Sprachen“ erst 1781 von August Ludwig von Schlözer (unter Rückgriff auf die Völkertafel in 1. Buch Moses, Kapitel 10) erfunden wurde und den realen historischen Subjekten vor 3500 den Begriff gar nicht bekannt war:

“ … Die ganze lokale Prominenz ist zu der Buchvorstellung geladen worden und hat sich tatsächlich eingefunden. Der Saal ist voll. Metaxia Tsipopoulou ist beglückt. Noch. Sie schaut in den Mienen der vielen Gäste, die sich plötzlich versteinern, als sie Christakis’ These vorträgt, die keineswegs neu ist: Die Minoer waren keine Griechen. Sie kamen aus dem Osten. Wahrscheinlich aus der Levante.

Unmut im Auditorium. Murren. Füßescharren.

Der Autor Kostis Christakis meldet sich zu Wort „Ob es nun einigen gefällt oder nicht, die Minoer sind ein semitischer Stamm gewesen“, sagt er selbstbewusst.

Tumultartige Szenen im Saal. Der frühere Präfekt von Heraklion, Dimitris Sarris, springt auf. „Sie wollen uns sagen, dass die Minoer Juden gewesen sind?“ schreit er mit überschnappender Stimme.

Das will Christakis sicher nicht, denn zu jener Zeit, als die Paläste auf der Insel entstanden und die feine Keramik gefertigt wurde, setzte man überall in der Alten Welt noch auf viele Götter. Das Eingott-Modell war noch nicht erdacht, der ewig zürnende Jahwe noch nicht geschaffen worden.

Im Saal ist die Hölle los. Die Gäste gellen, ballen die Fäuste. Sarris packt nun die Kraft seines früheren Amtes in seine Stimme: „Wir einfachen Griechen können und wollen die These von Christakis nicht akzeptieren.“

Er schaut sich triumphierend um, breitet die Arme aus. „Wir waren die Minoer. Die Minoer waren Kreter. Punktum.“

Einer aus dem Auditorium tritt nach vorn, schlägt sich theatralisch an die Brust: „Hier drinnen fühle ich, dass die Minoer Kreter waren. So wie du und du und du.“ Er zeigt mit spitzem Finger in die Menge. Bevor er auf mich deuten kann, ducke ich mich weg, auf dass er nicht lügt.

Gefühle lügen nicht, auch wenn alle Kreter lügen – aber halt, wir wollen ja nicht ins Paradoxe abdriften, die Wortbeiträge bei dieser Buchvorstellung sind paradox genug.

„Das ist doch zionistische Propaganda, dass das alte Kreta jüdisch gewesen ist.“ Das sagt einer, der keineswegs dem rechten Rand des politischen Spektrums zuzurechnen ist, sondern ein Abgeordneter der PASOK, der sozialistischen Partei Griechenlands.

Das „jüdische Kreta“ wird in den nächsten Wochen zum Topthema der Insel-Medien. Keine der vielen Verschwörungstheorien kommt zu kurz, man spricht und schreibt gar von einem „Feldzug der Juden, Kreta wenigstens in der Antike in ihren Besitz zu bringen“.

Als die Anschuldigungen bizarrer werden, die Vorwürfe gegen Tsipopoulou und Christakis immer lauter, sieht sich der Verband der griechischen Archäologen gezwungen, eine Stellungnahme zu veröffentlichen. Die Archäologen zeigen sich besonders darüber beunruhigt, dass die Angriffe auf die Vertreter ihrer Zunft von lokalen Politikern ausgegangen sind. Der Verband verweist auf die Freiheit von Lehre und Forschung und sichert seinen Mitgliedern die volle Unterstützung zu. Einige Forscher der Insel geben aber zu verstehen, dass sie sich als kretische und nicht als griechische Wissenschaftler betrachten.“

ansonsten ein Literaturhinweis zum Thema: Heinrich Lewy: Die semitischen Fremdwörter im Griechischen (1895) und ein Zitat von Homer:

„Kreta ist ein Land im dunkelwogenden Meere,
Fruchtbar und anmutsvoll und ringsumflossen. Es wohnen
Dort unzählige Menschen, und ihrer Städte sind neunzig:
Völker von mancherlei Stamm und mancherlei Sprachen. Es wohnen
Dort Achaier, Kydonen und eingeborene Kreter,
Dorier, welche sich dreifach verteilet, und edle Pelasger.
Ihrer Könige Stadt ist Knossos, wo Minos geherrscht hat,
Der neunjährig mit Zeus, dem großen Gotte, geredet.“

2.) Einem verwandten Thema widmet sich die neue Ausgabe des Weekly Workers mit dem zweiten Teil des Artikels von Chris Gray Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ in social and historical context (Teil 1 hier)