Big changes often start with acts that looked pointless at the time: small acts of resistance, bold acts of defiance, subtle acts of subversion, and even witty acts of disobedience. Small Acts of Resistance celebrates the inspiring ingenuity and awe-inspiring courage of the human spirit and pays tribute to those who have been standing up to say “no”. Telling the stories of more than eighty acts of resistance, spanning the world and the 20th and 21st centuries, this book pays homage to the groups and individuals that treat the impossible as the possible that just hasn’t happened yet.
Three stories from Small Acts of Resistance from Burma, Uruguay and the UK.
Of Dogs and Dictators
In September 2007, tens of thousands took to the streets to protest against the lawlessness of the military regime in Burma (officially known as Myanmar). The protests were triggered by a sudden sharp increase in the cost of fuel, but quickly broadened to calls for basic rights and freedoms. The military beat, arrested, and killed protesters.
According to the UN, at least thirty-one people died. It became too dangerous to venture onto the streets, which were patrolled by the military. But the imaginative Burmese found a way around that problem: In Rangoon and other cities, they promoted the legions of stray urban dogs to the ranks of protesters.
Dogs are regarded as lowly creatures in Burmese culture. Being reborn as a dog suggests that you were up to no good in a previous life. To hurl a hefty insult in Burmese, throw the word dog or dog’s mother in somewhere, and you won’t go wrong.
Perhaps in an attempt to improve their chances in the next life, stray dogs began to be seen roaming around Rangoon with pictures of the military leader, Than Shwe, and images of other senior leaders tied around their necks.
Throughout the city and to the delight of its residents, troops were seen chasing the protesting mutts down, in a vain attempt to rescue the generals’ irretrievably low esteem. The Irrawaddy, published in neighboring Thailand, quoted a resident as saying with approval: “They seem quite good at avoiding arrest.”
The Great One-Liner
The military junta that ruled Uruguay from 1973 was intolerant in the extreme. Hundreds of thousands fled into exile. Political opponents were jailed. Torture was the order of the day. On occasion, even concerts of classical music were seen as subversive threats. A performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for Left Hand was cancelled because the title sounded leftishly dangerous. Meanwhile, however, a remarkable small protest took place at soccer games throughout the twelve long years of military rule.
Whenever the band struck up the national anthem before major games, thousands of Uruguayans in the stadium joined in unenthusiastically. This stubborn failure to sing loudly was rebellion enough. But, from the generals’ point of view, there was worse to come. At one point, the anthem declares, Tiranos temblad!—“May tyrants tremble!” Those words served as the cue for the crowds in the stadium suddenly to bellow in unison: “Tiranos temblad!” as they waved their flags. After that brief, excited roar, they continued to mumble their way through to the end of the long anthem.
The authorities could not arrest everyone in the stadium. Nor could they cancel games or drop the singing of the national anthem. The junta toyed with the idea of removing thetiranos temblad! line from public performances of the anthem, but that proved too embarrassing. Why, after all, would the generals remove words from a beloved nineteenth-century hymn, unless they believed that they might be the tyrants in question? Today, the national anthem can be sung at Uruguayan soccer games in full and without fear. Leaders of the junta have been jailed for the crimes committed during their years in power. The former tyrants tremble.
Which Side Are You On?
In Oxford and other British university cities, an unusual set of graffiti appeared above pairs of Barclays Bank cash dispensers in 1984. Above one ATM was spray-painted the wordBlacks. Above the other: Whites Only. The graffiti changed nothing, of course, in terms of who could use which cash machine. Customers were free to whichever ATM they preferred. Black customers could line up at the Whites Only machine if they wished to. Whites could take cash from the Blacks machine. The black-and-white labeling left people faintly unsettled, however. And unsettled was all that was needed. The graffiti made many of those lining up at the black-vs.-white machines feel uncomfortable about Barclays’ well-publicized involvement in the South African system of apartheid, where signs proclaiming Net Blankes—Whites Only—were at that time the order of the day.
Fewer graduates applied to work at Barclays, so as not to be tainted by the black-white division that the bank seemed to represent. Barclays’ once lucrative share of UK student accounts plummeted from 27 percent to 15 percent of the market. In 1986, the banking giant admitted defeat at the hands of the graffiti sprayers and their allies. The Barclays pullout became one of the most high-profile and punishing acts of divestment suffered by the South African regime.
Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for life because of his rejection of the government’s racist policies, was released after twenty-seven years in 1990. Democratic elections were held in 1994. The Barclays graffiti were scrubbed away. Barclays returned to South Africa in 2005.
Read: Steve Crawsaw and John Jackson, Small Acts of Resistance (2010)
Albert Camus: On Rebellion
Posted by "Patrick Mac Manus"
Rebellion proves…that it is the very movement of life and that it cannot be denied without renouncing life. Its purest outburst, on each occasion, gives birth to existence. Thus it is love and fecundity or it is nothing at all.
Revolution without honour, calculated revolution which, in preferring an abstract concept of man to a man of flesh and blood, denies existence as many times as is necessary, puts resentment in the place of love.
Immediately rebellion, forgetful of its generous origins, allows itself to be contaminated by resentment; it denies life, dashes toward destruction, and raises up the grimacing cohorts of petty rebels, embryo slaves all of them, who end by offering themselves for sale, today, in all the market-places of Europe, to no matter what form of servitude. It is no longer revolution or rebellion but rancour, malice, and tyranny.
Then, when revolution in the name of power and of history becomes a murderous and immoderate mechanism, a new rebellion is consecrated in the name of moderation and of life…
This is an excerpt from Albert Camus, Beyond Nihilism. His origin in Algeria and his experiences there in the thirties are dominating influences in his thought and work. Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest in philosophy, he comes to France at the age of twenty-five. The man and the times meet: Albert Camus joins the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation is a columnist for the newspaper Combat.
Posted by "Patrick Mac Manus" in Palestine
If anyone wants to attempt an understanding of any conflict they should study history. And if anyone wishes to understand the roots of the problems in the Middle East, and in particular Israel and Palestine, they should read Geoffrey Lewis’s beautifully researched and scholarly Balfour & Weizmann: The Zionist, The Zealot and the Emergence of Israel.
Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and midwife of the Balfour Declaration was the Zionist, while Chaim Weizmann, a distinguished chemist whose efforts help shorten World War II, was the Zealot and its father.
For its time, 2nd November 1917, the declaration is quite remarkable:
‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’
Despite this being Balfour’s dream, like so many evangelicals going back to the Puritans, that the Israelites should reclaim their ancient homeland of Palestine, the view of HMG was far less sentimental. The Ottoman Empire was being carved up by Old Europe and Tsarist Russia and the prospect of Jews controlling Palestine gave Great Britain an important strategic advantage.
Geoffrey Lewis plots Britain’s long, and sometimes quite barmy, attempts to relocate the Jews to their homeland with great skill and knowledge. In 1840, Palmerton’s stepson-in-law, Lord Ashley, ‘an evangelical of demonic energy’, propounded the establishment of an Anglican bishopric in Jerusalem, an idea favoured by the old boy. There was only one slight drawback. ‘Ashley’s scheme had one of its main purposes the conversion of the Jews once they had regained their inheritance.’ It didn’t seem to occur to them that the Jews would not be over the moon at having to ditch thousands of years of theology, the cement that bound them together as a race.
Joseph Chamberlain also had a cunning plan for a Jewish Homeland. He suggested to the great Zionist thinker Herzl in 1903 that the East African Protectorate (later to become Kenya) would fit the bill. Amazingly, this was given serious consideration by all sides. Not surprisingly, this little gem bit the dust.
The fascinating narrative about his book is the tireless efforts of Weizmann to bring a highly prejudiced British establishment on the right tracks and to attempt to keep a squabbling Zionist movement onside. Balfour was a privileged, detached figure whom, according to Churchill, ‘glided on the surface of life’. Lloyd George said, ‘when he is gone there will be nothing left but the scent of a handkerchief’. Robert Cecil (Later the Marquis of Salisbury) was his uncle and great patron. Hence the expression, ‘Bob’s your uncle’.
Weizmann had an instinctive gift for diplomacy: ‘His exposition was lucid and compelling and his charm of manner captivated those whom he wishes to seduce, especially British statesman. He knew what the other man most wanted to hear, but he would not flatter’.
These two men with very different backgrounds and skills became firm friends and committed to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The trouble was that nobody paid too much attention to what the 800,000 or so Arabs who lived there thought about it all.
Picasso In Palestine: A Painting and The Bulldozers
Posted by "Patrick Mac Manus" in Palestine
The painting “Buste de Femme” which Pablo Picasso painted in 1943 when he lived in Nazi-occupied Paris, arrived at the International Academy of Art, Palestine – in Ramallah. The painting is usually located at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in the Netherlands. It was lent to the Palestinian gallery for one month.
On that same day, at almost exactly the same hour that the valuable painting arrived at the showroom in Ramallah, bulldozers of the Israeli Defence Forces made their way to the tiny village of Bir Al-Ad in the South Hebron Hills, and in less than an hour demolished its miserable huts, destroyed sacks of animal food, uprooted plants and shrubs, leaving behind heaps of rubble and ninety homeless people. The nearby caves, also used for housing, were on this occasion not demolished, but the soldiers made sure to cut and sever the electricity cables, which the inhabitants had installed to light them. “You here don’t deserve to have electricity!” said one of the soldiers to a resident who dared to protest.
This destruction is nothing new or unusual in the history of the Israeli occupation on the West Bank. It happens routinely, on one week in the southern West Bank and next week in its east, although such events receive very little attention and are rarely reported in any media.
As usual in such stories, settlers – in this case, the settlers of the nearby Mitzpe Yair, covet the land of Bir Al-Ad. Officially, Mitzpe Yair is an illegal outpost, even by the rather permissive standards of the Israeli occupation. Which in no way disturbs the same authorities to consider its inhabitants fully deserving of a regular supply of electricity, which the army takes care to provide.
Two days after these events, the Army’s Home Front Command conducts a civil defence exercise in unprecedented dimensions throughout Israel. And in this exercise horror scenarios were postulated of war on four fronts, against the Palestinians and the Syrians and the Lebanese and the Iranians simultaneously and the fall of seven hundred missiles. And citizens were to take the air raid alarms seriously and run immediately to the nearest shelter, if any. And a senior Home Front Command officer expressed dissatisfaction with the indifferent behaviour of many citizens, especially in Tel Aviv where they ignored the blaring sirens and continued to bathe in the sea. “When real missiles fall, we will see them running,” said the officer with some vindictiveness.
But maybe the fall of the real missiles can be averted. If the day comes when residents of Bir Al-Ad can live peacefully in their miserable homes, and when loaning paintings to a gallery Palestinians would no longer need to struggle through the coils of Israeli military bureaucracy, and when all Palestinians – rich and poor, rural and urban - are a free people in their homeland of Palestine.
Official Report: 4.8 Million Palestinian Refugees Living In Poverty and Unemployment
Posted by "Patrick Mac Manus" in Palestine
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) has issued a report stating that, scattered across dozens of camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), the minimum number of Palestinian refugees registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) until mid-2010 had now reached approximately 4.8 million.
The report also stated that 43.4% of the total population of the Palestinian Territories are refugees; being a very young society, 41.3% of the population are also under the age of fifteen.
The report’s data explained that 29.7% of the occupied West Bank’s population are refugees, while the proportion in the Gaza Strip had reached about 67.3% indicating that 66% of the indigenous population of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 were displaced and expelled in that year.
The report, which was issued to coincide with World Refugee Day on Monday, June 20, also noted that, compared with the rural and urban areas, the refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip represented the poorest environments. This is due to the high rates of unemployment and large refugee family sizes compared to other rural and urban families.
It also pointed out that refugee camps in the Gaza Strip suffered under more acute conditions than those experienced in the West Bank; the percentage of those living in poverty in Gaza is 38% compared to 18.3% in the West Bank.
In spite of all this, according to official data, there has been a notable increase in educational attainment along with a decrease in the level of illiteracy among Palestinian; there was a 4.8% increase by the middle of last year for the over 15 age group among refugees and an increase of over 5.2% among the non-refugee population.
Middle East Monitor
20 June 2011
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