[-empyre-] detention vs movement violence

[Babak Fakhamzadeh]

As far as I'm aware, there are no private drivers/actors in the Syria
conflict. That is, the Syrian, US, Saudi Arabian, Turkish, Iranian and
several Gulf states are the only ones paying to keep the conflict
going. So, if the Haliburtons, or hardware providers, would be taxed
in this context, all that would happen would, essentially, be each
state taxing themselves.

Sure, Halliburton and its successors have made huge profits,
particularly in Iraq, but at a risk. Not so much for corporate
Halliburton, but for the individual employees. There is no way but to
have big risks come with big rewards, meaning that it's only
economically expected for the Haliburtons of this world to make lots
of money.

I'm not defending either conflicts in Iraq or Syria from any angle.
I'm only pointing out that 'solving' the problem is not that
straightforward. Probably the main problem is not the Haliburtons or
pick your favourite oil companies of this world, who simply,
primarily, react to opportunity (see Cockburn's The Rise of the
Islamic State, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25407471-the-rise-of-islamic-state),
it's the political desire for influence and control.
In the 'west', 'the people' might be able to have some meaningful
influence on steering the course of their nations, in many other
countries, this is not the case, leaving warmongering autocrats to do
pretty much whatever they want, and for-profits to step in to the
voids they create.

Hence, the conflict in Syria and its consequences.

But, how did the Gulf countries manage to not take in any Syrian
refugees and get away with it?
--
Babak Fakhamzadeh | babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com | http://BabakFakhamzadeh.com

Ask me for my PGP public key to send me encrypted email.


On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 8:54 PM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> Johannes it was not only me, the great majority of the Latinamerican refugees coming to Europe during the 70:s are today relatively integrated in Europe and many of them come back to South America and are today's ministers in different socialdemocrats governments.
> I speak mostly of Chile and Uruguay.
> My point is the clue to absorb refugees was to give them tools to be selfsufficient to teach them skills necessary to manage the challenges of a new life, languages, therapy for them surviving jail and torture, family reunification for them separated from their relatives needing support, a profession or a work.
> The problem is the numbers today all the resources of wealthy welfare countries as Germany Norway Sweden Danmark Finland and France are strained to give huge amounts of refugees their bare needs it means shelter medical support and food it's not enough to grant the refugees a worthy life it's only a patch for their most immediate needs.
> But countries as Greece or Hungary or Serbia are not able to deal with the huge waves of refugees pouring every day from warzones.
> As I wrote in an ocassion here the only ones having huge profits from the wars are the manufacturers of weapons and the owners of parallel armies as Blackwater Haliburton Dupont and many others. A way to deal with the mounting cost of fleeing refugees should be apply big taxes to all companies dealing with weapons.
> Let them pay the consequences of their unethical warmongery.
> Ana
>
> Den 10 feb 2016 18:19 skrev "Johannes Birringer" <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk>:
>>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>
>>
>> what is "kinopolitics"?
>>
>> just wondering as the term (referring to kino/cinema)? was not clear to me when I think Ricardo
>> first brought it up...
>> unless there is a link here to what, I think, P.Sloterdijk once wrote as a critique
>> "political kinetics”, kinetic movement of 20th century politics of speed and displacement,
>> war machines, etc
>> -  i think in 1989 he even spoke of a kinetic inferno, but I doubt that at the time he
>> could anticipate the current refugee migrations and displacements.
>>
>> thanks for your reply Isabelle, I need more time to reflect, as I think
>> my question was really how the "camp" has been used as a metaphor or
>> as a symbolic system by philosophers and that is not what we were
>> talking about, and my confusion came from a sense of the romantic resistance
>> I felt you proposed vis à vis governmental / central policy of containment (which is not in fact
>> quite true for Germany,  I surmise, where regional administrations and help organizations
>> in a distributed federal landscape need to take often their own initiatives for help?); Calais
>> and Grande-Synthe at Dunkerque may be dfferent in that respect, but i visited facilties in the
>> Saarland near a town where I grew up and managing help was done through a mix of
>> local institutions and mini-NGOs, and provisions for sleep, care, food were not
>> left to "Jungle" self administration and done cooperatively, I wonder actually what
>> forms of governance or camp community formation happen under the circumstances,
>> and how different the anticipations or hopes may be (and Ana, your case back then surely
>> sounds as if you had been very fortunate).
>>
>> I wonder whether there would be room here to also look at some of the incidents of
>> sexual violence, puportedly committed by immigrant asylum seekers staying in Germany
>> at the time of the criminal offenses (Cologne e.g.), and how such violence has been used
>> now against migrants by the instrumentalizing political wings and press.
>>
>>
>> regards
>> Johannes Birringer
>> dap-lab
>>
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>
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