Lost and bombed at Hodeidah. Eine Weihnachtsgeschichte für die Verlassenen

[Diese Geschichte beruht auf wahren Begebenheiten, ist aber weder ein Tatsachenbericht noch eine genaue Aufzeichnung. Sie ist ein Versuch, das Unerzählte in Worte zu fassen. Sie ist die erste in einer Reihe von Geschichten, die ich vorläufig "Schattengeschichten aus dem Vergessen" nennen will.]

Wir waren acht Männer auf einem Schiff, das niemand mehr wollte. Die Captain Tarek lag im Hafen von Hodeidah, unbeweglich wie ein rostiger Sarg. Der Krieg war überall. Man hörte ihn in der Ferne, manchmal sah man ihn. Explosionen, Rauch, Funken am Horizont. Wir hörten nicht mehr hin.

Der Kapitän war längst verschwunden. Kein Diesel, keine Vorräte. Wir teilten uns Reis, der nach Salz schmeckte, und Wasser, das nach Öl roch. Der Koch machte das Beste daraus, aber viel war das nicht. Niemand sprach vom nächsten Tag. Es gab keinen Plan, nur warten.

Lost and bombed at Hodeidah. A Christmas tale for the abandoned

[This story is based on true events, but it is not a factual account nor an exact record. It is an attempt to put into words the unreported. It's the first in a series of stories I will call Shadow Stories from the Forgotten, for now.]

We were eight men on a ship no one wanted.

The Captain Tarek sat in the port of Hodeidah, motionless like a rusty coffin. The war was everywhere. You could hear it in the distance, sometimes see it. Explosions, smoke, sparks on the horizon. We stopped listening.

The captain had been gone for months. No diesel, no supplies. We shared rice that tasted of salt and water that smelled of oil. The cook did his best, but it wasn’t much. No one spoke of tomorrow. There was no plan, just waiting.

Die Rose

Wir kamen nach Heidenheim, müde und durstig. Es war der 19. Mai, und wir waren achtzehn Kilometer durch feuchtkaltes Wetter marschiert, ohne ein Gasthaus zu sehen. Die Dörfer waren still. Die Türen waren verschlossen, die Fenster mit Brettern vernagelt, die Schilder alt und verblasst. Es war, als hätte der Wind alles mit sich genommen, außer der Straße unter unseren Füßen.

The Rose

 

We came to Heidenheim, tired and thirsty. It was the 19th of May, and we had marched eighteen kilometers through damp, cold weather without passing a single inn. The villages were silent. Doors were locked, windows boarded up, signs faded and worn. It was as if the wind had carried everything away, except for the road under our feet.

Photographer of “Earthrise” died in a plane crash. His picture changed our perception of planet Earth

The photographer of “Earthrise” is dead. Astronaut William Anders was killed in a plane crash. I had used his famous photo Earthrise as a reference in an essay some time ago. RIP

“Earthrise” is the name of the NASA photo AS8-14-2383HR taken on December 24, 1968 by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo flight. It is undoubtedly one of the photos that has profoundly changed and shaped our perception of our planet and our place in the universe. Anders’ photo taken with a Hasselblad-500 camera makes it immediately sensually clear that the Earth is a blue planet. The world’s oceans cover 71 per cent of the planet’s surface, and are essential to the global climate and ecological balance, to the habitability and existence of life on the planet. At the same time, the oceans are the largest and one of the most important fields in which “man’s metabolism with nature is mediated, regulated, and controlled by his own actions” (Marx and Engels 1968: 192).

Jörn Boewe, Major Trends in Work at Sea: Outline of a Political Economy of Maritime Labour, in: Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work, edited by Maurizio Atzeni, Dario Azzellini, Alessandra Mezzadri, Phoebe Moore, Ursula Apitzsch (Hrsg.) 708 pp., 2023, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., ISBN 978-1-83910-657-6

https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/handbook-of-research-on-the-global-political-economy-of-work-9781839106576.html

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/p3cc66jvx2ft788isfeob/Major-trends-in-work-at-sea-Boewe-research-handbook-of-the-global-economy-of-work-2023.pdf?rlkey=vvv05b899weja4g6rwo5717s4&e=1&dl=0

Let's roll again. ITF Baltic Week of Action goes on, after two years of forced interruption

 

I am glad to hear that after a two-year forced interruption due to the pandemic, the ITF Baltic Week of Action will be held again this year in September. Albeit small-scale and rather symbolic, it embodies the idea of immediate workers' solidarity across national, professional, organizational and bureaucratic boundaries. It can be read as a seedbed for a holistic cross-sectoral politics of solidarity from below, as we need it more than ever today, in times of increasingly self-and all-destructive late capitalism.

Is this idea an unrealistic pipedream? This is a typical objection from bureaucrats and narrow-minded people who don't realize how much the ground is burning beneath our feet. In a contribution to the hopefully soon to be published "Handbook of the Political Economy of Work", I try to develop such a strategic vision on a materialist basis.

The sea is a transport route for people and goods, a reservoir for food (fishing and aqua farming), a source of raw materials (offshore mining), energy (both fossil fuels such as oil and gas, and renewable ones such as wind and tidal power), a space of military conflict, human recreation (or the illusion that the modern tourism industry sells for that purpose) and, last but not least, a place of human contemplation and inspiration. The oceans are the fluid that enables and holds together the economic cultural and ecological existence of humanity as a global species.

I remember, when one of the traditional East German shipyards, Volkswerft Stralsund, slid into insolvency (not for the first time) in the fall of 2012, Hamani Amadou, Inspector of the International Transport Workers' Federation ITF, from neighboring Rostock paid a spontaneous visit to the shipyard workers, accompanied by a team of volunteers, dock workers from Lübeck and Rostock. Actually, they wanted to inspect incoming ships from flag of convenience states for compliance with minimum collective bargaining standards as part of the international "Baltic week of action".

Why were they here, at a shipyard, in the organizational area of the German metalworkers' union IG Metall?

"This is where the ships are built on which the seafarers we organize are sailing, the ships our members load and unload in the ports," Hamani said. "Seafarers, dockers, shipyard workers - we are one family. If you suffer, we suffer too."

What may sound like sentimental maritime poetry is actually nothing more than straight prose. Since the 1990s, the conditions under which workers in the maritime or ocean-related economy perform their work have been subject to similar or even identical trends. Accelerated capitalist globalization, the financialization of the economy, the triumph of neoliberalism have led to increased de-unionization, precarization and devaluation of labor and the pitting of workers against each other in highly fragmented global labor markets. New technological possibilities have not mitigated the socially destructive consequences of these developments, but rather exacerbated them. A cross-sectoral, integrated theoretical and political approach to maritime work is therefore more necessary than ever.

Of course I know, that the practice of trade unions is still far from that holistic, cross-sectoral approach. So this has to be changed. It has to be done. It's that simple.

(Thanks to all the friends and companions who inspired and encouraged me to maritime writing.)

It is clear where this is bound to lead. It's a pity, as perhaps the West is indeed the best of worlds

"I have been living in the West for more than half of my life now, but the bigotry of this 'best of worlds' still amazes me, and continues to do so. The West is simply incapable of understanding anything. In the current Spiegel, a cover story - well done for the most part - about young Muslims from Germany who join ISIS. Reporters try to find answers to the question of why, and they do an excellent job, researching, going into courtrooms, talking to parents, friends, experts, visiting mosques, tea shops, clubs - whatever you do as a reporter.

And then they say that the young men come "from a world in which war and religion have been banished from political self-understanding. The 70-year peace that has reigned in Western Europe has made warlike violence taboo ..."

What baffles me about this is the matter-of-factness with which West (Is Der Spiegel "the West"? Yes, it is.) passes over its own warlike actions here (not least in the Muslim world), as if that had nothing to do with the topic. And let's stay with Germany: 15 years after the air strikes on Yugoslavia, five years after the negligent bombing at Kunduz, we see ourselves as a society that has "made warlike violence taboo"? This is interesting.

The FRG was incapable of understanding the GDR, West Germany is incapable of understanding East Germany, Obama, Merkel, Spiegel, ARD and ZDF are incapable of understanding Russia. They are incapable of understanding Putin, and they are even proud of it. The West is incapable of understanding anything. Everything foreign to it is just an opportunity for self-congratulation, and good opportunities must not be missed.

It is clear where this is bound to lead. It's a pity, as perhaps the West is indeed the best of worlds." Notebook, November 21, 2014