Deep in the dissertation zone, which is much like living permanently in one of the deeper levels of Russian sci-fi writer Sergei Lukyanenko's Twilight in his hugely entertaining Nightwatch novels (now available to English speakers thanks to excellent translations by Andrew Blomfield).
The shaping of each word. Measurements of texture, the scanning of density and mass. The extreme energy expenditure of standing still. Endless dunes of grey sand, beading into opalescent skies, streaked with light. Kneel down and grab a handful of sand: what seemed platinum gray at a distance turns out to harbor shimmering colors, each grain a fractal multitude.
Where have I come from.
Where am I going.
It's hard to think transnationally.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Hold the Line!
The dictator's forces have counter-attacked, taking back several towns in the west. After a week of heroic resistance, the small city of Az-Zawiya was blasted into smithereens and occupied by regime forces, though it seems many of the rebels escaped to fight another day. Misurata, Libya's third-largest city, is still holding fast, as are the far western towns, though for how long, noone can know.
What is clear is that while support for the dictator is minimal – the population of Tripoli is sullen and morose, the state propaganda victory parades shown on state TV are pathetically small, and it took the regime a full week for its crack troops to defeat the largely unarmed protestors of Az-Zawiya, a small city – the revolutionaries don't yet have the organization to topple the state's military machine. The revolutionaries made a brave but futile attempt to take the town of Sirte with nothing more than AK-47s and pickup trucks, and were driven all the way back to Ajdabiya by tanks, air-strikes and rocket barrages.
Still, the regime's greatest threat remains the eastern cities. They are not just the heartland of the rebellion, they are located in hilly terrain unfavorable to open tank warfare (in fact, the road to Tobruk was the site of some memorable battles in WWII). The regime is hastily throwing its most capable brigades at the east, knowing full well that they need to strike before the UN sanctions and the loss of oil revenues bites. Unlike Saddam-era Iraq, which had a sizeable middle class and trained engineers capable of keeping the refineries running, the Libyan regime is utterly dependent on skilled foreign labor.
The revolutionaries must play for time, dig solid anti-tank defenses, and mobilize its civilian population. Properly organized, the 1 million citizens of the east can put 50,000 soldiers into the field and eventually defeat the regime's mercenaries and elite brigades, which do not number more than 30,000. The revolutionaries control the border with Egypt, and have access to fresh weapons and supplies. The regime's obsolete, poorly-maintained tanks will become increasingly less effective and eventually useless, once the revolutionaries acquire sufficient anti-tank weaponry. Tunisia's nascent democracy will enforce UN sanctions on its border; and it will not be possible to export significant amounts of oil through Algeria or Chad. The only card the regime has left to play is air-power, and a UN-sponsored no-fly zone can take care of that.
I know what you're thinking: Slorgzilla has jumped the shark and joined the neocons, who are barking for another disastrous colonial war.
Nope, no sharks here. Any direct foreign intervention in Libya would be a catastrophe. But the problem is how best to deal with the legacy of *past* forms of foreign intervention. In a 2009 report for the US Congressional Research Office, analyst Richard F. Grimmett estimated the countries of Europe sold the regime $1.3 billion of military equipment during 2000-2009, Russia sold $600 million, and other countries an estimated $300 million worth. Now that $2.2 billion is being used by a murderous tyrant to kill his own people. Consider further that the European Union has been the main customer of Libya's oil, effectively financing the dictatorship.
Noone can fight the Libyan people's battle for them. But we can at least neutralize the regime's air-force, and save as many Libyan lives as possible.
No Libyan blood for oil, and no Libyan blood for arms sales, either.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Zawiya and Benghazi, Hero Cities
The people of Libya are so brave, so incredibly brave. They are facing not just point-blank fire by tanks, APCs, artillery and air strikes, but also the more subtle but no less dangerous enemies of fatigue, despair, reactionary identity-politics, and regime propaganda.
Alex Crawford filed this stunning report from Zawiya, a small city just twenty minutes away from the outskirts of Tripoli. It shows how the regime's thugs murdered unarmed, peaceful demonstrators -- and only then did the people pick up weapons to defend themselves. And defend themselves they have. They fought off literally weeks of attacks by the crack brigades of the dictator. They fought against the best the regime had -- and they are winning. Time and again they have driven out incursions by the dictator's forces, and continue to control their city.
On Libya Alhurra, the Revolution's web-streamed TV channel, another band of heroes had gathered: a meeting of the women of the revolution in Benghazi, organizing themselves and their city to consolidate and support the revolution. They are no less brave, casting off centuries of patriarchal oppression as well as decades of regime propaganda, and their struggles are no less important to the foundation of Libya's democracy.
Two bands of heroes, covering themselves and their nation in glory.
Alex Crawford filed this stunning report from Zawiya, a small city just twenty minutes away from the outskirts of Tripoli. It shows how the regime's thugs murdered unarmed, peaceful demonstrators -- and only then did the people pick up weapons to defend themselves. And defend themselves they have. They fought off literally weeks of attacks by the crack brigades of the dictator. They fought against the best the regime had -- and they are winning. Time and again they have driven out incursions by the dictator's forces, and continue to control their city.
On Libya Alhurra, the Revolution's web-streamed TV channel, another band of heroes had gathered: a meeting of the women of the revolution in Benghazi, organizing themselves and their city to consolidate and support the revolution. They are no less brave, casting off centuries of patriarchal oppression as well as decades of regime propaganda, and their struggles are no less important to the foundation of Libya's democracy.
Two bands of heroes, covering themselves and their nation in glory.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Revolution on the March
The people of the Middle East are pulling off one of the most amazing feats in human history, toppling a seemingly impregnable series of corrupt, bloodthirsty neoliberal dictatorships with record speed. It took a month for Tunisians to send Ben-Ali packing, and it took 21 days for the people of Egypt to topple Mubarak.
Now Libya has picked up the pace. Within a single week, the people of Libya have risen up against Qaddafi's neoliberal gangster-ocracy. It started with three days of horrifying state repression against peaceful demonstrators, but it didn't end there. Inspired by the examples of Tunisia and Egypt, the eastern cities rose up and threw off their chains. Knowing full well that the rebellion would be crushed if it remained local, activists creatively refunctioned Libya's limited social media networks, spreading the sparks of rebellion to the rest of Libya. The regime's only response was to broadcast some the most bone-crushingly idiotic and patently absurd state propaganda ever emitted by a dying autocracy, while unleashing foreign mercenaries to murder its citizens en masse. This brutality has allowed it to retain limited control over parts of Tripoli, but has only served to enrage ordinary Libyans. Pro-democracy militias and army units are now converging on the city for the final showdown.
The city of Benghazi, epicenter of the eastern rebellion, has been running the only live video feed currently available from the country. The Revolution Cam just ran its first webcast, an improvised pre-Qaddafi flag (red, black and green) prominent in the background -- the insignia which will undoubtedly become the official symbol of the free, democratic Libya of the future:
http://www.livestream.com/libya17feb
The best source of news:
http://feb17.info/
Robert Fisk weighs in on the approaching end:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/tripoli-a-city-in-the-shadow-of-death-2223977.html
Now Libya has picked up the pace. Within a single week, the people of Libya have risen up against Qaddafi's neoliberal gangster-ocracy. It started with three days of horrifying state repression against peaceful demonstrators, but it didn't end there. Inspired by the examples of Tunisia and Egypt, the eastern cities rose up and threw off their chains. Knowing full well that the rebellion would be crushed if it remained local, activists creatively refunctioned Libya's limited social media networks, spreading the sparks of rebellion to the rest of Libya. The regime's only response was to broadcast some the most bone-crushingly idiotic and patently absurd state propaganda ever emitted by a dying autocracy, while unleashing foreign mercenaries to murder its citizens en masse. This brutality has allowed it to retain limited control over parts of Tripoli, but has only served to enrage ordinary Libyans. Pro-democracy militias and army units are now converging on the city for the final showdown.
The city of Benghazi, epicenter of the eastern rebellion, has been running the only live video feed currently available from the country. The Revolution Cam just ran its first webcast, an improvised pre-Qaddafi flag (red, black and green) prominent in the background -- the insignia which will undoubtedly become the official symbol of the free, democratic Libya of the future:
http://www.livestream.com/libya17feb
The best source of news:
http://feb17.info/
Robert Fisk weighs in on the approaching end:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/tripoli-a-city-in-the-shadow-of-death-2223977.html
Friday, February 18, 2011
Masrzilla
January 25, 2011 may well go down in history as the zero-hour of a new geopolitical entity in the Middle East, the first true developmental state of the Arabic-speaking region: Masrzilla.
In many ways, Egypt's postcolonial history is a combination of post-WW II Latin America and postcolonial Southeastern Asia: a period of decolonization carried out by nationalist military officers, followed by the era of Nasser's firebrand pan-Arabism and the construction of an import-substitution economy -- a blend of Indonesia's Sukarno and Peron's Argentina, as it were.
However, while the Nasser regime did bring about limited social reforms, it was unable to industrialize the country, resolve the glaring social inequities of Egyptian society, or create a democratic national polity. The result was political crisis and economic stagnation. Egypt sank into Sadat's neocolonial
authoritarianism, and finally into Mubarak's kleptocratic neoliberalism.
Beginning in the late 1990s, neoliberal regimes through the industrializing world began to implode under the accumulated weight of their own internal contradictions. Venezuela led the way in 1998, quickly followed by Russia, Argentina, Turkey and Brazil. For their part, China and India never fully embraced neoliberal policies, and pragmatically steered towards regulated mixed economies 2004.
Two factors prevented the Egyptian regime from imploding until now. First, Egyptian workers flocked to Middle Eastern oil-producing states during the post-1979 oil shocks and also began to emigrate in significant numbers to the European Community, forerunner of the European Union. The remittances these workers sent home stabilized Egypt's economy, very much as remittances stabilized the Philippines during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Second, the US pumped tens of billions of dollars into Egypt as a reward for signing a peace treaty with Israel.
By 2011, however, the game was up. The world economic crisis crimped remittances, and US military aid was no longer large enough to finance the investment needs of a population of 80 million citizens. The result was not just one of the great democratic revolutions of the 21st century, but the first openly anti-neoliberal revolution of our time.
Ironically, this delay is why Egypt may well become a developmental state and an economic motor for the entire region in record time. It took Brazil twenty years to manage the transition from the democratic revolution of the early 1980s to the economic democratization of the Lula-Dilma era; it took Russia ten years to translate the political freedoms of 1991 into the genuine economic development of the Putin-Medvedev era. But Egypt can achieve the same feat within a couple of years, assuming it can make the transition to a full-fledged democracy (and all the signs are promising).
The key is not, as neoliberal observers chatter, the attitude of the military. The key is the extensive industrial networks of Egypt's military-owned industries. These are the crucial engine for Egypt's economic revival. The first step will be to seize the ill-gotten assets of the Mubarak family and selected oligarchs. Next, transform the military enterprises into state champions, and use their surplus-profits to finance education and social services. Finally, pursue a UNASUR-style foreign policy of regional democratization and economic integration, and help free Palestine from Israeli colonization (and encourage Israel to free itself from the monstrous Israelo-apartheid which so terribly disfigures and warps its society).
In many ways, Egypt's postcolonial history is a combination of post-WW II Latin America and postcolonial Southeastern Asia: a period of decolonization carried out by nationalist military officers, followed by the era of Nasser's firebrand pan-Arabism and the construction of an import-substitution economy -- a blend of Indonesia's Sukarno and Peron's Argentina, as it were.
However, while the Nasser regime did bring about limited social reforms, it was unable to industrialize the country, resolve the glaring social inequities of Egyptian society, or create a democratic national polity. The result was political crisis and economic stagnation. Egypt sank into Sadat's neocolonial
authoritarianism, and finally into Mubarak's kleptocratic neoliberalism.
Beginning in the late 1990s, neoliberal regimes through the industrializing world began to implode under the accumulated weight of their own internal contradictions. Venezuela led the way in 1998, quickly followed by Russia, Argentina, Turkey and Brazil. For their part, China and India never fully embraced neoliberal policies, and pragmatically steered towards regulated mixed economies 2004.
Two factors prevented the Egyptian regime from imploding until now. First, Egyptian workers flocked to Middle Eastern oil-producing states during the post-1979 oil shocks and also began to emigrate in significant numbers to the European Community, forerunner of the European Union. The remittances these workers sent home stabilized Egypt's economy, very much as remittances stabilized the Philippines during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Second, the US pumped tens of billions of dollars into Egypt as a reward for signing a peace treaty with Israel.
By 2011, however, the game was up. The world economic crisis crimped remittances, and US military aid was no longer large enough to finance the investment needs of a population of 80 million citizens. The result was not just one of the great democratic revolutions of the 21st century, but the first openly anti-neoliberal revolution of our time.
Ironically, this delay is why Egypt may well become a developmental state and an economic motor for the entire region in record time. It took Brazil twenty years to manage the transition from the democratic revolution of the early 1980s to the economic democratization of the Lula-Dilma era; it took Russia ten years to translate the political freedoms of 1991 into the genuine economic development of the Putin-Medvedev era. But Egypt can achieve the same feat within a couple of years, assuming it can make the transition to a full-fledged democracy (and all the signs are promising).
The key is not, as neoliberal observers chatter, the attitude of the military. The key is the extensive industrial networks of Egypt's military-owned industries. These are the crucial engine for Egypt's economic revival. The first step will be to seize the ill-gotten assets of the Mubarak family and selected oligarchs. Next, transform the military enterprises into state champions, and use their surplus-profits to finance education and social services. Finally, pursue a UNASUR-style foreign policy of regional democratization and economic integration, and help free Palestine from Israeli colonization (and encourage Israel to free itself from the monstrous Israelo-apartheid which so terribly disfigures and warps its society).
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The Semiperiphery Explodes
Like many nations of the semi-periphery, Egypt is one of the oldest of human cultures, and the newest of nation-states.
Like many nations of the semi-periphery, Egypt heroically threw off the yoke of colonialism, only to fall under the sway of postcolonial elites who gradually forgot their popular roots, and devolved into corrupt underlings of Wall Street neoliberalism. Typically, their rule was administered by client states armed and financed by the US Empire.
But in the late 1990s, the nations of the semi-periphery began to rebel against the economics of neoliberalism and the politics of neocolonialism. The power of tanks, guns and jails fell to far mightier powers: the power of the pen, the website, the video-clip and the ballot box. It happened in Venezuela and Indonesia in 1998, Russia in 1999, Argentina in 2001, Turkey in 2002, Brazil in 2003, India in 2004, etc.
One by one, former US client states melted away, in an uncanny echo of the collapse of the Soviet client states of Eastern Europe in 1990-91.
And now the people of Egypt have joined the party, upsetting the last bastion of US neoimperial rule over the world. It's the end of the Arabic-region autocracies, the end of Israelo-apartheid (aided and abetted by corrupt regional elites), and the beginning of true democracy everywhere in the Middle East -- in Egypt, in Israel, in Palestine.
The revolution will be live and online.
Like many nations of the semi-periphery, Egypt heroically threw off the yoke of colonialism, only to fall under the sway of postcolonial elites who gradually forgot their popular roots, and devolved into corrupt underlings of Wall Street neoliberalism. Typically, their rule was administered by client states armed and financed by the US Empire.
But in the late 1990s, the nations of the semi-periphery began to rebel against the economics of neoliberalism and the politics of neocolonialism. The power of tanks, guns and jails fell to far mightier powers: the power of the pen, the website, the video-clip and the ballot box. It happened in Venezuela and Indonesia in 1998, Russia in 1999, Argentina in 2001, Turkey in 2002, Brazil in 2003, India in 2004, etc.
One by one, former US client states melted away, in an uncanny echo of the collapse of the Soviet client states of Eastern Europe in 1990-91.
And now the people of Egypt have joined the party, upsetting the last bastion of US neoimperial rule over the world. It's the end of the Arabic-region autocracies, the end of Israelo-apartheid (aided and abetted by corrupt regional elites), and the beginning of true democracy everywhere in the Middle East -- in Egypt, in Israel, in Palestine.
The revolution will be live and online.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Happy, Merry Resistance!
The latest, sleaziest and most predictable Obama sellout yet:
In the name of the Earth: свободы, humanity, 阻力!
The US bubbleklatura has now officially rocketed past the Soviet nomenklatura to qualify as the single most suicidal elite to immolate its Empire, ever.
This is usually the moment when progressives don the sackcloth and ashes, wallowing in self-indulgent doom and sepulchral gloom.
Screw that.
To all Americans: it's time to let go of the Empire. You never owned it. It owned you. Today you get nothing from its rotting, diseased carcass except tens of thousands of dead and maimed bodies from failed trillion-dollar colonial wars, and trillion dollar debts from failed bankster bailouts.
To all non-Americans: it's time to build the multipolar world.
In the season of imperial collapse, it's more important than ever to dance with post-Imperial joy, to laugh with anti-capitalist mirth, and to spread tidings of commons-based cheer.
The banksters own the US media, US politicians and the US war machine, but we own the developmental states and the videogame culture.
In the name of the Earth: свободы, humanity, 阻力!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)