tirsdag den 22. marts 2011
Dagens Citat: Henry David Thoreau
»When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of bloodshed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.«
- Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience (1849)
Dagens Citat: Umberto Eco
“Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz. I want the blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its instances – everyday, in every part of the world.”
Umberto Eco, Eternal Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, New York Review of Books, November-December 1995, p 15.
mandag den 21. marts 2011
Libyen: Analyser og Kommentarer (de nyeste øverst).
Counterpunch: The US, Libya and Oil.
Jadalliya: Is the 2011 Libyan Revolution an Exception?
International Perspective: Libya: a legitimate and necessary debate from an anti-imperialist perspective.
Al Jazeera: Responsibility to protect or right to meddle?
Al Jazeera: Libyans on the move.
ICH: The CIA’s Libya Rebels.
Chossudovsky: 24 March 1999: Remembering the NATO led War on Yugoslavia.
IPS: U.N. Chief's Ambivalent Role in the No-Fly Zone.
Foreign Policy: Has the U.S. forgotten how to pass the buck?
Al Jazeera: Gaddafi, moral interventionism and revolution.
Commondreams: Instead of Bombing Dictators, Stop Selling Them Bombs.
Foreign Policy: De Gaulle, He Ain't - Nicolas Sarkozy's misguided quest for glory in Libya.
MERIP: Of Principle and Peril.
IPS: African Union at a Loss Over Libya.
IPS: Conflicting Interests Cloud Military Intervention's Objectives.
Guardian: Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong.
Greenwald: The manipulative pro-war argument in Libya.
Majorie Cohn: Stop Bombing Libya.
Al Jazeera: Libya intervention threatens the Arab spring.
AlMasryAlYoum: The Libyan conundrum.
Stephen Walt: What intervention in Libya tells us about the neocon-liberal alliance.
Salon.com: The Libyan war: Unconstitutional and illegitimate.
Guardian: Kosovo: A Template for Disaster.
Al Jazeera: The drawbacks of intervention in Libya.
Politico: Libya: Too much too late.
Greenwald: Libya and the Familiar Patterns of War.
Foreign Affairs: The Folly of Protection.
Foreign Policy: Libya in its Arab Context.
Foreign Policy: Libya Is Too Big to Fail.
Juan Cole: How the No-Fly Zone Can Succeed.
Dagens Citat: Erich Fromm
“The failure of the great promise, aside from industrialism's essential economic contradictions, was built into the industrial system by its two main psychological premises: (1) that the aim of life is happiness, that is maximum pleasure, defined as the satisfaction of any desire or subjective need a person may feel (radical hedonism); (2) that egotism, selfishness, and greed, as the system needs to generate them in order to function, lead to harmony and peace.”
- Erich Fromm To Have or To Be (1976).
fredag den 18. marts 2011
Kritiske analyser.
Jeg har sammen med Poya Pakzad skrevet en kritisk analyse af de mulige implikationer af en (primært) vestlig militær intervention mod Libyen, som inkluderer noget historisk kontekst omkring humanitær intervention og det sidste nye skud på stammen af belæg for intervention, Responsibility to Protect doktrinen.
Man kan med fordel supplere op med Poya Pakzads og Uffe Kaels Aurings ganske fremragende artikel 'Sikkerhedsproduktion' på Atlas Magasins side som giver et ganske fint overblik over NATOs dominanspolitik, hvilket også er relevant ift. talen om intervention i Libyen. Artiklens indhold er det bedste jeg mindes at have læst om (dansk) sikkerhedspolitik i noget dansk medie.
Enjoy!
Man kan med fordel supplere op med Poya Pakzads og Uffe Kaels Aurings ganske fremragende artikel 'Sikkerhedsproduktion' på Atlas Magasins side som giver et ganske fint overblik over NATOs dominanspolitik, hvilket også er relevant ift. talen om intervention i Libyen. Artiklens indhold er det bedste jeg mindes at have læst om (dansk) sikkerhedspolitik i noget dansk medie.
Enjoy!
Dagens Citat: Henry Giroux.
“Jingoistic patriotism is now mobilized in the highest reaches of government, in the media, and throughout society, put on perpetual display through the rhetoric of celebrities, journalists, and nightly news anchors, and, relentlessly buttressed by the never-ending waving of flags – on cars, trucks, clothes, houses and the lapels of TV anchors – as well as through the use of mottoes, slogans, and songs. As a rhetorical ploy to silence dissent, patriotism is used to name as unpatriotic any attempt to make governmental power and authority accountable at home or to question how the appeal to nationalism is being used to legitimate the United States government's aspirations to empire-building overseas. This type of anti-liberal thinking is deeply distrustful of critical inquiry, mistakes meaningful dissent for treason, constructs politics on the moral absolutes of “us and them”, and views difference and democracy as threats to consensus and national identity. Such “patriotic” fervour fuels a system of militarized control that not only repudiates the authority of international law, but also relies on a notion of preventive war to project the fantasies of unbridled American power all over the globe.”
Henry Giroux: Against the New Authoritarianism: Politics after Abu Ghraib, Arbeiter Ring Publishing 2005, p. 41-42.
onsdag den 16. marts 2011
Wallerstein: Libya and the World Left.
There is so much hypocrisy and so much confused analysis about what is going on in Libya that one hardly knows where to begin. The most neglected aspect of the situation is the deep division in the world left. Several left Latin American states, and most notably Venezuela, are fulsome in their support of Colonel Qaddafi. But the spokespersons of the world left in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and indeed North America, decidedly don’t agree.
Hugo Chavez’s analysis seems to focus primarily, indeed exclusively, on the fact that the United States and western Europe have been issuing threats and condemnations of the Qaddafi regime. Qaddafi, Chavez, and some others insist that the western world wishes to invade Libya and “steal” Libya’s oil. The whole analysis misses entirely what has been happening, and reflects badly on Chavez’s judgment – and indeed on his reputation with the rest of the world left.
First of all, for the last decade and up to a few weeks ago, Qaddafi had nothing but good press in the western world. He was trying in every way to prove that he was in no way a supporter of “terrorism” and wished only to be fully integrated into the geopolitical and world-economic mainstream. Libya and the western world have been entering into one profitable arrangement after another. It is hard for me to see Qaddafi as a hero of the world anti-imperialist movement, at least in the last decade.
The second point missed by Hugo Chavez’s analysis is that there is not going to be any significant military involvement of the western world in Libya. The public statements are all huff and puff, designed to impress local opinion at home. There will be no Security Council resolution because Russia and China won’t go along. There will be no NATO resolution because Germany and some others won’t go along. Even Sarkozy’s militant anti-Qaddafi stance is meeting resistance within France.
And above all, the opposition in the United States to military action is coming both from the public and more importantly from the military. The Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mullen, have very publicly stated their opposition to instituting a no-fly zone. Indeed, Secretary Gates went further. On Feb. 25, he addressed the cadets at West Point, saying to them: “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president again to send a big American land army into Asia or the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.”
To underline this view of the military, retired General Wesley Clark, the former commander of NATO forces, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post on Mar. 11, under the heading, “Libya doesn’t meet the test for U.S. military action.” So, despite the call of the hawks for U.S. involvement, President Obama will resist.
The issue therefore is not Western military intervention or not. The issue is the consequence of Qaddafi’s attempt to suppress all opposition in the most brutal fashion for the second Arab revolt. Libya is in turmoil because of the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. And if there is any conspiracy, it is one between Qaddafi and the West to slow down, even quash, the Arab revolt. To the extent that Qaddafi succeeds, he sends a message to all the other threatened despots of the region that harsh repression rather than concessions is the way to go.
This is what the left in the rest of the world sees, if some left governments in Latin America do not. As Samir Amin points out in his analysis of the Egyptian uprising, there were four distinct components among the protestors – the youth, the radical left, middle-class democrats, and Islamists. The radical left is composed of suppressed left parties and revitalized trade-union movements. There is no doubt a much, much smaller radical left in Libya, and a much weaker army (because of Qaddafi’s deliberate policy). The outcome there is therefore very uncertain.
The assembled leaders of the Arab League may condemn Qaddafi publicly, but many, even most, may be applauding him privately – and copying from him.
It might be useful to end with two pieces of testimony from the world left. Helena Sheeham, an Irish Marxist activist, well-known in Africa for her solidarity work there with the most radical movements, was invited by the Qaddafi regime to come to Libya to lecture at the university. She arrived as turmoil broke out. The lectures at the university were cancelled, and she was finally simply abandoned by her hosts, and had to make her way out by herself. She wrote a daily diary in which, on the last day, Mar. 8, she wrote: “Any ambivalence about that regime, gone, gone, gone. It is brutal, corrupt, deceitful, delusional.”
We might also see the statement of South Africa’s major trade-union federation and voice of the left, COSATU. After praising the social achievements of the Libyan regime, COSATU said: “COSATU does not accept however that these achievements in any way excuse the slaughter of those protesting against the oppressive dictatorship of Colonel Gaddafi and reaffirms its support for democracy and human rights in Libya and throughout the continent.”
Let us keep our eye on the ball. The key struggle worldwide right now is the second Arab revolt. It will be hard enough to obtain a truly radical outcome in this struggle. Qaddafi is a major obstacle for the Arab, and indeed the world, left. Perhaps we should all remember Simone de Beauvoir’s maxim: “Wanting to be free yourself means wanting that others be free.”
Source: iwallerstein.com - Libya and the World Left.
The world can be powered by alternative energy, using today's technology, in 20-40 years
A new study – co-authored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson and UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi – analyzing what is needed to convert the world's energy supplies to clean and sustainable sources says that it can be done with today's technology at costs roughly comparable to conventional energy. But converting will be a massive undertaking on the scale of the moon landings. What is needed most is the societal and political will to make it happen.
Stanford University News.
mandag den 14. marts 2011
søndag den 13. marts 2011
Dagens Citat: Albert Camus
“What better way to enslave a man than to give him the vote and tell him he’s free.”
-Albert Camus
Abonner på:
Opslag (Atom)