Michael Hardt On 'Common Wealth' (1 of 10)

The Military-Industrial Complex Revisited

Dagens Citat: Hardt & Negri.

“The great modern works of political science all provide tools for transformation or overthrowing the ruling powers and liberating us from repression. Even Machiavelli's The Prince, which some read as a guidebook for nefarious rulers, is in fact a democratic pamphlet that puts the understanding of violence and the cunning of power in the service of republican intelligence. Today, however, the majority of political scientists are merely technicians working to resolve the quantitative problems of maintaining order, and the rest wander the corridors from their universities to the courts of power, attempting to get the ear of the sovereign and whisper advice. The paradigmatic figure of the political scientist has become the Geheimrat, the secret adviser of the sovereign.”

- Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Multitude p. 33.

Michelle Alexander: US Prisons, The New Jim Crow

Dokumentar: The Trials Of Henry Kissinger

Glenn Greenwald, Presentation, 8 March 2011

Dagens Citat: Howard Zinn

“[Civil disobedience] is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience … Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.”

- Howard Zinn.

Afghanistan: Den sikkerhedspolitiske begrundelse.

Den primære officielle begrundelse for de danske troppers tilstedeværelse i Afghanistan, har kontinuerligt været, at vi befinder os i landet for at sikre, at der ikke igen sker terrorangreb på vestlige mål og interesser.

I sin nytårstale 2009 benyttede Anders Fogh Rasmussen således lejligheden til at forsvare Afghanistan-krigen med den sikkerhedspolitiske begrundelse:

“Vi lever i en ny verden. En verden, hvor terrorister kan slå til hvor som helst - også i Danmark. En verden, hvor forsvaret af vores sikkerhed starter fjernt fra dansk jord. Afghanistan må ikke igen blive et fristed for terrorister. Derfor er vi i Afghanistan. Det handler om sikkerhed. Og det handler om, at vi danskere tager medansvar i verden. Vi ønsker frihed, fred og sikkerhed. Så må vi også selv yde et bidrag”.

Den sikkerhedspolitiske begrundelse er imidlertid tvivlsom idet Al-Qaeda ikke længere har nogen nævneværdig tilstedeværelse i landet, mens organisationen til gengæld menes at være aktiv i en række andre lande, som Danmark (eller den internationale koalition) ikke er militært engageret i. Der er ikke meget der tyder på at de lokale krigsførende parter i Afghanistan har andet end lokale interesser, hvorfor de forskellige oprørsbevægelser altså ikke truer den danske befolknings sikkerhed!

Selvom Al Qaeda fortsat havde en markant tilstedeværelse i landet, eller skulle få det igen på et senere tidspunkt, er det særdeles tvivlsomt hvorvidt en nedkæmpning af organisationen på afghansk territorium ville forvolde en større grad af sikkerhed, da hverken terrorangrebene i London eller Madrid havde nogen beviselig forbindelse til Afghanistan. Sikkerhedsargumentet bør endvidere mødes med skepsis da planlægningen af et terrorangreb ikke kræver nogen konkret tilstedeværelse i et givent land. Terrorangreb, som dem vi så i London, Madrid og Mumbai, kræver ikke store træningslejre men beror derimod på relativt små sammensværgelser, som kan planlægge angrebene uden fysisk kontakt, så længe de har adgang til internettet. Endvidere har Al Qaeda iflg. officielle udmeldinger etableret sig i en række lande, herunder Yemen, Afghanistan-krigen vil altså ikke eliminere terrortruslen fra Al Qaeda og organisationens sympatisører, uanset dens udfald.

Jeremy Scahill on Yemen and US covert action.

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)

"Freedom Packages!!!"

The Daily Show - America's Freedom Packages
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Democracy and Hypocrisy in Libya.

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.

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.

Achcar: Libyan No Fly Zone Necessary But Intervention Has Imperialist Objectives

Gaddafi compound hit by missile as dozens die in coalition strikes.

Inside Story - True Democracy for Egypt?

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).

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!

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.