Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show is brilliant.
Pilger on Fascism and the Arab Revolt
Renowned journalist, author and filmmaker John Pilger writes today at Antiwar.com:
The revolt in the Arab world is not merely against a resident dictator but a worldwide economic tyranny designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development, the IMF and World Bank, which have ensured that rich countries like Egypt are reduced to vast sweatshops, with half the population earning less than $2 a day. The people’s triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism.”
The article begins with Pilger’s 2003 interview with former elite CIA officer Ray McGovern. McGovern responds to Pilger’s question about Norman Mailer‘s assertion that America has entered a pre-fascist state:
Well … I hope he’s right, because there are others saying we are already in a fascist mode.”
Click to read the article in its entirety: “Behind the Arab Revolt is a Word We Dare Not Speak“.
The political power of literature
Can literature inspire revolutions? What role do artists and intellectuals play on the frontline of popular uprisings?
The Satan of Our History
Latest from our freedom-loving friend in Tripoli:
I am in Tripoli, on the 24th February at 1pm. As I heard in the news this morning that Zawiya city is under attack, I called my friend in Zawiya to check. He confirmed to me that Zawiya city has been under ruthless and continuous attack since last night at around 2am. He also reported that around 8am there was very heavy gunfire and the sound of exploding bombs. He told me he was terrified because the gunfire didn’t stop the whole night. (An eye witness told al-Jazeera that at least 100 people have been killed in Zawiya this morning).
Minutes after my call with my friend, I received confirmed news that Misurata is under attack too by the so-called security forces, and a little girl along with many other injured people were brought to Misurata hospital.
Scandalously Done
Our witness in Tripoli writes:
At 2am I hear gunfire and screaming coming from far. Hours later, I heard that a woman was randomly shot by ‘security forces’ while she was standing by her window in an area called Zawiyat Adahmani, which is near the area of Ben Ashour, where I live.
Last night there were big celebrations around the streets and mainly in Green Square by the thug’s supporters (when 2 days ago almost 1000 martyrs were brutally killed). Following his threatening speech, anyone who walks in the streets of Tripoli by night will be cleared (killed) right away- exactly as he said. Right after the celebrations, non-Libyan mercenaries and some black Libyans (from the south) belonging to ‘kitaib khamis‘ (the Khamis Qaddafi Brigade) were spread all around Tripoli (there is a video taken proves mercenaries driving around the area of Fashloom- at least 8 open cars).
Mercenaries at Work
Mercenaries in yellow helmets terrorise a street in Benghazi before the city’s liberation.
Cockroach Rule
Our informant in Tripoli, last I heard, was at home, terrified, trying her best to remain calm amid the sound of heavy gunfire.
Tripoli is very hotly contested. Reports suggest eastern Libya, meanwhile, has become an anarchist’s paradise. Benghazi, Tobruk, al-Bayda and smaller towns and villages are in the hands of the people and revolutionary soldiers. Committees have been formed for neighbourhood protection, rubbish collection and traffic direction. The mood is peaceful, triumphant and fearless. Two war planes have been landed in Benghazi by pilots who refuse to bomb the people. Another crashed outside the city after its pilots parachuted out. Today the city of Misurata, in the west, has also been liberated.
Qaddafi’s regime has already collapsed. The army in Misurata, and in the Jebel al-Akhdar region, has joined the people. A statement by high-ranking officers asks all military personnel to head to Tripoli to remove Qaddafi. The Interior Minister and the Justice Minister have resigned, as have many diplomats. All prominent Libyan tribal and religious leaders have backed the revolution. At least a quarter of the country’s oil output has halted; a tribal leader in the east threatened to stop supplies to Europe if Qaddafi continued to kill – and indeed the pipeline to Italy is now dry.
This is an Arab 1848
by Tariq Ali
The refusal of the people to kiss or ignore the rod that has chastised them for so many decades has opened a new chapter in the history of the Arab nation. The absurd, if much vaunted, neocon notion that Arabs or Muslims were hostile to democracy has disappeared like parchment in fire.
Those who promoted such ideas appear to the most unhappy: Israel and its lobbyists in Euro-America; the arms industry, hurriedly trying to sell as much while it can (the British prime minister acting as a merchant of death at the Abu Dhabi arms fair); and the beleaguered rulers of Saudi Arabia, wondering whether the disease will spread to their tyrannical kingdom. Until now they have provided refuge to many a despot, but when the time comes where will the royal family seek refuge? They must be aware that their patrons will dump them without ceremony and claim they always favoured democracy.
If there is a comparison to be made with Europe it is 1848, when the revolutionary upheavals left only Britain and Spain untouched – even though Queen Victoria, thinking of the Chartists, feared otherwise. Writing to her besieged nephew on the Belgian throne, she expressing sympathy but wondered whether “we will all be slain in our beds”. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown or bejewelled headgear, and has billions stored in foreign banks.
Voices
by Wislawa Szymborska
You scarcely move your foot when out of nowhere spring
the Aborigines, O Marcus Aemilius.
Your heel’s mired in the very midst of Rutulians.
In Sabines, and Latins you’re sinking up to your knees.
You’re up to your waist, your neck, your nostrils
in Aequians and Volscians, O Lucius Fabius.
These small peoples are thick as flies, to the point of irritation,
satiation and nausea, O Quintus Decius.
One town, another, the hundred seventieth.
The stubbornness of Fidenates. The ill-will of the Faliscans.
The blindness of Ecetrans. The vacillation of the
Antemnates.
The studied animosity of the Lavicanians, the Pelignians.
That’s what drives us benevolent men to harshness
beyond each new hill, o Gaius Cloelius.
If only they weren’t in our way, but they are,
the Auruncians, the Marsians, O Spurius Manlius.
The Tarquinians from here and there, the Etruscans from
everywhere.
The Volsinians besides. The Veientins to boot.
Beyond all reason the Aulercians. Ditto the Sapinians
beyond all human patience, O Sextus Oppius.
Small peoples have small understanding.
Stupidity surrounds us in an ever-widening circle.
Objectionable customs. Benighted laws.
Ineffectual gods, O Titus Vilius.
Mounds of Hernicians. Swarms of Marrucianians.
An insect-like multitude of Vestians, of Samnites.
The farther you go the more there are, O Servius Follius.
Deplorable are small peoples.
Their irresponsibility bears close watching
beyond each new river, O Aulus Junius.
I feel threatened by every new horizon.
That’s how I see the problem, O Hostius Melius.
To that I, Hostius Melius, reply to you,
O Appius Pappius: Forward. Somewhere out there the world
must have an end.
– Wislawa Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1996. Poem courtesy of Andrew Bacevich.
Death and Destruction in Libya
UPDATE: The regime is collapsing. The minister of interior Gen. Abdulfatah Younis, whom Gaddafi praised in his speech, has just resigned and joined the revolution.
Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal reaches the Egyptian side of the border with Libya and begins to receive reports from those fleeing the country in revolt.
Civilians have rushed to the Al Jazeera team with memory sticks, telling him they contain images of “horrific scenes”: planes and helicopter gunships firing indiscriminately, and mercenaries breaking into homes and “slaughtering” people.
