BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR, a major figure in the Icelandic Revolution and now parliamentarian, is in a legal battle with the U.S. Department of Justice over TWEETS!
She posted this message:
“Overview @EFF on my ongoing legal battle with the USA #DoJ in relation to my volunteer work for #WikiLeaks in 2010. https://t.co/H2W2TGMk.”
I hope readers will circulate this information. It’s important for everyone.
As we watch, helpless, the Greatest Imperial Power the world has ever known is allowing itself to be propelled into the Greatest War Ever Fought in pursuit of the oil that will enable it to continue to grow until it snuffs out human life. The presence in the White House of an eminently educated, aware man, has been no match for the Darth Vader like forces intent on seeing the 99% march lemming-like off a cliff.
Hyperbole? I don’t think so: Even in the good old days of the Cold War there were enough weapons around to wipe out most of humanity: now they have proliferated, and a very small country is playing a game of chicken with the rest of us, supposedly to save itself from annihilation. Israel has not signed the non-proliferation treaty, and no one (except perhaps our president) knows how many nuclear weapons and delivery systems it has. The Jewish state claims to fear annihilation by Iran, which claims it’s not producing weapons but nuclear fuel for the day when its oil runs out. (Unrelatedly, but similarly, Greece, which teeters on the brink of a default which could, theoretically, bring down the carefully nurtured ten year old Euro system, claims, with similar dramatic emphasis, that it is being ‘threatened’ by a fellow NATO member, Turkey, forcing it to cut pensions and salaries in order to preserve its military budget. Is there something about Mediterranean peoples that inclines to overstatement? The Greek-Turkey standoff has been going on for so long that it isn’t even worth my while to Google it. My eighties book on the (then) potential for reunification of Europe, has an annex on the Greek/Turkish standoff. I haven’t revisited the issue since, but it seems that nothing has changed. (Cyprus comes into this equation, but it is more complicated than that.)
The Sunni/Shi’a divide, epitomized by Iran and Saudi Arabia, as I pointed out in a recent blog, is as relevant to all of this as the survival of a small state that refuses to play nice because it has a powerful backer – or the geopolitics of oil. Iran had a democratically elected president in 1953, (Mossadegh) who was overthrown by the CIA. Then, in the eighties, when Sunni-ruled Iraq waged an eight-year war on Shi’a Iran, we backed Iraq (under the same Saddam Hussein whom we would overthrow in 2003…). That ultimately gave us Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution (a modern outcome of Shi’a ideology). Iran’s client state Syria has been ruled by a Shi’te sect, the Alawites, for decades. Putting an end to the civil war that opposes a mainly Sunni population to President Bashar Al Assad via military intervention of one type or another is not so much going to ‘isolate‘ Iran, as it will protect Israel. (Syria has been known as ‘the front-line state‘ by Palestinians and their supporters, because unlike Israel’s other border states – but like Iran – it has been a staunch Palestinian ally.)
European progressive blogs suggest the U.S. intends to choose a ship that has outlived its usefulness and sink it in the Straits of Hormuz, claiming it to be an act of war by Iran. If this sounds far-fetched, Franklin Roosevelt, who knew of the Japanese intent to bomb Pearl Harbor, moved our newer ships out of harm’s way. And of course there was the shelling of the Maine off of Havana in 1898, used as a pretext for war with Spain and the acquisition of Cuba.
We can expect war with Iran and regime change in Syria, unless the thought of the combined capabilities of Russia and China forces Washington to rethink its justification for supporting Israel, right or wrong. Our closest ally Britain, is already involved in preserving the U.S. Sixth Fleet’s Bahrain base, where the ever down-trodden Shi’a of the Arab world are saying ‘Enough!‘ (A former high-ranking member of Scotland Yard, forced to resign in the wake of the Murdoch phone hacking scandal, quickly found new employment training the Gulf monarchy’s police…..)
While the U.S. is still behaving as though together with its allies like Israel and Great Britain, it dictates world outcomes, the world goes about its business without us. On February 20, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan held their third trilateral conference – this one focusing officially on counter-terrorism – in Islamabad, but also providing a venu for Iran to affirm its rights and its position in the region.
Brinksmanship is only justified in a world in which one major game is being played. The information isolation of Americans, feeling safe between two giant seas, is a tragedy, for it leaves them ignorant of the other games being played on the world stage.
I recommend replacing MSNBC with Al Jazeera, which can be found once a day in most areas, and also, RT, the coy acronym for Russia’s English Service, which, with the participation of American and British journalists, gets Putin’s message across, but also much of importance to Americans.
Observers seem surprised that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has accepted to create a multi-party system, even as he goes on killing his people. A Facebook comment by a young Iranian woman a few days ago, tells why: all systems, all regimes, are equally undemocratic.
So Syria’s Russian allies must have suggested that a parliamen-tary system wouldn’t change anything, and after all, it’s an elegant way out.
Although that fact is staring them in the fact on their own streets, they didn’t realize that the Syrian rebels, whoever they are, like the young Iranian woman on Facebook, have known for some time that democracy is only a word, and that in one way or another, to one extent or another, leaders always manage to get around it.
Until the 99% get the gist.
A month or so ago the media had fun with a shot of Mitt Romney crossing his legs as he tried to deal with an embarrassing question from an interviewer.
Today’s picture of President Obama meeting at the White House with the future president of China could give rise to similar comments, but except perhaps from Fox News, they are unlikely to be forthcoming.
Chinese vice-president Xi, a slightly burly man, sat obviously at ease legs apart, at the standard diagonal angle from his host, who could be observed with legs tightly crossed.
Meanwhile, in one of those serendipitousmoments, RT (Russian Television) showed Chinese president Hu Jintao receiving Europe’s financial leaders in Peking, where they had come to solicit help from the country they had brought to its knees with the Opium wars a hundred and fifty years ago.
Following the news, RT underlined the Shi’a/Sunni divide in Bahrain (see my yesterday’s blog), and aired a smartly produced program entitled ‘The Spirit of Resistance’ about grass roots opposition to government and corporate greed in half a dozen developing countries.
And a retired army colonel, Douglass MacGregor, spoke brutally about the America’s continued presence in Iraq, saying Obama had capitulated over everything.
The program airs from Washington. Is there more to Obama’s crossed legs than meets the eye?
Yesterday’s news made me realize I had neglected a fifth item in my last blog. Several channels mentioned the Shi’a in their coverage of the troubled Muslim countries of Bahrein, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria. It should be clear by now that a very old antagonism hovers in the background of the story about oil. Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan are the largest majority Shi’a countries. But Shi’a constitute nearly forty percent of the total Muslim population of the Middle East. The Shi’a arc begins in India, where they constitute around one third of the Muslim population of that predominantly Hindu country. Shi’a constitute a majority in Azerbaijan, with significant minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kurdistan. Iran and Iraq and tiny Bahrein have majority Shi’a populations. but Shi’a also make up over 35% of the population in Lebanon, over 45% in Yemen, approximately 30% in Kuwait, over 20% in Turkey, and 15% in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Roughly speaking, the Shi’a constitute a northern arc beginning in central Asia, and encompassing up to 200 million people.
The Sunni arc occupies the southern rim of the Middle East and Near East landmass, starting at the tip of the Arabian peninsula in Yemen, and centered in Saudi Arabia, the most powerful Sunni country, where religious authority is held by the puritan Salafists, whose Wahhabism inspired Al Qaeda. Along the Mediterranean lies Egypt, which since the days of Nasser has had a strong national and secular component, followed by have the countries of the Magreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, the Western Sahel and finally, up its west coast, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.
The Sunni/Shi’a fault line of the Eurasian continent where these two arcs meet is deepening, and the current fight over the future of Syria is the first round in a larger fight between Islam’s Sunnis and Shi’a as to which will dominate the Middle East. A resurgence of the traditionally down-trodden Shi’a across the Muslim world is a subset of the Arab Spring, but its ramifications go beyond the Arab or Muslim world.
Repeated visits by Iran’s President Ahmedinejad to Latin America do not seem incongruous if one considers the fact that Shi’ism has always been the revolutionary form of Islam, making it a natural ally of left-wing secular regimes, however far-flung. In the seventh century, Mohammed’s cousin and designated successor, Ali, was brutally struck down by representatives of the merchant class. His followers, most of whom are ruled by wealthy Sunni majorities, represent the Muslim 99%.0 A must read if one is to understand the importance of Shi’ism today, is Resistance : The Essence of the Islamist Revolution by the British international civil servant Alastair Crooke. It gives the lie to lose talk about ‘terrorism’, and shows just how handicapped our diplomates would be in a philosophical conversation with them.
The Iranian Islamic revolution, changed the Shia–Sunni power equation in Muslim countries from Lebanon to India, arousing the traditionally subservient Shia, to the alarm of traditionally dominant Sunnis. What makes Syria unique is that it involves a reverse Sunni-Shi’a divide: strongly backed by Shi’a Iran, the Alawi minority, a Shi’a sect, rules over a majority Sunni population while its neighbor Lebanon, which it dominated militarily from 1975 to 2005, continues under the influence of Hezbollah, a fighting Shi’a minority.
When the veil of ignorance about Shi’ism is torn away, it becomes clear why both Russia and China have opposed strong measures against Syria: In a special section of the January 21st Economist , both these superpowers are described as paragons of State Capitalism. What is significant about this assessment by a conservative publication is that the purpose of State Capitalism is to create greater equality among the classes. (On a more prosaic note, Russia must also bear in mind the majority Shi’a population in Azerbaijan, and China must be mindful of the 2% of Muslims, located mainly in the areas that border Central Asia, Tibet and Mongolia, i.e. Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinighai provinces, known as the “Quran Belt”.
America’s commitment to Israel – the main thing that interests many Americans - must be seen in this light. It was born of belated shame for Franklin Roosevelt’s refusal to grant asylum to Jews being slaughtered by Hitler. Then, as things evolved in the neighborhood of the Jewish Homeland, Israel, founded on modern, democratiic principles, was our natural ally against the majority Others: ‘backward’ Arabs, whose oil we coveted. The Janus tail of oil supply and Zionism is now wagging the American dog, forcing us to permit behavior by the one that endangers the other.
It is folly to believe that we can somehow make everything right for Israel, but if we follow the daily news, we can see that America is determined to steer the political turmoil among her neighbors to its advantage. There is nothing new about this. The Eurozone crisis is the long-term consequence of America’s post-World War II domination of Western Europe, which began with the ‘generous’ Marshall Plan: we saved Europe from the Nazis in order to remake it in our cowboy capitalist image. Then, using the tools of the late twentieth century, we did the same to Eastern Europe. Now, as the European 99% rebel against the world America created, and the remedies being forced down their throats after its failure, we are determined to steer the Arab Spring toward political/financial regimes that will espouse that model.
Fortunately for us and for them, its people see the writing on the wall.
Events come thick and fast. No time to write every day. So here are four briefs, each of which do not, in my opinion, warrant 500 words from me, because others provide that. What they don’t provide are the backstories:
1) Greedy Bastards: Kudos to MSNBC’s Dylan Rattigan for showing that there are solutions to most every problem, and when individuals decide to find them, they can. One comment: greedy doesn’t just happen, didn’t even just happen because one thing led to another and people had fun playing with other people’s lives: American Greed is forged in the classroom: what else to expect when, from nursery school on, kids are taught to do better than their piers, to come out on top, to win the prize. In the recent Nation (Nov, 16th 2011) marking 20 years since the overthrow of the Soviet Union, Russians are reported as often being nostalgic for the sense of solidarity that was part of the Communist ethos (if not always practiced by the State). Anna Makarenko, the great Soviet educator of the early 20th century, gave Soviet education a firm basis in cooperation. Our system couldn’t be more different.
2) The turmoil the world is experiencing has two layers(inadvertent shades of Marx…): the economic layer is recognized as a worldwide phenomenon, hurting the poor and the poverty-stricken in every nation. But there is a deeper layer, whether North or South, East or West, and that is religion. In the Middle Ages Christians fought Muslims for hundreds of years, embarking on veritable ‘crusades’. But only listen to the Tea Party’s latest standard-bearer, Rick Santorum, and it’s clear that the United States is in the midst of a home-grown religious crusade, even while it fights Muslims abroad. And the fervor is matched. (I agree that the religious war has been reawakened partly to counter improving employment numbers, with a view ousting Obama in November. (Although Born-Again Christianity has made inroads abroad, it is unlikely to every be as powerful in secular-minded Europe as in Africa or Latin America, but nonetheless, the world is embroiled in a financial crisis doubled with a multi-pronged religious war.)
3) Religions are not people. Probably inspired by Mitt Romney’s famous quip that corporations are people, Rick Santorum (again) appears determined to establish that religions, too, are people, and should not have to pay for health care items that contradict ‘its’ conscience. (We used to say, its teachings, but note the slippery slope among Catholic opponents of the President’s new initiative.)
4) Finally, to understand what is happening in Syria, look at Egypt. These two countries are the most powerful of Israel’s neighbors: for decades we paid handsomely to keep Egypt at least neutral where Israel was concerned. Now the Egyptian people have overthrown the ruler we pampered, and are determined to have their say in their country’s policies. It’s not the Muslim Brotherhood that is to be feared, nor even the Salafists per se, but the momentum built up by people who have lost their fear. No matter who sits at the top of the pyramid, Egypt can no longer be expected to support Israel, as it continues to cut off it nose to spite its face. By arresting NGO workers and threatening to put them on trial, Egypt’s new rulers are taking a page from Iran, which arrested and tried American tourists (who, contrary to the aid workers in Egypt, were most likely just tourists).
Whatever the way they treat their people, Egypt’s (‘interim’) rulers have every reason to suspect that with Mubarak gone, the United States is trying desperately to ensure their loyalty, by, among other means, enlisting the cooperation of NGO workers (such as the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood).
The situation in Egypt leads to a very plausible suspicion that the uprising in Syria has been aided and abetted by the United States. It is likely that a considerable number of Syrians are fed up with their government for any number of reasons, be they religious, tribal or economic. But is it unlikely that American agents infiltrated from Israel – or when possible from Lebanon – have had a hand in encouraging and perhaps arming their discontent? I find that irresistibly plausible. Just think of the increased danger Israel has been in since the birth, a year ago, of the Arab Spring. Aside from that, not a day goes by without Israel and its protector, the United States, threatening Iran, because that country could eventually produce the nuclear weapons that Israel already has. If Israel were to give in to its worst demons and actually assault Iran, would it not feel more secure if the Egyptian and Syrian governments could be counted on to remain neutral?
The prospects are currently not good in Egypt. All the more reason for the White House, yesterday, to have mooted, for the first time, the possibility of considering some form of armed intervention against Syria’s Assad. Several news channels (perhaps the BBC and CNN – or maybe Democracy Now) showed a young Syrian man pointing to what was either a wounded or a dead young child, asking “How many Syrians have to die before you come to our rescue?”
That sounded very much like the anguished plea of someone who was led to expect Western support.
The piecemeal nature of the information that reaches the American public – as well as its leaders – prevents us from seeing discrete events within a larger framework, the ‘big picture’ that I have been writing about for years, and which is now the title of Thom Hartmann’s show on Russia’s English language TV channel.
What’s the big picture in the Middle East? 1) Our client governments are trying to keep their people down, using increasingly brutal methods, which we are forced to condemn, but which differ only by degrees from our own. 2) The United States helps them hang on to power until the last minute, then backs the rebels we think will keep their country in our camp. Not only because we need their oil, but because a radical shift toward independent power in that region puts Israel in real danger (as opposed to the boogeyman dangers it has been crying wolf about for decades: first Iraq, now Iran).
It is no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood is defying the military rulers of Egypt after first supporting them following Mubarak’s ouster: the Brotherhood’s new generation of leaders are more interested in seeing their country break free of America’s virtual occupation – and its concomitant support of Israel – than in checking on headscarves.
As for Russia and China’s dogged support of Syria, it’s not only about a Mediterranean port for the former, and business for the latter: it’s about the Big Two’s support for Iran, that has long backed Syria as the ‘front line state’ in the stand-off with Israel. But more broadly, it’s about never allowing to be done to other rulers what you do not want done to you: that is, interference in the ‘internal affairs’ of a country, which usually ends in the deposition of the rulers.
The double veto of the Arab League’s initiative at the U.N. to condemn President Assad was followed tonight in the United States by the first mention of the inevitability of military intervention: it will be undertaken as much in the hope of installing a govenment friendly to Israel as to ‘save’ the Syrian people. But that is not likely to succeed.
No more than the Egyptians, are Syrians, once free, likely to befriend Israel. Yet Israel focuses obsessively on Iran’s putative nuclear program. Its leaders apparently believe the United States will be able to exact tacit support from new Arab leaders for its protection of Israel, whereas we cannot prevent Iran from lobbing a missile at it.
But Israel is in a state of denial: the flames predicted for years by Arab leaders as it became ever more intransigent toward the Palestinians, are erupting with greater ferocity than anyone imagined, because they are part of a bigger picture: worldwide revolt against America’s military and cultural domination, in which Israel has become a junior partner.
Fixated on the supposed deleterious influence of Islam, we have failed to recognize that the Muslim world’s people and their new leaders possess far greater ideological literacy than our politicians. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists on speaking to them as an unelected leader, it is clear that the United States cannot see the forest fire for the trees.
Were Israel to grant independence to the Palestinians tomorrow, the fire would not be contained.
The fact that Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who wants us to stop being the world’s policeman shows how schizophrenic our political system has become.
Paul’s motives appear to be mainly related to his crusade for minimal government. But even so, why is it perfectly all right for a Republican to campaign for an end to our imperial policies, while no ‘Democratic’ candidate would be allowed to do likewise?
The two oceans that spared us direct implication in Asian and European wars – other than for the purpose of steering these areas in directions beneficial to us – have, sadly, isolated 100% of Americans from any notion of social progress. Not even ‘progressive’ pundits dare to break the taboo against socialism.
Green Parties exist all over the world, and are influential in many European countries. The American Green Party espouses the same progressive policies, but like other third parties, it continues to be marginalized. The idea that the United States could benefit from systems that have been time-tested elsewhere is anathema. The Euro crisis is a handy scapegoat; but it was largely caused by participation in our financial capers. Nor are Americans told that the European 99 percent are better protected against its social fallout. (German industry has people working shorter hours instead of laying them off, and the French are determined to see through a tax on financial transactions which we can scarcely imagine. European demonstrations do not indicate that European workers are worse off than ours, but that they have a vibrant tradition of protest.)
American news of police brutality toward Occupiers in dozens of cities across the country<http://occupywallst.org/, is relegated to brief news crawls. The public can be forgiven for thinking the movement is over, when in fact it is part of the worldwide movement for radical change that has built on that tradition.
Appearing to ignore the growing strength of the 99%, both Democratic and Republican candidates claim ‘compassion’ while denying that in a country of 300,000,000, government must see to it that compassionate policies are implemented. (Some will say this is easier to achieve in small countries with homogeneous populations. Whatever their failings, the former Communist China and the former Soviet Union belie this myth.)
Republican candidates in Florida are out of touch with second and third generation Cuban-Americans, who see that Cuban socialism is evolving peacefully. Would any sane person disagree with Fidel Castro’s description of the Republican race “as the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been”, as Haiti continues to flounder under our auspices, and Puerto Ricans can only dream of independence?
Rick Santorum called loudly for us to take back the Southern Hemisphere, even as four of its leaders welcome Iranian president Ahmedinejad. Brandishing the threat of Islamic terrorists entering the US through Latin America, he fails to understand that Iran/Latin American ties represent a logical common anti-imperialist stance, since both Shi’ism and socialism represent a defense of the underdog.
The bottom line is that contrary to the President’s blustering assertions, both parties know that neither hundreds of overseas bases nor leaner, meaner drone warfare will prevent this from being the Chinese century.
George Lakey, the father of framing, has framed the argument for Americans to pay attention to Europe’s social systems in a way they can understand: by relating how the Swedish and Norwegian 99% got out from under their respective 1 percents in a non-violent but determined and organized way – STARTING A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
Here’s the link: www.alternet.org/story/153929/how_swedes_and_norwegians_broke_the_power_of_the_‘1_percent’?akid=8187.287959.vXcRI5&rd=1&t=5
ATTENTION ALL OCCUPIERS AND RECENT PUFFIN WINNERS.
On the first anniversary of Egypt’s Revolution that dethroned a thirty-year dictator, activists lament the continuing power of his army, while Americans worry about the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood. Little by little it’s becoming clear that fundamentalism and military control are not limited to Third World countries trying to achieve ‘democracy’. The most powerful democracy in the world increasingly uses drones to spy on its citizens and assassinate enemies – or unlucky by-standers – around the world.
As usual, I’ve raised two issues here, but they are related: one is the increasing clout of fundamentalists in all religions, the other is rulers’ increasing recourse to military means to control populations.
Fundamentalists are not generally perceived as threats by governments. They tend to approve of the use of force to force conversions, but more ‘fundamentally’ , obedience to any higher power, be it God or a President, implies a willingness to accept that power’s use of force. As I have written in ‘A Taoist Politics’, both the Judeo-Christian ethic and Islamic morality are based on God’s perceived power over life and death.
Thus it is not surprising that American military bases and academies have increasingly made room for religious services, fostering a simultaneous commitment to God and the use of force.
Nor is it surprising that our twenty-first century enemies go by names such as Al Shabaab (Movement of Striving Youth) in Somalia, or Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law) in Yemen. Have we not fundamentalist militia groups preparing to take on the American government, which they see as opposed to their moral convictions?
Not to mention well-funded movements of American evangelical Christians who oppose “both modernism in theology and the cultural changes that modernism endorses”? <en.wikipedia.org/wiki Christian_ fundamentalism# Militancy_ and_ evangelicals>.
The fact that Tea Partiers and associated groups tend to believe in competition rather than cooperation is really a detail compared to the fact that they, like Islamic fundamentalists, believe women should be subservient to men, and that real men carry guns.
Every time I open my mailbox, out come tumbling desperate pleas for money, like so manhy outstretched hands. First I wondered why we need mail service if nine-tenths of what it delivers are either advertisements or pleas for help. Then I began to wonder about the organizations sending out those pleas: they are in fact doing what should be the work of the entire polity, represented by the government.
Then I begin to wonder why we have so many volunteer organizations. That’s another way to keep rich people’s taxes low: they don’t like handing over their ‘hard-earned’ money, but volunteering – a form of charity – makes them feel good.
And when I receive please from NGOs, I further wonder whether they would be so ubiquitous if governments were taking care of the world. I don’t mean organizations like the Red Cross, but Oxfam and all those others that try desperately to save lives in war or disaster areas. Governments and international governmental agencies such as the UN should have sufficient budgets and personnel to take care of the world’s victims.
Think of all the paper, ink, postage, carriers needed to turn your mailbox into the equivalent of the beggar on the street, as our political parties dispute the role of government. That battle is actually going nowhere, because the Democrats want to provide safety nets while saving cowboy capitalism – much as Gorbachev hoped to save Communism – with too few innovations too late.
During the Cold War academics argued over whether the two systems would one day ‘converge’. What’s happened is that both have accepted to subsume human needs to those of capital, and now their respective peoples, together with most others, are working to create societies based on direct or participatory democracy rather than the representative democracy that are more or less a sham everywhere. That’s what the Occupy Movement and the revolts spreading over the globe like wildfire are about.
And if they succeed, we won’t need mailboxes anymore.
The extraordinary January 9th issue of The Nation is worth reading not only for what three articles say about the twenty years since the Soviet Union was abolished, but for what their writers reveal about the little-known event and even more importantly, about nostalgia for what we could only see as a monstrosity. This is important not only with respect to our misguided view of how the Soviet Union was experienced by its peoples. It can be extrapolated to crucial current events in Syria and Iran, bearing in mind that the Shi’a have traditionally been the down-trodden in Islam.
Vadim Nikitin, a Soviet-born Russia analyst, quotes a book by Berkeley sociologist Alexei Yurchak “Everything was Forever Until It Was No More’, who writes: “An undeniable constitutive part of today’s phenomenon of post-Soviet nostalgia, is the longing for the very real humane values, ethics, friendships and creative possibilities that were as irreducibly part of the everyday life of (late) socialism as were the feelings of dullness and alienation”. (A 17 year old describes a post-Soviet person as “one who is lost in this world. He is totally naked – spiritually, materially, nationally”.)
According to a memoir of daily post-war life by Gorbatchev associate Valentin Tolstykh’s “The Way We were: The Soviet Person as He Is” (2008):”Though sheltered, naive and conformist, the Soviet Person was also trusting, communal and idealistic, qualities that find little scope of expression in Russia’s current cutthroat capitalist system. The essential traits of the Soviet Person: collectivism, internationalism, and awareness have been replaced by indifference.”
I’m especially indebted to Nikitin, because I’ve been trying to get across the notion that the rulers of Iran, Syria and Libya have had sincere followers among their people because their leadership, however brutal or corrupt, has been based on very real humane values. Nikitin describes these as ‘collectivism, internationalism and awareness’, while the Occupy movement and the revolts across the globe would describe them as cooperation, interdependence and respect for Otherness.
Right now, the airwaves are buzzing with warnings about Iran, and pundits exhibit a genuine incomprehension of Russia and China’s reluctance to support sanctions. The reasons are the same that dictate these leaders’ interest in an international system of government. Naomi Klein describes it as ‘an alternative worldview’ in her recent exceptional article ‘Capitalism vs. the Climate’ www.thenation.com/search/apachesolr_search/Capitlism%20vs.%20The%20Climate.
Everything comes together for those who make connections rather than focusing on ‘facts’.
