We celebrate today the 60th Anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Against War March on Washington which ended the Vietnam War, an enduring example of solidarity over division and the triumph of love over hate.
Newly relevant this year as a primary strategy of ending Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s in Gaza, the refusal of soldiers to fight unjust wars for the profit of others has always been about solidarity against those who would enslave us as revolutionary class struggle; nowhere is there a more stunning, revelatory, and immediate example of this than in the peace movement of the American soldiers who ended the Vietnam War, and on this week’s anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Against War March on Washington we celebrate the truly heroic and visionary warriors for humanity whose actions will illuminate our path throughout history.
This is our best hope for ending the horrors of the vast war crimes that are the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel genocide of the Palestinians, and for ending all wars forever; the voluntary abandonment of the use of social force by the people on whom authority must rely for the enforcement of their hegemony of wealth, power, and privilege.
The redemptive power of love can triumph over hate, solidarity over divisions of elite membership and exclusionary otherness, exposure and the sacred pursuit of truth over falsification and the propaganda and lies of authority, and refusal to submit or obey over tyranny and terror both as war and as the carceral police state.
“The way to stop war is to just walk away, and say fuck it”; with these immortal words Ken Kesey proclaimed to the masses gathered in protest against the war in Vietnam in 1964, sixty years ago now, the path of renunciation of violence, and of its industrialization as war. Words which will echo through history, enshrined in the The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe’s novelization of the great trek on the bus Furthur in 1964 to enlighten humankind with Dionysian rituals of music and ecstasy through free love and LSD.
And stop the war they did, not simply with this incantation but with the mass action of veterans and serving members of the Armed Forces who went on strike all over the world, lay down their arms, and refused to fight for a government which had deceived and betrayed them.
Mass action protests and communal rituals of exaltation and transcendence share common origins as theatre, and as aspects of revolutionary struggle serve to challenge authority but also act as forces of social cohesion and interdependence. Here is the great opportunity of the dispossessed; the marginalized and the powerless, the silenced and the erased, in seizures of power and autonomy.
Here also is the danger, for the alliance of sectarian and political ideologies harnessed to narratives of victimization, plus submission to charismatic leaders and the emergence of authority which shapes generalized and overwhelming fear into identitarian nationalisms of blood, faith, and soil, is how we find ourselves enslaved to tyrannies of force and control and exploited by divisions of exclusionary otherness in service to elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege.
In the history of humankind few events have demonstrated the power of solidarity to transform the nature of our relationships as liberation than a war ended by soldiers who refused to fight it. And this is its great lesson for our future.
Let the forces of fascism and tyranny find not a humankind abject in learned helplessness and submission to authority, crippled and dehumanized by the legacies of historical inequalities and injustices and divided by hierarchies of exclusionary otherness, but united in solidarity and refusal to submit to force and control; for in resistance we become Unconquerable and free.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
As described by the Zinn History Project; “On April 24, 1971, 500,000 people demonstrated against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. It was the largest-ever demonstration opposing a U.S. war. Simultaneously, 150,000 people marched at a rally in San Francisco.
Prior to the massive rally, Vietnam Veterans Against the War staged a week-long series of demonstrations culminating in a protest at the U.S. Capitol where veterans threw back their service medals.
During the weeks following the April 24 protest, massive civil disobedience was conducted attempting to shut down the U.S. government during the People’s Coalition for Peace & Justice and Mayday demonstrations.”
“In the 1960’s an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn’t take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services.”
As witnessed in the newspaper of the VVAW, The Veteran, April 1977 volume 7, number2; “On Friday morning, the final day of the demonstration, the veterans lined up and marched to the Capitol Building. By now the number had grown to over 1000. Once at the Capitol they placed a sign marked “Trash” on a statue. One by one each vet approached the statue and a microphone. The vets told their names, their units, and many made statements against the war; then, angrily, they threw their war medals over the fence at the statue and at the Capitol Building itself.
One veteran threw away his nine Purple Hearts. Another threw over the fence a can he used as a result of a war injury. And on and on it went. Discharge papers, Silver Stars, Bronze Stars, Purple hearts. In all, literally thousands of medals were thrown back at the government that had sent each of the veterans to fight for the US ruling class. Never before had such a demonstration occurred by war veterans. It was unprecedented in the history of the country that veterans protested in such a unified and dramatic way their opposition to a war that was still raging on the other side of the world.
The sentiments of the vets was expressed best by one veteran who tossed his medals away and stated: “If we have to fight again, it will be to take these steps.”
With this action the demonstration ended. It abounded in lessons for all vets. During the course of the week the veterans had stood up to and beat all the attempts that the government had used to stop the demonstration. The vets backed down the most powerful apparatus of the country–the President, the Supreme court, the Congress. It forged a unity that was carried on afterwards among the veterans and their organization, VVAW. It precipitated the largest demonstration that ever occurred in Washington–on Saturday, April 24th. It gave impetus to the May Day demonstrations where over 10,000 demonstrators were arrested for fighting against the war. And it gave the American people a clear insight that the war in Vietnam was opposed even by those who fought it.”
As the film Sir! No Sir! Teaches us, “We truly believed that what will stop this war is when soldiers stop fighting it.”
Biden’s historic Armenian Remembrance Day speech of 2021 on this day, the first official recognition of the Armenian Genocide by America, went as follows; “Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination. We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.
Today, as we mourn what was lost, let us also turn our eyes to the future—toward the world that we wish to build for our children. A world unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance, where human rights are respected, and where all people are able to pursue their lives in dignity and security.”
Thus has our President and our nation given warning to the tyrannies of the world that we will defend the universal human rights which supersede the claims of any nation, and defend the people from unjust governments when necessary. In the context of the Armenian Genocide, especially this warrant is served to the regimes of Erdogan of Turkey and Putin of Russia, who between them now contest for the dominion of the Middle East and the Mediterranean in pursuit of refounding their former historic empires prior to the First World War.
With recognition must come reparations by Turkey, and the restoration of a sovereign and independent Armenian homeland. While the boundaries of Tigranes the Great’s Armenia included Jerusalem and all of Syria from Damascus and Palmyra to the sea, I think some compromise may be able to be worked out, considering that Turkey wants NATO support for its seizure of Libya’s oil fields through a puppet regime which is threatened by Russia’s massive line of Libyan fortifications and mercenary army; surely this vast wealth and dominion of the Mediterranean would be worth the price of justice for Armenia. Turkey and Iran may also find a buffer state useful, as Iran and Russia support the brutal Assad regime in Syria against the Turkish army and other liberation forces of secular democracy.
There remains the smouldering powder keg of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Russian and Turkish proxy forces, both a Civil War and Great Powers conflict which has been a theatre of World War Three. In this Turkish interests align with those of Europe and of America as a guarantor of our universal human rights and of democracy.
A Turkish fleet, especially one allied and integrated with joint NATO-EU forces, could end the war in Ukraine by liberating the seaboard and the Black Sea.
And with America undergoing a Restoration of democracy and independence from Russian conquest in the wake of our repudiation of her puppet Trump, a new willingness to challenge Russia’s imperial conquest of Ukraine, to liberate Russia’s vassal state of Belarus and Russia itself in support of the mass democracy movements which now challenge Putin’s tyrannical regime and imperial dominion, now is an excellent moment for a realignment of Turkey with America.
We have a chance to forge a peace together, Turkey and America, in which both of us win. My hope in this is that the world’s champions and guarantors of democracy, freedom, equality, truth, and in the case of the Armenian people most especially justice, may yet find a way forward to throwing words instead of stones, as Sigmund Freud taught us.
As written by the historian Heather Cox Richardson in her daily current events newsletter; “In his first major speech as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken laid out the principles of the Biden administration in foreign policy, emphasizing that this administration believed foreign and domestic policy to be profoundly linked. Biden’s people would support democracy at home and abroad to combat the authoritarianism rising around the world… including in the U.S.
“The more we and other democracies can show the world that we can deliver, not only for our people, but also for each other, the more we can refute the lie that authoritarian countries love to tell, that theirs is the better way to meet people’s fundamental needs and hopes. It’s on us to prove them wrong,” Blinken said. “So the question isn’t if we will support democracy around the world, but how.” He answered: “We will use the power of our example. We will encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad laws, fight corruption, and stop unjust practices. We will incentivize democratic behavior.”
President Joe Biden has set out a foreign policy that focuses on human rights and reaches out more to foreign peoples than to their governments, heartening protesters in authoritarian countries.
On Saturday, Biden issued a document declaring that the displacement and slaughter of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans in 1915 was a “genocide.” The U.S. had previously refused to recognize the ethnic cleansing for what it was because of the strategic importance of Turkey to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO (among other things, Turkey holds the straits that control access to the Black Sea, on which Russia and Ukraine, as well as other countries, sit).
Biden’s recognition of the Armenian genocide is a reflection of the fact that Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is increasingly close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Taliban, and appears to be abandoning democracy in his own country, giving Biden the room to take a step popular in America but previously too undiplomatic to undertake. (Remember when Erdogan’s security staff beat up protesters in Washington, D.C., in 2017 and prosecutors dropped the charges?)
Erdogan greeted Biden’s announcement with anger, demanding he retract it, but he also said he expected to discuss all of the disputes between the U.S. and Turkey at the June NATO summit. Geopolitics in Erdogan’s part of the world are changing, as Putin is struggling at home with protests against his treatment of opposition leader Alexey Navalny and with the new U.S. sanctions that, by making it hard for him to float government bonds, could weaken his economy further. It is looking more and more likely that Biden and Putin will also have a summit early this summer.”
As written in the website of the Genocide Museum; “What is the Armenian Genocide?
The extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the surrounding regions during 1915-1923 is called the Armenian Genocide.
Those massacres were masterminded and perpetrated by the government of Young Turks and were later finalized by the Kemalist government.
The First World War gave the Young Turks the opportunity to settle accounts with Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, thus implementing the decision of the secret meeting of 1911 in Thessaloniki. The plan was to tukify the Muslims and to exterminate the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Talaat Pasha (Interior Minister), Enver Pasha (Minister of Military Affairs), Djemal Pasha (commander of the Palestinian Front), Behaeddin Shakir Bey (Young Turk Central Committee member) and others were among the orchestrators of the project.
Intending to annihilate Armenians, they wanted to eliminate the Armenian Question. Armenia and Armenians were an obstacle on the way of the project of the Young Turks. Their dream of “Great Turan” was to stretch from the Bosphorus to Altai. During the First World War the Young Turks perpetrated massacres against Assyrians, Greeks and Arabs living in the Ottoman Empire.
In February 1915 the military minister Enver Pasha ordered to eliminate the Armenian soldiers serving in the Army. On April 24 and the following days 800 Armenians were arrested in Constantinople and exiled to the depths of Anatolia. Armenian writers, journalists, doctors, scientists, clergymen, intellectuals including Armenian members of the parliament were among them. A part of them died on the way of the exile, while others died after reaching there. The first international response to the violence resulted in a joint statement by France, Russia and the Great Britain in May 1915, where the Turkish atrocities against the Armenians were defined as “a crime against humanity and civilization”. According to them, Turkish government was responsible for the implementation of the crime.
Why was the Armenian Genocide perpetrated?
When WWI erupted, the government of the Young Turks adopted the policy of Pan-Turkism, hoping to save the remains of the weakened Ottoman Empire. The plan was to create an enormous Ottoman Empire that would spread to China, include all the Turkish speaking nations of the Caucasus and Middle Asia, intending also to turkify all the ethnic minorities of the empire. The Armenian population became the main obstacle standing in the way of the realization of this policy. Besides, the constitution restored after the Revolution of 1908 promised equal rights to all citizens of the Ottoman Empire. Armenians enthusiastically embraced this opportunity, however the change of status of previously deprived Armenians increased the hostility of the Turks towards Christians. This hostility was formed long ago, as even in the conditions of deprivation Armenians of the Ottoman empire provided unprecedented social, cultural and economic development. The genocide was a means to suppress this ascent, as well as to seize the Armenian wealth created during decades.
The Young Turks used WWI as a suitable opportunity for the implementation of the Armenian genocide, although it was planned in 1911-1912.
How many people died in the Armenian Genocide?
There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire before the First World War. Approximately one and a half million Armenians were killed from 1915-1923. The remaining part was either islamized or exiled.
The mechanism of implementation
A genocide is the organized extermination of a nation aiming to put an end to their collective existence. Thus, the implementation of the genocide requires oriented programming and an internal mechanism, which makes genocide a state crime, as only a state possesses all the resources that can be used to carry out this policy.
The first phase of the Armenian Genocide was the conscription of about 60,000 Armenian men into the Ottoman army, their disarmament and murder by their Turkish fellow soldiers.
The second phase of the extermination of the Armenian population started on April 24, 1915 with the arrest of several hundred Armenian intellectuals and representatives of national elite (mainly in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople) and their subsequent elimination. Hereinafter, Armenians worldwide started to commemorate the Armenian genocide on April 24.
The third phase of the genocide is characterized with the exile of the massacres of women, children, elderly people to the desert of Syria. Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered by Turkish soldiers, police officers, Kurdish bandits during the deportation. The others died of epidemic diseases. Thousands of women and children were subjected to violence. Tens of thousands were forcibly islamized.
The fourth phase is the universal and absolute denial of the Turkish government of the mass deportations and genocide carried out against Armenians in their homeland. Despite the ongoing process of international condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey fights against recognition by all means, including distortion of history, means of propaganda, lobbying activities and other measures.”
As to more recent events which echo and reflect the Genocide of 1915 in the unfolding Nagorno-Karabakh Theatre of World War Three, here follow my journals of its progress.
September 26 2023 Victory in the Nagorno-Karabakh Theatre of World War Three As the Ukrainian Liberation of the Black Sea Gathers Momentum
Nagorno-Karabakh liberates herself from Russian occupation as Ukraine liberates the Black Sea, with glorious destruction of the Russian forces of occupation in Crimea and the deaths of the Russian Navy high command.
These event are related, as well as concurrent, for Russia is losing her grip on her colonies as Putin’s regime loses its authority.
Erdogan has outplayed Putin in this theatre of World War Three, one made complex with old vendettas and the legacies of history. But a predator is most dangerous when it is cornered and must win or be destroyed, and this is the moment when Putin will attack with the greatest possible savagery.
The liberation of the Black Sea and the Turkish eclipse of the Russian Empire in dominion of the Mediterranean means the end of threats of Russian conquest of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, but we are now in a race to regime change before Putin loses all his options of survival, for he might do anything, even unpredictable things.
For his finger rests on a button of global nuclear annihilation, and like an evil genie in a bottle it calls to him, whispering; “Set me free, and I’ll make you powerful.” This is why we must take his toys away with decisive action now, while we still can, before he realizes his cause is hopeless and his empire is lost.
Now is the time to destabilize the Russian client states of puppet tyrants throughout the world, sever the Gordian Knot of the Russia-China-Belarus pact, leverage American and international solidarity with Ukraine, and bring confusion to the enemy.
As written by Edwin Markham in The Gates of Paradise and Other Poems ”When you are anvil, bear; When you are hammer, strike.”
As written by Dan Sabbagh in The Guardian, in an article entitled Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh victory highlights limits of Russia’s power: With Moscow’s resources ‘clearly finite’ the Kremlin has had to adapt to Baku’s rising power; “Azerbaijan’s military victory in the extended 35-year conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh is a notable geopolitical setback for Russia, traditionally Armenia’s partner and ally.
Moscow’s post-Soviet strategy has often been to stoke conflicts to weaken its near neighbours, creating crises in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. But on this occasion the Kremlin has had to adapt to Azerbaijan’s rising power – showing a willingness to sacrifice an old ally.
At the beginning of the month, before the current crisis, Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s prime minister, rued that his country’s historic “99.999%” dependence on Russia as security partner had amounted to “a strategic mistake”.
By then it had long been clear Russia had become embroiled in a quagmire in Ukraine – and so would be unable to prevent Azerbaijan from finally regaining control of an enclave of territory in ethnic Armenian hands over which it had wanted to assert control since the fall of the Soviet Union.
“Russian resources are clearly finite,” said James Nixey, a Russia expert with the Chatham House thinktank. “Karabakh is clearly an issue of lesser importance to Moscow, it is not a place like Crimea or Syria from which it is possible to project force.”
“In a way, Russia chose the wrong country,” said Neil Melvin, a director at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank. “Azerbaijan is much closer to Russia: the two share a border. It is clear who is now the dominant force in the south Caucasus, and looks like it wants to align to them.”
Azerbaijan is a larger, wealthier country than Armenia and an autocracy, like Russia. The country’s economy, supported by large oil and significant gas reserves, is able to afford a more powerful military – its $2.64bn (£2.16bn) defence budget is 3.5 times its neighbour’s in dollar terms, according to figures from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Baku had already formed an effective alliance with Turkey that provided the Bayraktar TB2 drones that helped it win the last war in 2020, a 44-day autumn conflict in which Azerbaijan took control of the skies, bombing Armenia’s Soviet-era tanks and its allies in Nagorno-Karabakh.
It recaptured territories lost in 1994 and in the ensuing peace left only the core of Nagorno-Karabakh in ethnic Armenian hands, with nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeepers in place to control the borders and the protect the small Lachin corridor to Armenia proper.
But in the run-up to the Ukraine war, Azerbaijan also turned to Moscow. Its president, Ilham Aliyev, whose father was once a KGB official and a politburo member, travelled to Moscow two days before the invasion to sign an alliance agreement with Vladimir Putin. Azerbaijan later agreed to buy gas from Russia, raising questions whether it was using that to meet commitments to the EU.
Azerbaijan’s latest attack last week on Nagorno-Karabakh lasted only 24 hours. During the assault, a number of Russian peacekeepers were killed by Baku’s forces. Aliyev rang the Kremlin to apologise the next day, and the matter appears largely closed without Moscow making any significant complaint.
South of Azerbaijan lies Iran, one of Russia’s few close allies, and the three countries agreed in May they would build a new rail corridor along the Caspian Sea, although claims from Мoscow that it could create a trade route to rival that of the Suez Canal seem notably optimistic.
Armenia’s prime minister, meanwhile, has complained that the Moscow-dominated six-country Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) did not come to its aid, and some hope that it will now try to pivot to the west. Its parliament will now consider signing up to the international criminal court, which, if ratified, could prevent Putin, because he is indicted by The Hague, from visiting.
But that is a long way from Yerevan turning to the EU and Nato. “Look at the difficulties Ukraine is having joining the EU and Nato. A country like Armenia has no chance,” Nixey said. With a long-established Russian base, Gyumri, to protect it from Turkey to the west, a rapid realignment is impossible.
Russia’s inability or lack of desire to protect Armenia may not have any major implications for other post-Soviet frozen conflicts, because the countries involved have less power than Azerbaijan or simply less hostility to Moscow.
Magomed Torijev, a journalist and expert on the Caucasus region, said Georgia’s government was “increasingly friendly with Russia”, with no strong interest in trying to reclaim either South Ossetia or Abkhazia, while Moldova, with its own Transnistria separatists, was not ready to challenge the Kremlin.
In other countries, such as Syria, Russia’s alliance with the governing regime will help protect its position, and Moscow’s presence is likely to endure unless it is directly challenged. But what has changed, experts say, is that stronger countries such as Ukraine and Azerbaijan are willing and able to challenge Russia as never before.
“The reality is that Russia has been weakening for some time,” Melvin said.
As I wrote in my post of September 19 2022, Renewal of the Nagorno-Karabakh Theatre of World War Three; Among the many horrors of the multifront Third World War now being waged by Russia against democracy in the mad imperial conquest and dominion of Putin’s regime of war criminals and plutocrats, the renewal of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict along with the destabilization operations of the Russian puppet tyranny of Serbia against Bosnia and Kosovo together signal an active threat to Europe and the world.
As Putin’s conquest of Ukraine collapses in failure and ruin, with Russian soldiers running from the battlefields in total panic, rout, and mass desertions before the victorious army of Ukraine, and his plans of glorifying the power of his regime ending in self-demonization and delegitimation, Putin now seeks to generalize the conflict. Russian tanks are not yet massing along the border of Poland, nor ships positioning for the capture of the Romanian port of Constantia and the invasion of the Danube, nor nuclear missiles hurtling through the skies to bring the extinction of humankind, but all of these possibilities are now far more likely. A predator is most dangerous when cornered.
Some voices yet speak of peace as something which may be clung to in the face of an enemy which does not recognize our humanity nor respect any laws or limits regarding our universal human rights, or seek mercy through danegeld and becoming de facto vassal states of an imperial master, though this has never worked and we should have learned this from the failure of Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” speech of 1938 to save Europe from Hitler.
To this I say; the best time to stop a war, a genocide, acts of terror and tyranny, and crimes against humanity, is before it happens.
Those who respect no laws and no limits may hide behind none.
We may disambiguate robber-baron Russia in this moment from the fallen Soviet Union it replaced by one simple fact, of enormous implications; Russia now funds, trains, arms, and directs fascist and nationalist alt-right political parties globally where it once did the same for communist revolutionaries.
We all of us who love Liberty, including those who now challenge the Russian imperial dominion and hegemony in the many theatres of this the Third World War, in Russia and America, Ukraine and Syria, Libya, Belarus, Kazakhstan, West Africa, the Sahel, and Lake Chad, Nagorno-Karabakh, and now the Gordian Knot of Serbia and Bosnia as Putin launches his campaign for the conquest of Europe, and as skirmishes signal an emerging Tajik-Uzbek conflict which will bring Afghanistan and Pakistan into an unhappy alliance with Turkey and rekindle the dream of a united Sunni Mughal-Ottoman alliance against Shia Persia, now Iran and Russia’s ally in Syria, in this moment as the world burns and civilization begins to collapse utterly it seems to me that we must face a great truth; it doesn’t matter who we are or what we call ourselves, only what we do.
This is the principle of impartial justice and equality before the law on which democracy is founded, and it has consequences for our duty of care for others; all that matters in the end is what we do with our fear, and how we use our power.
How can we understand and process Russia’s historical volte-face from liberator to conqueror and betrayal of our solidarity as human beings?
In the second episode of the series premier of the beloved and iconic epic and allegory of antifascist Resistance, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Harvest, we have a gruesomely parallel situation. Our heroes have learned that the enforcers of The Master are about to deliver the world in his dominion and need sacrifices which they will find at the local nightclub, and are ambushing the malefactors in a spoiling raid. Xander is focused on rescue of his friend Jesse who has been taken by the vampires, and says: “We’ve gotta get in there before Jesse does something stupider than usual.” I say to you now as Giles says to Xander; “Listen to me… Jesse is dead. You have to remember that when you see him, you’re not looking at your friend. You’re looking at the thing that killed him.”
I say again and directly to fellow Democratic Socialists, Progressives, Anarchists, and Left intellectuals of all kinds; Putin’s Russia is a criminal syndicate which embodies the final form of capitalism as totalitarian kleptocracy and the elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil which she once so heroically fought against. In this I speak as a witness of history who fought alongside Russian soldiers in the liberation of South Africa from Apartheid and in other causes, and in Mariupol fought against them in the reformed Abraham Lincoln Brigade which we modeled on that of the Spanish Civil War.
The origins of evil lie not in an evil impulse as an inherent flaw of human design, but in the operations of systemic power and weaponized inequalities and wealth disparity.
And this we must resist, always and in whatever form it arises through all of history and the world.
As written by Isabelle Khurshudyan, Erin Cunningham and Miriam Berger in Huffpost; “The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region has simmered for decades. In 2020, the two sides fought a bloody war for territory — one that ended with a fragile Russian-brokered truce.
But on Monday night, fierce clashes erupted again near the disputed region, which is inside Azerbaijan but controlled by ethnic Armenian separatists.
Armenian officials said at least 49 people were killed in attacks by Azerbaijan’s military. Azerbaijan acknowledged launching the strikes — but said it was responding to Armenian provocations.
The renewed fighting prompted the State Department to call for an immediate end to the hostilities. Reuters reported Tuesday morning that Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke overnight with both the Armenian prime minister and president of Azerbaijan.
Russia is a key ally of Armenia, and some observers speculated that Azerbaijan may have sought to attack while Moscow is bogged down by a tough fight in Ukraine.
Here’s what you need to know about the fight over Nagorno-Karabakh, the longest-running conflict in the post-Soviet sphere.
What are the roots of the conflict? Why did Azerbaijan attack Armenia on Sept. 12?
Armenia’s Defense Ministry said Azerbaijan attacked the areas of Goris, Sotk and Jermuk in Nagorno-Karabakh using drones and large-caliber weapons. Azerbaijan’s military admitted to the attacks but accused Armenian forces of planting mines along the border to disrupt supply routes. Yerevan denied the accusations.
At least 49 people were killed in the strikes, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Tuesday, adding, “Unfortunately, it’s not the final figure.” Azerbaijan also said it suffered losses but did not provide a casualty count.
Regional analysts said Azerbaijan could have tried to capitalize on recent Russian setbacks in Ukraine.
“This escalation takes place when (1) Russia is distracted as never before after the collapse of the Kharkiv front; and (2) offensive action against Armenia can surf the global wave of revulsion for Russia since Armenia is formally Russia’s ally,” Laurence Broers, an associate fellow of Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia program, said on Twitter.
Baku has “unprecedented leverage in every direction,” Broers added, as an increasingly isolated Moscow is now also reliant on land routes through Azerbaijan for trade with Asia and Iran.
In July, the European Commission and Azerbaijan reached a deal to double gas exports to the E.U. within the next two years as the continent seeks out alternatives to Russian energy.
The E.U. is pushing to “diversify away from Russia and to turn toward more reliable, trustworthy partners. And I am glad to count Azerbaijan among them,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the time.
Armenia on Tuesday appealed to Russia, the United States and France for help in ending the hostilities. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it helped broker a truce for Tuesday morning.
“As we have long made clear, there can be no military solution to the conflict,” Blinken said Monday in a statement. “We urge an end to any military hostilities immediately.”
What are the roots of the conflict?
As part of a divide-and-rule tactic, the Soviet government first established the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where at least 95 percent of the population is ethnically Armenian, in Azerbaijan in the 1920s.
But it wasn’t until 1988, as Moscow’s grip began to weaken, that the enclave became a flash point within the Soviet Union. Authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh sought to unite with the then-Soviet republic of Armenia and declared independence from Azerbaijan, another Soviet republic.
In 1992, after the Soviet Union collapsed, a full-scale war broke out between the two new countries over control of the region. Nagorno-Karabakh is located within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan but is mostly controlled by political factions linked to Armenia.
Between 20,000 and 30,000 people were killed in that conflict and hundreds of thousands were displaced before a cease-fire was declared in 1994. Not only did Armenia end up controlling Nagorno-Karabakh but it also occupied 20 percent of the surrounding Azerbaijani territory, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Between 1994 and 2020, periodic skirmishes flared along the border, including the use of attack drones, heavy weaponry and special operations on the front lines. In 2016, particularly fierce clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenian-backed forces in Nagorno-Karabakh raged for four days.
But in 2020, a full-scale war broke out after Azerbaijan launched an offensive across the line of contact held by Armenian forces and local fighters. The campaign, which began on the morning of Sept. 27, sparked a six-week-long war.
“The fighting is the worst it has been since the Karabakh War of 1992 to 1994, encompassing the entire line of contact, with artillery, missile, and drone strikes deep past Armenian lines,” Michael Kofman, director of the Russian studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses in Virginia, and Leonid Nersisyan, CEO of the Armenian Research & Development Institute, wrote at the time.
The war, they said, featured “modern weaponry … representing a large-scale conventional conflict.”
One of the major features of the war was the military support Turkey, a regional power and longtime foe of Armenia, gave Azerbaijan. In the months before the conflict broke out, Turkey’s military exports to Azerbaijan rose sixfold, according to exports data analyzed by Reuters. The sales included drones and other military equipment, which experts say helped turn the tide for Azerbaijan.
As part of the Russia-mediated cease-fire, Armenia had to cede swaths of territory it controlled for decades. More than 7,000 combatants were killed, according to the International Crisis Group, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed to patrol the region.
The cease-fire Russia brokered “brought neither full stability nor security to the region,” Alexa Fults and Paul Stronski of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in April. “And even before the Ukraine war, Moscow’s peacekeepers have struggled to do their jobs.”
Russia, they said, arguably has the most influence of any outside power to push peace forward. But its resources and attention have been sapped by the war in Ukraine.
“After the 2020 war, the front line has become longer and more volatile than before,” according to the International Crisis Group.”
And in a previous essay on this conflict, April 15 2022, A History of the Third World War and Russia’s Imperial Wars of Dominion Since 2020, Part Six: the Nagorno-Karabakh Theatre of War; That which is not spoken of becomes forgotten, and ceases to be real as a historical informing, motivating, and shaping force of our identity. This is why the witness of history is important to our adaptive range and our possibilities of becoming human, and why meaning and value can be created in the present as an unfolding and realization of the past.
Memory, history, identity; such recursive processes sculpt us across vast epochs of time as a stone is formed by wind and water. We are prochronisms, a record in our forms biological, psychological, and sociocultural-civilizational of how we solved problems of adaptation to change like the shell of a fantastic sea creature.
This is true of nations as well as individuals; and here I practice my art of seeing futures that might be in the stories of which we are made, using methods of literature, history, and psychology in an archeology of the future, as originated by Robert G.L. Waite in his study of Hitler, The Psychopathic God. I first read it as a senior in high school, and its why I chose these three disciplines of scholarship at university in my life mission to understand the origins of evil.
Here is the sixth and final part of my interrogation of the theatres of World War Three, that of Nagorno-Karabakh.
As I wrote in my post of October 10 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan: Today a Fragile Peace in a Century Old Conflict; An ephemeral moment of peace stilled the thunder of war in the developing third front of the historic civilizational Great Powers conflict of dominion between Russian and Turkey; adding the Armenian-Azerbaijan theatre to those of Syria and Libya, which have destabilized Europe and cast the fate of the Middle East and the Mediterranean to the winds of fate.
That today’s cease fire falls within days of the historic 1920 Baku Congress which shattered the grip of European colonial powers on the world is no accident, but a distant echo of that vigorous idealism and vision of a new future for humankind.
Here are the ringing words of the closing call to action at the end of the Congress; “Go forward as one in a holy war against the British conquerors! …this is a holy war to liberate the peoples of the East; to end the division of humanity into oppressor peoples and oppressed peoples; and to achieve complete equality of all peoples and races, whatever language they may speak, whatever the color of their skin, and whatever the religion they profess.”
They are words which still hold true today, as we battle for our humanity, our liberty, our equality, and our lives against tyrannies of force and control in the streets of Portland, Seattle, New York, and across America and the world; in Hong Kong, Syria, Yemen, Chile, Bolivia, Kashmir, India, and that dual entity which is both al Quds and Jerusalem, among many others.
Yet Armenia holds a unique symbolic position in the iconography and mythology of genocide and survival, for the events of the 1914-1917 campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing by the Ottoman Empire were Hitler’s justification for the invasion of Poland. The text of the Obersalzberg address on 22 August 1939, provided by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of German military intelligence, to an allied agent is as follows; “Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command – and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians.”
So it is that Armenia has become a symbol of the struggle between civilization as human meaning and value on the one side and the atavistic barbarism of an amoral modernity and nihilism in which only power is real on the other. And of the beauty of resistance, by which the powerless become unconquerable and free.
As written by Bryan Gigantino in Jacobin; “In 1994, representatives of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, and the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh signed the Bishkek Protocol. After six years of deadly fighting and ethnic cleansing, this document provided a much-needed reprieve — and an immediate end to the bloodshed. But this produced only a fragile peace, and far short of addressing the root causes of the conflict, it institutionalized mutual enmity and the uncertainty over Nagorno-Karabakh’s future.
A quarter-century later, this September 27, military clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out once more. Again, the fighting between these South Caucasus neighbors centered on Nagorno-Karabakh — a mountainous, unrecognized de facto independent state surrounded by Azeri territory. Once populated by both Azeris and Armenians, since the war of 1988–1994 the territory has become increasingly homogenous, with its 150,000 Armenians. The region is de jure part of Azerbaijan, but since 1994 it has been both controlled by local Armenian armed forces and wholly dependent on Armenia for security, economic survival, and access to the outside world.
Following the latest two weeks of violence, on Saturday, October 10, a cease-fire was hastily agreed. This came after ten hours of talks between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, who met in Moscow with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. Yet even this truce is fragile — only an hour into the truce and both sides immediately accused the other of breaking it, as reports of shelling abounded.
While the post-1994 cease-fire was broken by repeated skirmishes, the recent fighting was the most severe in decades. Previous instances such as the clashes in 2008, the April War of 2016, and fighting this July pale in comparison; this time, hundreds of civilians and military personnel have been killed and thousands forced to flee their homes. Previous upticks were often sparked by murky circumstances or accidents. But this time was different: for the Azeri offensive had been months in the making.
After armed confrontations in July resulted in the death of Azerbaijan’s major general, Polad Hashimov, massive pro-war demonstrations flooded the capital, Baku. Missteps over Karabakh had ended the careers of many Azeri elites in the 1990s; this was not lost on President Ilham Aliyev, who, especially given the economic pressure from the COVID-19 crisis, could not ignore the nationalist rage. Aliyev publicly stated that searching for a peaceful solution with Armenia was pointless. On September 24, just three days before the fighting started, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ominously released a list of so-called provocative actions taken by Armenia since reform-oriented Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan came to power in that country’s 2018 Velvet Revolution.
Following Azerbaijan’s initial offensive on September 27, the fighting rapidly escalated. Azeri rockets and heavy artillery bombarded the regional capital Stepanakert almost daily. Towns within Armenia and military positions along the two-hundred-kilometer “line of contact” separating Azerbaijan from Nagorno-Karabakh also came under fire. Armenian forces unsurprisingly responded, attacking Azeri positions and repelling drones — one of which was shot down alarmingly close to Armenia’s capital, Yerevan. But they also shelled targets within Azerbaijan’s territory, including its second city, Ganja.
There is, indeed, a substantial asymmetry between the two countries, with Azerbaijan’s defense budget, military hardware, and total personnel far outweighing Armenia’s. With a population of nearly ten million, Azerbaijan has a defense budget of $2.73 billion at 5.4 percent of GDP, whereas Armenia has a population of slightly under three million and a defense budget of $500 million at 4.7 percent of GDP. Notably, Turkish- and Israeli-made drones have played a central role in Azerbaijan’s military operations: Amnesty International confirms that Israeli-made cluster munitions were used in residential areas of Stepanakert.
State officials in both Armenia and Azerbaijan have fueled the fighting with a concomitant information war, unleashing a deluge of accusations, misinformation, and false data. Each state’s intransigent rhetoric thickens the abyss of unverifiable information widely circulating on Twitter and Facebook. Despite the best efforts of well-intentioned journalists and analysts, these conditions filter much of the conflict to the outside world. Even when more or less accurate information is available, the overall picture remains foggy. For example, Armenia releases consistent updates on military casualties but not civilian ones, whereas Azerbaijan does the inverse.
Yet such details alone do not explain why two neighboring post-Soviet countries with deep and intertwined histories are still locked in conflict. Fundamentally, irreconcilable official narratives and national understandings are central to the persistence of tensions and the reproduction of enmity. The region’s recent history can put this dynamic into a much clearer perspective.
For Armenians, the defense of Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh as it is traditionally called, is an existential struggle. Between 1914 and 1917, 1.5 million Armenians perished in the genocide at the hands of Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish irregulars. The combination of forced deportation and indiscriminate slaughter depopulated Eastern Anatolia of nearly its entire Armenian population. Though the cities of Tbilisi and Baku were far more culturally, economically, and politically significant for Armenians, nationalists of the time had seen Eastern Anatolia as the future home of an independent Armenian state.
The permanent loss of this land created a territorially dismembered nationalism, in which not only a shared language and religious traditions but a sense of loss and popular memory of the genocide shape the Armenian national idea. This, in turn, fuels its intransigence over Nagorno-Karabakh — much like how Israeli irredentism often invokes the fear of a second Holocaust.
For Azeris, too, Karabakh is also critical to the national imagination. This mainly owes to the nearly six hundred thousand Azeris who became internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the fighting before the 1994 cease-fire. While some IDPs came from Nagorno-Karabakh, the vast majority fled seven districts in Karabakh’s historically Azeri-populated flatlands currently (according to Azerbaijan) under Armenian occupation. Since the end of the last war in 1994, the reclamation of these lost territories and the eventual return of their residents has been a pillar of Azeri nationalism.”
As I wrote in my post of April 27 2021 Biden Recognizes the Armenian Genocide; Biden’s historic Armenian Remembrance Day speech last Saturday, the first official recognition of the Armenian Genocide by America, went as follows; “Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination. We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.
Today, as we mourn what was lost, let us also turn our eyes to the future—toward the world that we wish to build for our children. A world unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance, where human rights are respected, and where all people are able to pursue their lives in dignity and security.”
Thus has our President and our nation given warning to the tyrannies of the world that we will defend the universal human rights which supersede the claims of any nation, and defend the people from unjust governments when necessary. In the context of the Armenian Genocide, especially this warrant is served to the regimes of Erdogan of Turkey and Putin of Russia, who between them now contest for the dominion of the Middle East and the Mediterranean in pursuit of refounding their former historic empires prior to the First World War.
With recognition must come reparations by Turkey, and the restoration of a sovereign and independent Armenian homeland. While the boundaries of Tigranes the Great’s Armenia included Jerusalem and all of Syria from Damascus and Palmyra to the sea, I think some compromise may be able to be worked out, considering that Turkey wants NATO support for its seizure of Libya’s oil fields through a puppet regime which is threatened by Russia’s massive line of Libyan fortifications and mercenary army; surely this vast wealth and dominion of the Mediterranean would be worth the price of justice for Armenia. Turkey and Iran may also find a buffer state useful, as Iran and Russia support the brutal Assad regime in Syria against the Turkish army and liberation forces of secular democracy.
And with America undergoing a Restoration of democracy and independence from Russian conquest in the wake of our repudiation of her puppet Trump, a new willingness to challenge Russia’s imperial conquest of Ukraine, Russia’s vassal state Belarus in the process of an independence struggle, and a popular democracy movement in Russia itself leading the resistance to Putin, now is an excellent moment for a realignment of Turkey with America.
We have a chance to forge a peace together, Turkey and America, in which both of us win. My hope in this is that the world’s champions and guarantors of democracy, freedom, equality, truth, and in the case of the Armenian people most especially justice, may yet find a way forward to throwing words instead of stones, as Sigmund Freud taught us.
As written by the historian Heather Cox Richardson in her daily current events newsletter; “In his first major speech as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken laid out the principles of the Biden administration in foreign policy, emphasizing that this administration believed foreign and domestic policy to be profoundly linked. Biden’s people would support democracy at home and abroad to combat the authoritarianism rising around the world… including in the U.S.
“The more we and other democracies can show the world that we can deliver, not only for our people, but also for each other, the more we can refute the lie that authoritarian countries love to tell, that theirs is the better way to meet people’s fundamental needs and hopes. It’s on us to prove them wrong,” Blinken said. “So the question isn’t if we will support democracy around the world, but how.” He answered: “We will use the power of our example. We will encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad laws, fight corruption, and stop unjust practices. We will incentivize democratic behavior.”
President Joe Biden has set out a foreign policy that focuses on human rights and reaches out more to foreign peoples than to their governments, heartening protesters in authoritarian countries.
On Saturday, Biden issued a document declaring that the displacement and slaughter of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans in 1915 was a “genocide.” The U.S. had previously refused to recognize the ethnic cleansing for what it was because of the strategic importance of Turkey to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO (among other things, Turkey holds the straits that control access to the Black Sea, on which Russia and Ukraine, as well as other countries, sit).
Biden’s recognition of the Armenian genocide is a reflection of the fact that Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is increasingly close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Taliban, and appears to be abandoning democracy in his own country, giving Biden the room to take a step popular in America but previously too undiplomatic to undertake. (Remember when Erdogan’s security staff beat up protesters in Washington, D.C., in 2017 and prosecutors dropped the charges?)
Erdogan greeted Biden’s announcement with anger, demanding he retract it, but he also said he expected to discuss all of the disputes between the U.S. and Turkey at the June NATO summit. Geopolitics in Erdogan’s part of the world are changing, as Putin is struggling at home with protests against his treatment of opposition leader Alexey Navalny and with the new U.S. sanctions that, by making it hard for him to float government bonds, could weaken his economy further. It is looking more and more likely that Biden and Putin will also have a summit early this summer.”
The beauty and grandeur of anticolonial resistance and liberation struggle unto death, against impossible odds, and of solidarity in action which affirms our humanity under tyranny and state terror as imposed conditions of struggle; the 1916 Easter Uprising speaks to us of resilience and the limitless capacity of humankind to overcome unequal systems of power by refusal to submit.
Here is a kind of victory which cannot be taken from us, and like Dorothy’s Magic Ruby Slippers bears the power to send us home and confer ownership of ourselves and realization of those truths written in our flesh.
The 1916 Easter Uprising was both tragic and glorious; tragic because it was answered not with brotherhood and solidarity by the English people as a united front with the Irish against systemic oppression versus divisions of language, faith, history, and national identity weaponized for centuries by the British Empire in service to power, but by forces of reaction and the Occupation. Glorious, because the Uprising was a Defining Moment which turned the tide of history and created the Republic of Ireland as a sovereign and independent nation, and because the Irish people fought on beyond hope of victory or survival.
This is where freedom is born. In the words of Max Stirner; “Freedom cannot be granted; it must be seized.”
As I wrote in my post of February 8 2020, Hope for the Union of Ireland: Sinn Fein Wins a Place at the Table; Today we celebrate with triumphant joy the electoral victory of Sinn Fein, the Irish party of liberation and social justice, which puts Union back on the table, the glorious dream of freedom from the colonial imperialist tyranny of England, which squats like a toad of foulness on the shores of Northern Ireland.
What if all the former colonies of the British Empire sent troops to aid the people of Ireland in their struggle for liberty? How then can tyranny survive?
Imagine with me a United Humanity of Free Peoples and Army of Liberation comprised of former slaves and victims of oppression with a historic mandate to export the revolution and bring justice to all humankind, India and America, Zimbabwe and Malaysia, Australia and Eqypt, Israel and Singapore, and so many others. Such a force would be unstoppable, would sweep across hierarchies of authoritarian force and control like the Black soldiers of the Union Army who liberated Richmond and brought the Confederacy to submission or the Allied victory over fascism in the Second World War.
Liberty is a dream resonant with historic momentum and power; we need only harness it to ride to victory on its tides.
So I wrote three years ago, and with electoral victory of May last year we moved a step nearer to our goal of Union; Northern Ireland with Ireland as one sovereign and independent nation. So very like the Thousand Day War in which the people of Vietnam liberated themselves from colonial Occupation and reunited their nation; the imposed conditions of struggle may yet force a return to such strategies as Vietnam used to win independence, but for now the peace holds and the struggle is limited to the arena of electoral politics. This too I celebrate; voting is always better than shooting.
Here in Ireland we play what in chess is called a Long Game, in which the sacrifices we make along the way to liberation become our stepping stones to victory. And with the issue of trade as leverage, and all of the intractable issues signified by the term Brexit, as our civilization begins to collapse from the mechanical failures of its internal contradictions amid a changing world order, we now have unique opportunities for revolutionary struggle and for independence.
As Guillermo Del Toro teaches us in Carnival Row; “Who is Chaos good for? Chaos is good for us. Chaos is the great hope of the powerless.”
As I wrote in m y post of September 23 2021, When Things Fall Apart and the Center Cannot Hold, Embrace Change; Transformative change and the forces of Chaos lie at the heart of our universe, a reality and medium of being characterized by illusion and impermanence, destruction and recreation, as its central motive principle.
Chaos is a forge of creation which endlessly generates contradictions and paradoxes as the forking points of universes, of multiplicities and relative truths, a wellspring of life and the realization of unknowns but also of our darkness born of attachment to that which is by its nature ephemeral and transitory, and moreover a world filled with falsifications of ourselves, echoes and reflections like the distorted images in funhouse mirrors which multiply into infinity as a theft of our uniqueness and our souls.
The trauma of death and of life disruptive change, and our immersion in a sea of grief, despair, and terror; when the anchorages and truths we cling to have shifted and cast us adrift into topologies of the unknown, when we dare to look behind the curtain and the figures of our faith are revealed to be lies and instruments of our subjugation, when these existential threats and crises of hope, trust, and faith combine as they have this past year with the loneliness of our modern pathology of disconnectedness, how shall we answer our nothingness?
To this I say, how can we not embrace Chaos and transformative change, when it is endless and ongoing, and challenges us to live in the eternal now? Why fix and react wholly to its negative aspects as death and destruction, when it offers us equally possibilities of liberation from order and authority, self-creation, autonomy, and unknowns to explore, and a space of free creative play?
Here is Yeats great and visionary poem The Second Coming, written in the wake of three successive mechanical failures of civilization as systems of order and oppression from their internal contradictions, the First World War, the Easter Rising of 1916, and the Russian Revolution of 1917. It is a song of rage against the dying of the light, of the embrace of our darkness, and of warning that the lies and illusions which enforce authority and our subjugation are and must always fail with cataclysms, but for myself it is also a song of hope.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
As I wrote in my post of January 30 2022, Fifty Year Anniversary of Bloody Sunday; Fifty years ago the massacre of Irish citizens by the British Army, an atrocity of state terror known throughout the world as Bloody Sunday, shifted American and global public and official support to the cause of Irish nationalism and reunification and like the brutal repression of Gandhi’s Salt Tax Protest delegitimized the British Empire. We have not yet fully emerged from the shadows of our imperial and colonial histories, but in the last century since the collapse of civilization from the mechanical failures of its internal contradictions in World War One and the revolutions and liberation movements which swept the world the tides have begun to turn.
Such is the terror and ruin of the age in which we live, and of its hope and glories as a liminal time of the reimagination and transformation of ourselves and the limitless possibilities of becoming human.
The people of a nation are living echoes, reflections, consequences, and bearers of its histories, and the people of Ireland are no different in this from any other, our songs of survival, resistance, and triumph over those who would enslave us acting like forces of nature, like the winds and the tides, to shape us as informing and motivating sources. So national identities are formed from the legacies of our stories, both as epigenetic and multigenerational trauma and harms and as freedom and the ownership of ourselves.
History, memory, identity; we are prochronisms, histories expressed in our form of how we have solved problems of adaptation over vast epochs of time, truths written in our flesh like the shells of fantastic sea creatures.
What has been written in our lives has all too often been a tale of tyranny and repression, imperial conquest and colonialism, the theft of the soul by carceral states of force and control, and the consequences of falsification, commodification, and dehumanization by the state as organized violence and enslavement by elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege and divisions of exclusionary otherness by fascisms of blood, faith, and soil.
And this we must resist, by any means necessary. To tyranny and fascism there can be but one reply; Never Again.
When those who would enslave us and steal our souls come for us, let them find not a humankind subjugated by police terror and the control of false histories and propaganda, abjection and learned helplessness, but united in solidarity and refusal to submit.
Whosoever refuses to submit becomes Unconquered and free, and this power of self ownership cannot be taken from us. Here also is the moment of decision wherein the tide turns and tyrannies of force and control break; for the social use of force is hollow and brittle, and fails at the point of disobedience. This great truth is the keystone of my art of revolution, and why liberation movements will eventually be victorious when applied as disruptive forces to systems of unequal power which will inevitably fail from their internal contradictions.
Always there remains the struggle between the stories we tell about ourselves and those others tell about us. This is the first revolution in which we all must fight; the struggle for ownership of ourselves.
Tyrants may own the monstrous shadows of the past, but the future is ours.
Liam Neeson reads WB Yeats’ Easter 1916
Michael Collins’ speech, in the film starring Liam Neeson
1916: The Easter Rising (Episode 1 – Tom Clarke)
the global brotherhood of nations liberated from the British Empire
To cast the bones of our futures; what prima materia shall we sift from among all our limitless possibilities of becoming human, to choose our best selves as a defining seizure of power?
How shall we choose how to be human together?
The emergence of the soul as a defining human act of revolutionary struggle against authorized identities and the legacies of our histories, of becoming Unconquered and a Living Autonomous Zone as self creation through refusal to submit to authority and its systems of oppression as force and control, and as finding balance under such imposed conditions of struggle between those truths immanent in nature and written in our flesh and those we ourselves create as human being, meaning, and value; such is the real work of becoming human.
We face two interdependent and mutually reinforcing existential threats, civilizational and ecological collapse, driven by the centralization of power to tyrannies and of wealth to elites, and these systems of oppression originate in our fear of the wildness of nature and the wildness of ourselves.
In the end, all that matters is what we do with our fear, and how we use our power.
Do something beautiful with yours.
As I wrote in my post of May 22 2023, Our War Against Nature and Ourselves: Humankind at the Tipping Point Between Extinction and Transformation; The human war on nature is ancient, both a motive and a consequence of our civilization itself; it is also primarily a war against our own animal nature, a titanic struggle against the prison of our flesh and its dark and chaotic syllabus of needs and desires.
We may imagine this as did Mary Shelly in her luminous and prophetic work Frankenstein, of whom I have written in celebration of her birthday; Our Monsters, Ourselves; genius, madness, inspiration, the quest to become as gods; who among us has not longed to steal the divine fire, to look beyond ourselves, to defy all limits and laws? To be, even for a moment, the Unconquered Victor Frankenstein?
Yet as Prospero said of Caliban, we must also say of Frankenstein’s monster; “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.”
As I have written of VanderMeer’s retelling of Frankenstein in the novel Borne, Mary Shelly’s glorious novel was also about the abandonment of a child who is no longer perfect, among a number of other themes, including the origins of violence and the need to dominate and control nature.
Frankenstein addresses themes of science versus nature, reason versus passion, and both of these within a Promethean rebellion against God, Authority which is a term I apply politically as a generalized reference to those who claim to speak for the Infinite, and universal Law as a form of Idealism; this from the perspective of the monster’s creator.
From the monster’s view, the novel portrays the disfigurement of the soul through abandonment by a parent who also functions as a figure of a creator-god and of Authority, known as the problem of the Deus Absconditus which refers to the god who made everything and then ran away before he was caught, and who drives the child to achievement and supremacy as his champion and proxy- what the Greeks called Arete or Virtue but also denoting superiority as with Achilles in the Iliad, one of Mary Shelly’s sources- in a chosen arena but who like Alberich in Wagner’s Ring cannot love because he is offered none, rendering all victory meaningless and hollow, dehumanizing the child and shaping a vessel of rage and vengeance, with the iron self discipline and will to enact subjugation of others in their turn, terrible and pathetic and with the grandeur of a tortured defiant beast trapped in the same flesh as the innocent who needs to be loved and cannot understand why he seems monstrous to others. It is about birthing monsters, and the chaotic plasticity of identity and relationships; thus do tyrants shape tyrants.
A story which is at once Greek tragedy and Freudian study of the process and relations between the id, ego, and superego, with a third parallel storyline relating a Romantic reimagination of Biblical Genesis like that of Blake, it is both the apotheosis of Romantic Idealism and its first criticism which breaks free of it, exegesis and classical myth, dialectic on responsibility and discourse on Aristotle’s categories of being, critique of Rousseau’s natural man and of Nietzsche’s Superman which it also inspired in a recursive loop of influence across the seas of time. Its author was a Pythian visionary whose insight reached centuries into the future, and whose immense scholarship reimagined some of the greatest works of our historical civilization.
Mary Shelly’s influence echoes through time, multiplies, and reshapes the contexts of its polymorphous meanings. One cannot think of Kafka’s Gregor Samsa without thinking of his original, the dual-aspected monster-child created to bind our nature with reason, nor read her sources and references in the prophecies of William Blake and Milton’s Paradise Lost without reevaluating them in terms of Mary Shelly’s novel; her work resonates through past and future, and what touches, it changes.
Who can read the work of Emily Bronte without the meaning of her great novel Wuthering Heights changing with our awareness that its author thought of herself as Victor Frankenstein and as the titan Prometheus cast out of heaven like Milton’s rebel angel? That Heathcliff is her monster, a demon to be united with in an exalted Nietzschean rapture of transformative rebirth? And does this not change one’s reading of her source Frankenstein?
A nested set of puzzle box themes and contexts, multiple narrative threads which create paradoxes of meaning, role reversals and inversions of identities, and the questioning of the mission of civilization and the morality of progress; Mary Shelly created the modern world with her great book Frankenstein.
We are that monster and its creator, mad god of reason and his degraded figure of vengeance, of uncontrollable and free but twisted and destructive passion. Ours is the future modernity she warned us of, a civilization which consumes itself through the mechanical failures of its internal contradictions as has happened twice now in our two World Wars and in the Third World War now unfolding in ten theatres; Russia in the peace and democracy movements against Putin’s mad wars of imperial conquest and dominion, America in our elections, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Africa, and the beast with two heads Israel and Palestine.
When I think of the destructive effects on the environment of our mad quest to control and impose order and human values on nature, I do so in the context of a specific ideological lineage which I share with one of the great public intellectuals of our time, whose works reflect the themes of Mary Shelly.
In her foundational classic Sexual Personnae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia, trickster figure and provocateur, whose many masks include a Guide of the Soul which echoes Ariadne, a chthonic figure of the Queen of the Underworld which recalls Persephone, and a truth teller like Pythia or the Jester of King Lear, provides us a definition of Beauty as the apotheosis and motive force of human civilization, one which references her major influences among the British Romantic Idealists, Keats and Coleridge; “Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature.”
Hers is a vision which extends Nietzsche’s thesis in The Birth of Tragedy that human civilization is an artifact of the struggle between the Dionysian and the Apollonian as oppositional forces which together create human being, meaning, and value. Civilization is thus a prochronism or history expressed in our form of how we solved problems of adaptation, like the shell of a fantastic sea creature.
She refers to Beauty as a cypher of the Infinite, in reference to Keats, as does Umberto Eco in his magisterial On Beauty. Compare her definition to that of Keats, in the phrase which I quote when asked to identify my faith; “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not—for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty.”
Her traditional identification of Apollonian rationality and the will to impose order with the animus or masculine side of a whole person and the Dionysian or ecstatic principle as feminine and equal to chaos and nature is found in Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism; “Western science is a product of the Apollonian mind: its hope is that by naming and classification, by the cold light of intellect, archaic night can be pushed back and defeated.”
Here is the rotten heart of our corruption which consumes this fragile ark of life, this earth, to destruction and humankind to annihilation; our need to control and impose order on a fundamentally irrational universe and the conquest and dominion of nature which flows from it.
Thus far I share with Camille Paglia the three ideological lineages from which this analysis develops; British Romantic Idealism, Nietzsche’s aesthetics of ontological politics, and the classicism of Joseph Hillman and his sources in Jung’s transformational psychology. Where we diverge importantly is her total rejection of postmodern critical theory, which she calls out as Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault; here I am more aligned with Iris Murdoch in balancing classicism with modernity as a complementarity. We need both conserving and revolutionary forces; both T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Flannery O’Connor.
And to complete my image of the cosmos and the place of humankind in it, we must add one thing more; Holism as expressed in Gregory Bateson’s Mind and Nature: a necessary unity, and explicated in Morris Berman’s The Re-Enchantment of the World. A reimagination of Schiller’s idea of “the disgodding of nature”, Bateson’s work rewired my brain when I encountered it as a graduate student, and for this I shall be eternally grateful. Only Godel’s Theorem and the poetry of Nietzsche, Blake, Basho, and Rumi struck me with the force of lightning as did he.
What does all this mean?
As the earth dies in fire and ice and humankind with it, victims and slaves consumed by the fathomless greed of a handful of oligarchic and plutocratic czars of a global hegemonic elite, we witness the horror of our extinction with helpless submission to our destroyers but are able to describe it with great beauty, a beauty and vision which nonetheless fail to transform our fate.
Unless we act to seize our power and liberate ourselves and the common heritage of our resources from our destroyers.
As written in Jacobin in an article entitled The Ministry for the Future, a vision of possible survival and the transformation of catastrophic policies of capitalism and human extinction: Imagining the End of Capitalism With Kim Stanley Robinson interviewed by Derrick O’Keefe; “The Ministry for the Future is Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest attempt to fill in a major gap in the utopian fiction tradition. Rarely dealing with the transitional phase toward a better and different society, speculative fiction of this type instead explores the final stages of a utopian experiment. The Ministry is an exception to this tendency.
A speculative history of the next few decades, the novel revolves around an international ministry assembled to help implement the Paris climate agreement. The novel’s action spans the globe, featuring popular uprisings, ecoterrorism, asymmetrical warfare, student debt strikes, and geoengineering. Green New Deal–style programs in a number of the world’s biggest economies feature prominently — with a post-BJP India leading the way — and the commandeering of many of the world’s key central banks to finance the work toward a just transition off fossil fuels is explored.
This is the meat and potatoes of the long transition — that which has dismissively been called “a cookshop of the future.” But while it may not service as a political blueprint, it is undeniably fertile ground for a novel. And genre disregard for the subject matter has been to Robinson’s gain.
Looking backward from the mid-twenty-first century, The Ministry helps open our minds to a world in transition away from capitalism. Imagining is a necessary precondition for solving the ecological crisis of our times. It provides the pivot for leveraging the horizon of the possible. By envisioning possible routes forward, Robinson has done us an invaluable service.
Jacobin’s Derrick O’Keefe, a Vancouver-based organizer and writer, caught up with KSR to talk about politics, economics, climate change, sci-fi, and the journey from now to the future.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
This past month, Vancouver, where I’m based, has had a few days with the worst air quality in the world, thanks to the smoke from the California and West Coast wildfires. This was an appropriate backdrop for reading The Ministry of the Future, which opens with a catastrophic weather event. That event, which takes place in India, helps trigger a wave of political change and climate action worldwide. Do you think it’s going to take something really extreme to trigger the changes we need?
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
I think we’re already there, with the pandemic and with the fires and hurricanes — the level of extremity has brought a sense of general awareness that something is going to have to be done, and the sooner the better. That said, I think we’re on the brink of even worse events happening, as the book makes clear. It’s been a memorable year, a traumatic year — so this may be a stimulus to the start of some changes.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
The Ministry is dedicated to Fredric Jameson, who was your PhD supervisor.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Fred was my PhD supervisor, and while I was working on my PhD, he moved from UC San Diego to Yale, and when that happened, he stayed on my committee — but the actual supervision shifted over to my undergraduate advisor.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
I wanted to ask you about the now-famous quote attributed to Jameson, which is actually a bit of a paraphrase: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” It strikes me this book is coming out in a year when it’s become pretty easy to imagine the end of things, and that the real challenge is to imagine the beginnings of some kind of socialist system. As much as The Ministry is about the future, it suggests that those beginnings we need are already here with us now and that it’s really a matter of scaling up some of those alternatives.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
I’m a novelist, I’m a literature major. I’m not thinking up these ideas, I’m listening to the world and grasping — sometimes at straws, sometimes just grasping at new ideas and seeing what everybody is seeing.
If we could institute some of these good ideas, we could quickly shift from a capitalism to a post-capitalism that is more sustainable and more socialist, because so many of the obvious solutions are contained in the socialist program. And if we treated the biosphere as part of our extended body that needs to be attended to and taken care of, then things could get better fast, and there are already precursors that demonstrate this possibility.
I don’t think it’s possible to postulate a breakdown, or a revolution, to an entirely different system that would work without mass disruption and perhaps blowback failures, so it’s better to try to imagine a stepwise progression from what we’ve got now to a better system. And by the time we’re done — I mean, “done” is the wrong word — but by the end of the century, we might have a radically different system than the one we’ve got now. And this is kind of necessary if we’re going to survive without disaster. So, since it’s necessary, it might happen. And I’m always looking for the plausible models that already exist and imagining that they get ramped up.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
The cooperative economy of Mondragon, in the Basque region, comes up as one such model in a number of your books. And in The Ministry, there is the example of Kerala, because India is so central to the book’s action as a leader of the transition to dramatic climate action.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
I’m very interested in both these examples. I’ve actually never been to either region, but I’ve got contacts in both. In Mondragon, they are aware of me as an American science fiction writer who likes them, because my Mars trilogy books are translated into Spanish and do quite well in Spain. With Kerala, I’ve been studying it for twenty, twenty-five years. Like, why is it different and how is it different? Could it be a tail-wagging-dog situation for the rest of India? And so on.
We’re in a science fiction novel, as a culture. Science fiction is the realism of our time.
I did put places that I’ve been in the novel, because I needed some anchoring points — principally Zurich [where the titular ministry is headquartered]. My wife and I lived in Zurich for years, and I finally managed to put that into fiction, which was a great pleasure. But as for the rest of the world, and for these kinds of leftist precursors, or already existing leftist states that are at a regional or town level, I’ve often thought to myself, “Is there any reason that these can’t be taken as models?” Is there any real reason — since obviously there are ideological reasons; if you’re a defender of capitalism per se, then you would say these are outliers of sorts or too small to be relevant — but if you’re a leftist, you look at them and see the public support for what they’re doing, and you ask, “Why couldn’t that work at a larger scale?” Especially if you’re trying to imagine futures that are working better, which is what a utopian science fiction writer does, then you’re kind of desperate for real world-models.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
When I originally heard the synopsis for this book, it struck me immediately as something like an ecosocialist Looking Backward 2000–1887. The main character in that work by Edward Bellamy had fallen asleep for over a century and then woke up in a sort of post-capitalist utopia in the year 2000. In contrast, The Ministry is more about the journey to 2050 or so, a world that is very different from today both economically and politically. How do you situate this work, and your work more broadly, within the utopian tradition?
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Well, Bellamy’s is a good book to think about, because it had an impact in the real world. There were Bellamy clubs, and the whole progressive movement was energized by Looking Backward.
I’ve steeped myself in the utopian tradition. It’s not a big body of literature, it’s easy to read the best hits of the utopian tradition. You could make a list, I mean roughly twenty or twenty-five books would be the highlights of the entire four hundred years, which is a little shocking. And maybe there’s more out there that hasn’t stayed in the canon. But if you talk about the utopian canon, it’s quite small — it’s interesting, it has its habits, its problems, its gaps.
Famously, from Thomas More (Utopia) on, there’s been a gap in the history — the utopia is separated by space or time, by a disjunction. They call it the Great Trench. In Utopia, they dug a great trench across the peninsula so that their peninsula became an island. And the Great Trench is endemic in utopian literature. There’s almost always a break that allows the utopian society to be implemented and to run successfully. I’ve never liked that because one connotation of the word “utopian” is unreality, in the sense that it’s “never going to happen.”
The Left needs to be much more aggressive, and say the problem is not globalization per se; the problem is bad globalization, which is capitalism.
So we have to fill in this trench. When Jameson said it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, I think what he was talking about is that missing bridge from here to there. It’s hard to imagine a positive history, but it’s not impossible. And now, yes, it’s easy to imagine the end of the world because we are at the start of a mass extinction event. But he’s talking about hegemony, and a kind of Marxist reading of history, and the kind of Gramscian notion that everybody’s in the mindset that capitalism is reality itself and that there can never be any other way — so it’s hard to imagine the end of capitalism. But I would just flip it and say, it’s hard to imagine how we get to a better system. Imagining the better system isn’t that hard; you just make up some rules about how things should work. You could even say socialism is that kind of utopian imaginary. Let’s just do it this way, a kind of society of mutual aid. And I would agree with anyone who says, “Well, that’s a good system.”
The interesting thing, and also the new stories to tell if you’re a science fiction novelist, if you’re any kind of novelist — almost every story’s been told a few times — but the story of getting to a new and better social system, that’s almost an empty niche in our mental ecology. So I’ve been throwing myself into that attempt. It’s hard, but it’s interesting.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
Amidst and between all the action of The Ministry, there are some polemics carried out, is that fair to say? One recurrent polemic is against mainstream economics, a theme running throughout the book that there’s a need for new metrics and new indices both to quantify the biosphere and to express what we truly value rather than just GDP and the stock market.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
There is a polemic for sure. First, I would want to make a distinction between economics and political economy, because by and large, economics as it’s practiced now is the study of capitalism. It takes the axioms of capitalism as givens and then tries to work from those to various ameliorations and tweaks to the system that would make for a better capitalism, but they don’t question the fundamental axioms: everybody’s in it for themselves, everybody pursues their own self-interest, which will produce the best possible outcomes for everybody. These axioms are highly questionable, and they come out of the eighteenth century or are even older, and they don’t match with modern social science or history itself in terms of how we behave, and they don’t value the natural biosphere properly, and they tend to encourage short-term extractive gain and short-term interests. These are philosophical positions that are expressed as though they are fixed or are nature itself, when in reality they are made by culture.
Political economy is a kind of nineteenth-century thing, a more open-ended idea where we could have different systems. And that accounts for a lot of the struggles of the twentieth century. But capitalism likes to pretend that it’s nature itself, and that’s what economics is today, largely.
Take the term “efficiency.” In capitalist economics, that’s just regarded as almost a synonym for “good,” but it completely depends on what the efficiency is being aimed at. You know, machine guns are efficient, gas chambers are efficient. So, “efficiency” as such does not mean “good.” It is a measure of the least amount of effort put in for the most amount gotten out.
I learned more about the central banks and realized that nationalizing the banks wouldn’t be going far enough.
One of the things you’re seeing during the pandemic is that the global system of creating masks is efficient, but it is also fragile, brittle, and unreliable because redundancy, robustness, and resilience are all relatively inefficient, if the only rubric of efficiency is profit.
Capitalist economics misunderstands and misjudges the world badly, and that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in — caught between biosphere degradation and radical social inequality. These are both natural results of capitalism as such, a result of the economic calculations we make under capitalist axioms.
Distinctions have to be made here. Quantification is really part of science. Social science has some tools for understanding and generalizing from the particulars of individuals to what the group might want.
Twenty-five years ago, I might have said, “Economics, we have to throw it out.” That doesn’t hold for me anymore. Economics has a set of tools. And social science tools, working with the right axioms, could make for a socialist economics. There could be a post-capitalist economic system. But what you’re then talking about is a different political economy.
That’s one of the things The Ministry is about. Can you morph, by stages, from the political economy that we’re in now, which is neoliberal capitalism, to what you might call anti-austerity, to a return to Keynesianism, and then beyond that to social democracy, and then beyond that to democratic socialism, and then beyond that to a post-capitalist system that might be a completely new invention that we don’t have a name for?
Right-wing thinking is supremely hypocritical and convoluted and self-contradictory, and that needs to be pushed on and pointed out at every chance.
This is why I hold myself to calling it “post-capitalism,” so as not to try and define it by any of the nineteenth-century political economies. I think many of the solutions can be found in socialism, but I don’t call myself a socialist. I would want to keep it a little more open to the idea that we have to morph capitalism as such, and that we might shove it to the margins, where we might have a market for the non-necessities. I think the market itself has to be reexamined, and this is so fundamental to the way that modern society works that it’s frightening, and, for me, it’s better to think in a stepwise fashion and to imagine society from where we are now transforming to an undefined better political economy.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
One of the axioms of that better political economy is expressed in The Ministry as “Public ownership of the necessities, and real political representation” — two things together that we are far from having, by greater or lesser degrees, really almost everywhere today.
A key part of getting from here to there, to a new political economy, involves the question of finance. In New York 2140, one of your characters is a Wall Street trader speculating on intertidal markets, and much of the action concerns finance and the banks. In The Ministry, even more radical measures are contemplated for putting finance at the service of a livable, non-submerged future. Where did you get the inspiration for Carbon Quantitative Easing and the rest of the transformation of finance imagined in this book?
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Carbon Quantitative Easing is not my idea. I really am just a listening facility here, trying to amplify ideas. That one is out there. Recently, even Lawrence Summers — who was the treasury secretary for Bill Clinton and a neoliberal of the first order — and his think tank have been putting out stuff about some kind of CQE. So it’s been spreading quickly as an idea, and I’m glad.
But in the years since I wrote New York 2140, I learned more about the central banks and realized that nationalizing the banks, which happens in 2140, wouldn’t be going far enough. It would be great if all banks were owned by the people, and if banks were not private profit-making enterprises, that would be great — but it would only be one step along the way; it would not be enough. Because, at this point, central banks are only concerned with stabilizing money and maybe helping employment levels, and they will not do anything else unless they are under enormous pressure. They need to be changed, and that’s a lot of what this novel’s about.
Changing the way we regard money, that would be a step toward post-capitalism right there. If money was created from scratch but not given to the banks to loan to whatever they wanted but given to decarbonization projects first, then flowing out into the general economy — the first spending money by governments, which make money in the first place, would be targeted toward decarbonization efforts. This strikes me as a good idea, a necessary idea.
Because saving the biosphere doesn’t make a profit in the capitalist order, we will never do it, and we are therefore doomed. So a very fundamental reform of how we regard money itself is absolutely necessary. I’m saying that a post-capitalist political economy that regards money as created for the public good and is spent on that first — and then trickles into the general economy — is a fundamental shift, and without it, we’re in terrible trouble.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
A lot of the action takes place in Switzerland, as you mentioned, because many of the main characters are members of the Ministry of the Future headquartered in Zurich. Do you worry that your story could evoke right-wing tropes like the globalist, world government bogeyman that nationalists talk about to avoid action on climate change?
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Well, maybe so, but I would say the Left has to fight fire with fire. Right-wing ideas are also conceptions of globalization, in terribly poor disguises as being nationalist. But the nationalist system is embedded in capitalism; it’s just completely international and global. These right-wingers, if they could make an extra dime an hour by selling out national citizens by sending their industries to China or India — they’d do it in a second, and they already have. So they need to be called out for being completely inconsistent and hypocritical. And the Left needs to be much more aggressive on that, and say the problem is not globalization per se; the problem is bad globalization, which is capitalism, as opposed to good globalization, which is mutual aid and cooperation among the nation states by way of international treaties and things like the UN.
Because saving the biosphere doesn’t make a profit in the capitalist order, we will never do it, and we are therefore doomed.
The Paris Agreement is crucial. It’s a major event in world history. It could turn into the League of Nations, in which case we’re screwed. Or it could turn into something new in history, a way to decarbonize without playing the zero-sum game of nation against nation.
So all this needs to be fought at the level of the discursive battle, and no concessions can be made on that point. I mean, right-wing thinking is supremely hypocritical and convoluted and self-contradictory, and that needs to be pushed on and pointed out at every chance — these supposed nationalists are also going to sell you out. This discursive battle, it’s very important.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
You talked about the Great Trench, of how we get from here to there, and it strikes me that this book is very grounded. There’s no reference to a lunar colony, let alone to any Elon Musk Inc. version of Mars, and there’s no mention of off-planet gated communities like in the film Elysium. Does this absence imply that saving the earth, or transitioning to a livable system, requires stopping the capitalist colonization of space? I kept waiting for an Elon Musk character.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Well, since there are 106 chapters — I guess that I could have made it 107, and I could have talked about that. But maybe the absence does speak louder than words. All of those things are fantasies, and billionaire fantasy trips are not going anywhere.
In Red Moon and Aurora, I’ve made my statement about what’s possible and what isn’t. Because in the capitalist world, you have to make a profit, and even the billionaires don’t have enough money to properly fund these ventures on their own. So they talk about asteroid mining — that’s bullshit. They talk about Helium-3 mining on the moon — that’s bullshit. There is no profit in space. It’s just a fantasy of our culture right now, because everybody’s been convinced by science fiction writers [laughs], and they’re not paying attention to the numbers game, I guess.
I believe in space science. I’m totally in love with NASA, and with public space science, as part of government. There’s this saying of NASA’s, “space science is Earth science,” and I totally believe that.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
That strikes me as the theme of Aurora, right there. You have to go 150 years away from Earth into space to realize what you’ve got, and in that book, they actually turn the ship around.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Yes, exactly. Aurora is my statement about leaving the solar system and that whole idea that humanity is destined for the stars. I try to put a stake in the heart of that idea. But the moon, Mars, the asteroids — that’s more local. But it’s not profitable. So, you’ll see China on the moon [as in Red Moon], you’ll see an international presence there. I’m confident it will be just like Antarctica. And Antarctica’s interesting. There’s a couple thousand people down there every summer. It’s not exploitable; there’s no profit to be made down there. And nobody’s interested. Like, if I say to people, “Oh, I went to Antarctica,” it’s like, “Who cares?”
DERRICK O’KEEFE
And I assume you have spent quite some time in Antarctica, because there’s so much detail to the action that takes place there, in both this book and your earlier works.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Yes, I have been there twice. I have a whole novel about it. Sea level rise is so imminent that Antarctica will be important. And this idea of sucking out the water from beneath these glaciers to slow their melting and sliding into the ocean, this is an idea that glaciologists have, really an individual glaciologist. And when I ask their colleagues about this plan, they say, “Yeah, we have the technology.”
The question is whether the bottom [of the glaciers] is configured correctly. In other words, the earthy form of Antarctica that the ice is resting on may or may not be conducive to sucking water out. So it’s an open question whether my save-the-sea-level section of The Ministry would actually work… it’s probably the most speculative part of the novel, to suggest that that could be done and that it would work. That would be extremely useful geoengineering, but as of now, no one is confident that it would actually work, because we don’t know enough about what the bottom is like. So the Antarctic strand of the novel is a bit of wishful thinking.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
Geoengineering is sometimes a kind of “third rail” in left or ecological political circles. At one point, one of your characters in this book suggests that what’s needed is a new word.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
I know just what you’re talking about, this kind of third rail sensibility. I would say that conditions have changed such that we are now obviously actively experiencing climate change. I can see that a standard leftist analysis of this is that it’s just more capitalist excuse-making. But what I’m saying is, we’re doing it already, it might become necessary, and anyway, a nation like India, if they get hit by a heat wave, they’re not going to care about any kind of leftists clutching their pearls. Many leftists are fairly well off, well off enough to have a political philosophy that wants things to be better for everyone, partly, like in my case, so I don’t feel like a ridiculous aristocrat but just a precursor of what everyone will have later on.
What I want to say to all my leftist readers is, get over it. We’re in an all-hands-on-deck situation, where every possible thing that has ever been suggested to escape the mass extinction event is going to be on the table. And these theoretical arguments — it’s just another capitalist ploy, it’s a silver bullet, it’s a fantasy — well, some of that’s true and some of it isn’t. So there is no excuse for ideological rigidity about something this important. As a leftist, I would say to other leftists: Get over the prejudice against the term geoengineering and look again at the situation that we’re in. We need to decarbonize. Anything we do at scale to achieve that is a form of geoengineering.
I’m totally in love with NASA, and with public space science, as part of government.
Here’s one thing I’ve been saying to open eyes around geoengineering: women’s rights are a geoengineering technology. Here’s why: when women have developed and achieved rights, because we need to get to post-patriarchy as well as post-capitalism, the population replacement rate — a steady population is like 2.1 kids per woman — drops naturally from their own life choices to a rate of like 1.8 or 1.6. So, if you start talking about women’s rights as a geoengineering method, that takes it out of the techno-silver-bullet land, which is where we’re stuck right now. Because right now, when a leftist hears “geoengineering,” they think about an oil company pulling the wool over our eyes, suggesting we can keep burning carbon if we just throw dust into the atmosphere, and how we could end up in some kind of Snowpiercer or other extreme, far-fetched situation. So it serves as an allegory about things that could go wrong.
But I want to argue that humanity is now a major player in Earth’s biosphere, and anything we do to help Earth’s biosphere at scale — in other words, the whole civilization doing it on purpose — could be defined as geoengineering. And then you get software as well as hardware solutions.
So law, justice, post-capitalism, women’s rights, post-patriarchy — all these things could be defined as forms of geoengineering, and at that point, the term kind of falls apart. What we’re really talking about is civilization, as such, as a form of biosphere management. So this is what I’m going out there with over and over on this point, because there’s too much hardening of positions, and these positions are being taken on the basis of the situation as it existed in about 1980 or maybe 1990. The positions are behind the curve of the realities. So, as a leftist science fiction writer, it’s my responsibility to be politically incorrect in provocative ways.
DERRICK O’KEEFE
One of the Ministry characters wonders at some point, “Were they fools to have tried so hard for words in a world careening toward catastrophe?” Every writer working on the topic of climate, whether approaching it through fiction or nonfiction, probably has this thought from time to time. You’ve worked hard for decades in a genre that many have often dismissed. Against this snobbish trend, Ursula K. Le Guin once suggested abolishing genre and subgenre categories altogether, arguing that “literature is literature.” Do you feel like science fiction, or speculative fiction, is finally getting its due respect — especially in this year of the pandemic?
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
We’re in a science fiction novel, as a culture. Science fiction is the realism of our time, as I’ve been saying over and over again. It’s the best way to describe the world that we’re in.
I read widely, I’m open-minded. As a writer, I chose science fiction consciously because it best expresses the realism of our lives today. Since the pandemic, everybody wants to hear what a science fiction writer has to say. Of course we don’t have the solution, and of course we can’t predict the future, but what I think is happening is people are realizing climate change is already here, it’s hammering us, and that we have to think more like how science fiction writers have been thinking for decades now.
This year, I’ve seen a bump in interest that’s doesn’t have to do with me personally. It has to do with science fiction as a genre. Now, you don’t see everybody interested. There’s a crowd of people who like to stay in a previous structure of feeling, to use Raymond Williams’s term. But that structure of feeling is now inadequate, and essentially reactionary. Now you’re in a science fiction world, and so what are you going to do? Maybe you’re going to read more science fiction!”
As written by Javier Sethness Castro in the Agency website in a review entitled Salvaging the Future: A Review of The Ministry for the Future; “After the basics of food and shelter that we need just as animals, first thing after that: dignity. Everyone needs and deserves this, just as part of being human. And yet this is a very undignified world. And so we struggle. You see how it is (551).
The Ministry for the Future is Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest contribution to the emerging genre of climate fiction, known as “cli-fi.” Climate fiction is a subset of science fiction, set in the near or distant future, that centers the projected dystopian effects of global warming and the sixth mass extinction on humanity and nature, while exploring creative and utopian ways of salvaging the future of our species, together with that of millions of others.
As in his other recent speculative works, from Aurora (2015) to New York 2140 (2017), Robinson here draws implicitly on the concept of “disaster communism” developed by the Out of the Woods climate collective—a form of mutual aid that relies on “a kind of bricolage.” Some concrete examples of this bricolage (“work made from available things”), as the collective explains in a 2014 article, include trucks being “repurposed to deliver food to the hungry, retrofitted with electric motors, stripped for parts, and/or used as barricades,” and ships being “scuttled to initiate coral reef formation.” Indeed, in Ministry, Robinson alludes to the repurposing of destroyed container ships as reef beds, and praises Robinson Crusoe for ingeniously “ransack[ing] the wreck of his ship” (229, 367). Thus history—and, by extension, the future—can be remade at the intersection of communal self-organization and the autonomous reconfiguration of existing technologies and infrastructures. As the Out of the Woods collective argues, “the unfolding catastrophe of global warming cannot and will not be stopped” without the “transgressive and transformative mobilization” of disaster communities agitating for a new, post-capitalist global system. As we will see, Robinson’s Ministry is animated by a parallel desire to put an end to the “strip-mining [of] the lifeworld,” and to “help us get to the next world system” (163, 317).
Compared with most of Robinson’s other twenty-five published works, Ministry is among the closest in time frame to our own. It starts in the mid-2020s, just five years after its publication date. Measured in terms of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, the world of Ministry begins at 447 parts per million (as compared to earth’s current level of 417ppm). Unlike Aurora, Red Moon, the Mars trilogy (1992–1996), Galileo’s Dream (2009), or 2312 (2012), the plot in Ministry—with the exception of some lyrical scenes depicting airship flight—is earthbound, focused on terrestrial humanity and nature, rather than interplanetary or interstellar life and travel. Despite this difference, all of Robinson’s cli-fi books share humanistic, ecological, scientific, and historical themes, lessons, and quandaries, and Ministry is no exception. Efforts to address the catastrophic twin threats of a melting polar ice and sea level rise are central to the narratives of Green Earth and Ministry alike.
Although set centuries apart, and/or in differing parts of the solar system or galaxy, Robinson’s novels commonly feature radically subversive political struggles, journeys of existential discovery and loss, interpersonal romances, explorations of the relationship between humanity and other animals (our “cousins”), historical optimism, an emphasis on human stewardship and unity, and the creative use of science to solve social and ecological problems (502). In this sense, his latest work is no exception.
A Global Scope
The Ministry for the Future begins with a shocking illustration of capitalist hell, as Frank May, a young, white US aid worker, witnesses climate devastation firsthand in India, where an estimated twenty million people perish in an unprecedented single heat wave induced by global warming. As the only survivor of the heat wave in a village in the state of Uttar Pradesh, Frank experiences significant trauma and guilt, and goes somewhat mad. In this, he echoes the quixotic crossover of neurodivergence and heroic agency seen in several other of Robinson’s male protagonists, from Saxifrage Russell in the Mars trilogy to Frank Vanderwal in Green Earth and Fred Fredericks in Red Moon.
At the national level, this catastrophe delegitimizes the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is voted out in favor of the nascent Avasthana (“Survival”) Party. In turn, the new government switches the Indian energy grid from coal to renewables, and launches thousands of flights to spray aerosols into the stratosphere, in an effort to double the effects of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. This unilateral geoengineering scheme effectively cools global temperatures by 1 to 2°F (0.6–1.2°C). Dialectically, this “New India,” a formidable “green power,” promotes land reform, biosphere reserves, “communist organic farm[ing],” the decentralization of power, and a questioning of patriarchy and the caste system (141–42). Thousands of miles away, these sweeping changes resonates in arid California, where the state government recognizes all water as a commons, “blockchaining” it for the purpose of collective accounting and use in the face of sustained drought. This is before an “atmospheric river” destroys Los Angeles, “the [capitalist] world’s dream factory,” and a heat wave ravages the US Southwest, taking the lives of hundreds of thousands (285, 348–49).
Just prior to the South Asian heat wave, in 2025, the Ministry for the Future is founded as a “subsidiary body” to the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, the ministry is tasked with representing the interests of future generations, as well as the defense of entities that cannot represent themselves, such as nonhuman animals and ecosystems. Much like the US National Science Foundation (NSF) featured in Green Earth, this ministry is led by cutting-edge, clear-minded scientists; it is distinguished, however, by its international and global scope, as well as its use of artificial intelligence (AI). Part of its mission involves the identification and prosecution of climate and environmental criminals across the globe. Initially, the ministry utilizes legalistic methods to pursue these offenders, but, after a late night confrontation between the deranged Frank and the ministry’s Irish director, Mary Murphy (whom he kidnaps and harangues), decides to quietly support a black ops wing headed by the Nepali Badim Bahadur. The parallel organization, which may be the same as the “Children of Kali” group, and other underground cells, execute weapons manufacturers, disrupt the World Economic Forum at Davos, destroy airliners, sink container ships, and purposely infect cattle herds to prevent their consumption, all as part of the “War for the Earth.” Soon, the Children of Kali are joined by Gaia’s Shock Troops, along with fictionalizations of the real-world Defenders of Mother Earth and Earth First!
Under Bahadur’s direction, the ministry, led by Mary Murphy, not only pursues covert campaigns, but also develops two major proposals to save the world from the menaces of ecocide and militarism: First, it aims to appeal to the central banks of the most powerful states to stimulate decarbonization by replacing the dollar with a new global currency called “carboni.” This new currency is backed, in turn, by long-term bonds and applied in conjunction with progressive carbon taxes, intended to incentivize survival. But it is only after popular occupations of Paris and Beijing, demanding a “kind of commons that was post-capitalist,” and “millions [coming out to] the streets,” transferring their savings to credit unions, and launching a debt strike after the climatic destruction of LA, that the “useless” bankers and “corrupt” lawmakers feel compelled to take steps to adopt “carbon quantitative easing” and remove the profit motive from the fossil fuel industry (214, 252, 344). Second, to slow down the retreat of polar sea ice (and similar to a plan outlined in Green Earth), the ministry backs a proposal to drill into glaciers and pump their melted remnants back onto the surface for refreezing.
After Intervention, the “Good Future”
Once carbon taxes and the carboni currency have been introduced in Ministry’s world, progressive political changes begin to follow. The despotic al-Saud family is overthrown in Arabia, and the interim government pledges to immediately finance the suspension of oil sales and a full transition to solar power through compensation in the form of carboni. Likewise, the “Lula left” makes a roaring comeback in Brazil, stopping the country’s sale of oil and promising to protect and restore the Amazon rain forest, all in response to the newfound incentives created by carboni. The African Union backs the nationalization of all foreign firms, and their transformation into worker cooperatives, as a means of presenting “a united front toward China, [the] World Bank, [and] all outside forces” (324–25, 355).
In Russia, a democratic opposition movement overwhelms Putin’s regime. Refugees in Europe—overwhelmingly Syrian—are given global citizenship and worldwide freedom of movement. Reacting to the pressures of a “brave new market” on the one hand, and of relentless eco-saboteurs on the other, the transport and energy sectors decarbonize. New container ships are designed, partly with the assistance of AI, integrating a return to sail technology and innovative electric motors that run on solar energy. In line with E. O. Wilson’s proposal for “half of earth” to be set aside for nature, a number of habitat corridors are established in North America, connecting the Yukon with Yellowstone, and Yellowstone with Yosemite, incorporating the Rocky, Olympic, and Cascade Mountain Ranges. In these corridors, hunting is banned, roads are ripped up, and underpasses and overpasses are built to facilitate the safe movement of animal populations.
Across the globe, communal, national, and regional socio-environmental organizations coalesce to rewild, restore, and regenerate ecosystems and the human social fabric. Atmospheric carbon concentration peaks at 475ppm, then begins a sustained decline (454–55). The British, Russian, and American navies collaborate to support “Project Slowdown,” the systematic pumping of glacial meltwaters, in Antarctica. The Arctic Sea is dyed yellow, to salvage some degree of albedo, or reflection of solar radiation, in light of melted sea ice. Social inequality declines sharply as universal basic income is adopted and land is increasingly converted into commons.
Rights are extended to nonhuman animals. More and more people shift to cooperative, low-carbon living and plant-based diets, just as communism, participatory economics, workers’ cooperatives, and degrowth emerge as reasonable components of a “Plan B” response to a climate-ravaged world. Frank accompanies Syrian and African refugees, volunteers with mutual aid organization Food Not Bombs, and expresses his love for both Mary and his fellow animals (372–73, 435, 447).
This alternate future is not free of tragedy, however. Tatiana, the ministry’s “warrior,” is assassinated by a drone, presumably directed by Russians seeking revenge for the ouster of Vladimir Putin—much as the anarchist Arkady Bogdanov and his comrades are firebombed by capitalists toward the end of Red Mars. This leads Mary Murphy to go into hiding, something the revolutionaries on Mars and Chan Qi, the female Chinese dissident in Red Moon, must also do.
Questions and Critique
She clutched his arm hard. We will keep going, she said to him in her head—to everyone she knew or had ever known, all those people so tangled inside her, living or dead, we will keep going, she reassured them all (563).
The Ministry for the Future is an engaging, entertaining, and enlightening read. It presents a hopeful vision of the future, whereby mass civil disobedience and direct action against corporations and governments serve as the necessary levers to institute a scientific, ecological, and humanistic global transition beyond capitalism. The plot features conflicts between the market and the state, and it is obvious where Robinson’s allegiances lie. As Mary declares, in this struggle, “we want the state to win” (357). Paradoxically, as an internationalist and an ecologist, Robinson endorses the “rule of law” as an important means of bringing capital to heel (61). At least for the time being, he believes that money, markets, and banks will themselves need to be involved in the worldwide transition toward social and environmental justice—that is, their own overcoming: “Without that it’s castles in air time, and all will collapse into chaos” (410).
Undoubtedly, this vision is different than that of anarchism, which foresees bypassing the hopelessly compromised state and overthrowing capitalism directly through the self-organization of the international working classes. Robinson admits his narrative does not advocate “complete revolution,” as left-wing radicals would (380). Rather than advocating the overthrow of the state, he calls for changing the laws. Indeed, in his construction of an alternate future, Robinson defines the Paris Agreement as the “greatest turning point in human history,” and the “birth of a good Anthropocene” (475). Mary Murphy’s ministry seeks to appeal to the same “bank/state combination” that has caused, and continues to perpetrate, the very climate crisis that threatens humanity and the rest of complex life on earth (212).
To advocate such a statist strategy as a means of salvaging the future, even as an “insider” counterpart to the direct actions carried out by revolutionary “outsiders,” several assumptions must hold—many of them questionable. For instance, Robinson assumes that all countries will adopt the Paris Agreement in good faith; that the ministry would be allowed to come into existence in the first place; that the BJP in India would not only be voted out of power but also accept its electoral defeat peacefully; that Trumpism and the US Republican Party would be out of the picture; that the masses would mobilize radically for socio-environmental justice across the globe and not be brutally repressed, as they were in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Plaza, Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, Occupied Palestine, Syria, or Myanmar/Burma, to name just a few examples; and that the bankers would consider, much less implement, a new global currency based on one’s contributions to carbon sequestration.
Of course, it is partly, if not largely, due to the imaginative assumptions and visions elaborated by speculative writers that audiences are so attracted to the genres of science fiction and fantasy. We must not chide Robinson for exercising his utopian imagination, as it has produced so much beautiful and critical art, including Ministry. At the same time, it is fair to question the intersection of philosophical statism and psychic optimism in his cli-fi. Such a constellation, for instance, unfortunately leads Robinson to compliment the organization of the US Navy, and to praise Dengist China as socialist (155, 381–83). An anarchist approach, in contrast, would prioritize the mobilizations, strikes, and other direct actions present in the text, while adopting a more critical and immediately abolitionist stance toward the state and market.
Conclusion
The Ministry for the Future continues Robinson’s critically visionary, optimistic, and reconstructive speculative fiction. In narrative form, he explains why we must change the system, and presents us with a panoply of means—revolutionary and reformist alike. He emphasizes the need for a “Plan B” to be developed ahead of time, to sustain the revolution, once it breaks out—much as the martyred Syrian anarchist Omar Aziz believed, and as the Frankfurt School critical theorist Herbert Marcuse’s own tombstone declares: Weitermachen! (“Keep it up!”)
Compared with the disastrous eco-futures depicted in such cli-fi novels as Aurora or New York 2140, The Ministry for the Future depicts a dynamically utopian story of estrangement, self-discovery, and creative struggle to ensure a better future. In this sense, it is reminiscent of Pacific Edge (1990), the most hopeful of Robinson’s Three Californias trilogy. At its best, Ministry conveys what could be.”
So for envisioning a future in which we all can live in harmony with nature and each other; how then shall the casting of the bones be read?
The study of our possible futures is an emergent art and science, which I read in current events through the instruments of literary criticism, history, psychology, and philosophy, a methodology inspired by my teenage reading of Robert G.L. Waite’s foundational analysis of Hitler in The Psychopathic God which with Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird fixed me on the origin of evil as my field of study.
As I map out our most probable futures today using iconic works of fiction to interrogate these pathways, I am struck by the ambiguity of much of our futurology; both utopian and dystopian in nuanced complexity and moral relativity, a discovery which both delights and reassures me as the founding and central project of civilization is still with us, that being to question ourselves, our ideas of self and other and of the world and our relationships with it, and how we choose to be human together.
Dystopian narratives and the Utopian ones they interrogate are important informing and motivating sources of political action and resistance not only because they provide vivid examples of the consequences of submission to tyrannical authority of force and control, and to disengagement from the struggle for the survival of nature and of humankind in the face of monstrous plutocratic devastation and greed, but because they allow us to read ourselves into the story and thereby shape our response as heroes in the story of our lives.
While the two main types of dystopian fiction, the totalitarian-dystopian genre and the post-apocalyptic genre, may historically have differing sets of themes and ways of handling them with unique references, allusions, and tropes, both allow us to solve adaptational crises by providing scaffolding for thinking through problems as we confront them in real time.
And the two existential crises we face today, and which will continue to challenge us in all of our tomorrows, are represented by these twin genres of literature and are interdependent and mutually reinforcing; tyranny and the fragility of democracy, and with it threat of our extinction and ecological disaster. We must confront them together as dyadic threats linked by our addiction to power and control as maladaptive responses to our fear of nature.
To this end of our education and models of direct action in resistance, I direct your attention to a short list of classics of the genre, including only those both worth reading on their merits as classics of world literature and as studies of futures we are overwhelmingly likely to witness as the unfolding of consequences of our choices:
Iggy Pop performs Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
As a chiaroscuro of fear and hope, negative spaces which define us and our possibilities of becoming human in coevolution like Escher’s Drawing Hands, I set against this litany of woes the following visions of redemption and transformative change:
First, the Utopia we all grew up with, which has shaped our ideas of an ideal society in countless ways; Star Trek
1966 Intro
Original Series on Paramount- all of the many show series are worth watching
The New Annotated Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Leslie S. Klinger (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Guillermo del Toro (Introduction), Anne K. Mellor (Afterword)
The great novels of speculative fiction are numberless as the stars, and this brief list of prima materia from which to cast the bones of our futures doubtlessly leaves out some of the finest works humankind has yet created.
Here follows an expansion of such, not limited to utopian/dystopian works, which I compiled originally in 1982 when I began teaching, and continually updated since, as a choice reading list to compliment the Authorized Version of our canon of literature, always nothing less than an authorized set of identities, for students in my high school English classes. Jay’s Revised Canon of Literature as I called it grew to over twenty lists of national literatures plus Moden American Literature, including Modern American Science Fiction.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Man in the High Castle, The Minority Report, Lies, Inc., Ubik, A Scanner Darkly, Valis, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick
Mind in Motion: the fiction of Philip K. Dick, Patricia Warrick
The Third Bear, City of Saints and Madmen, The Day Dali Died, Secret Life , The Ambergris Trilogy ( City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: an afterword, & Finch), Dradin in Love: A Tale of Elsewhen & Otherwhere, The Surgeon’s Tale, Komodo, The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, & Acceptance), Borne. Monstrous Creatures: Explorations of Fantasy Through Essays, Articles and Reviews, Dead Astronauts, Jeff Vander Meer
The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations) Harold Bloom
Ring of Fire series, Eric Flint (1632 is the book that reminded me who we are, and what’s worth fighting for)
The Deep, Beasts, Engine Summer, Aegypt, Great Work of Time, Love and Sleep, Antiquities, John Crowley
Wild Cards Series, George R.R. Martin
Intervention, Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask, Magnificat, Julian May
The Maker of Universes, Philip Jose Farmer
Creatures of Light and Darkness, Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov
Dune series, Frank Herbert
Venus Plus X, Godbody, Theodore Sturgeon
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
` Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations) Harold Bloom Editor
Vorkosigan Saga, Lois McMaster Bujold
Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy, Illuminatus Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson
Mindswap, Dimension of Miracles, Options, Compton Divided, The Tenth Victim, Robert Sheckley
Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection. Samuel Delaney
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, The Fresco, The Visitor, The Companions, The Margarets, Sherri S. Tepper
Eight Worlds Series (The Ophiuchi Hotline, Steel Beach, The Golden Globe, Irontown Blues), Thunder and Lightning Series (Red Thunder, Red Lightning, Rolling Thunder, Dark Lightning) The Persistence of Vision, Good-bye Robinson Crusoe and Other Stories, John Varley
Hawksbill Station, Across a Billion Years, A Time of Changes, Dying Inside, The Stochastic Man, The Face of the Waters, Kingdoms of the Wall , Sailing to Byzantium, Majpoor series, Robert Silverberg
The Essential Ellison: a 50-Year Retrospective Revised & Expanded, Harlan Ellison, eds Dowling, Delap, and Lamont
Lyonesse Trilogy (Suldrun’s Garden, The Green Pearl, Madouc) The Languages of Pao, Jack Vance
The Boat of a Milliion Years, A Midsummer Tempest, Poul Anderson
Book of the New Sun series (The Shadow of the Torturer , The Claw of the Conciliator , The Sword of the Lictor ,The Citadel of the Autarch , and a coda, The Urth of the New Sun), The Book of the Long Sun series ( Nightside the Long Sun , Lake of the Long Sun , Caldé of the Long Sun , and Exodus From the Long Sun), The Book of the Short Sun series ( On Blue’s Waters, In Green’s Jungles and Return to the Whorl) Gene Wolfe
Aliens series, Gini Koch
Blood Music, The Forge of God, Anvil of Sars, Darwin’s Radio, Darwin’s Children, Queen of Angels, Slant, Heads, Moving Mars, City at the End of Time, Greg Bear
Song of Kali, Hyperion Cantos series (Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion) Ilium, Olympos, Dan Simmons
R. A. Lafferty: The Collected Short Fiction (The Man Who Made Models Volume 1, The Man With the Aura Volume 2, The Man Underneath Volume 3,
The Man With The Speckled Eyes Volume 4) The Devil is Dead trilogy (Archipelago, The Devil is Dead, More Than Melchisedech- consists of Tales of Chicago, Tales of Midnight, & Argo), Sinbad: the Thirteenth Voyage, R.A. Lafferty
Honor Harrington series, David Weber
Chanur series: (The Pride of Chanur, Chanur’s Venture, The Kif Strike Back, Chanur’s Homecoming, Chanur’s Legacy), The Faded Sun Series: (Kesrith,
The Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, & Mona Lisa Overdrive), The Bridge Trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru, & All Tomorrow’s Parties) the political-spy thriller trilogy (Pattern Recognition, Spook County, & Zero History), The Difference Engine, The Peripheral, Agency, William Gibson
Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling, Holy Fire, Zeitgeist, Islands in the Net, Schismatrix Plus, Pirate Utopia, Bruce Sterling
This Earth Day arrives at a turning point in the history of our planet and our species, in which we face existential threats including the pandemic which has made personal and undeniable the immediacy of the crisis, the melting of glaciers, the death of coral reefs and kelp forests, the collapse of the earth’s crust and the ground beneath our feet as the water vanishes and becomes more valuable than oil, firestorms and floods which devour cities, the extinction of species and one day of our own.
We may have already passed the point of no return, as our lives are fed into the machine of our commodification and destruction as raw fuel for the wealth and power of others.
I find it interesting that Earth Day is celebrated on the date of the first night of the traditional Nine Nights of the Wild Hunt of pre-Christian Europe, in which the wicked mighty are brought a Reckoning by chthonic forces which represent the oppressed underclass, a tradition most useful to we Antifa, revolutionaries and allies of liberation struggle, and Living Autonomous Zones.
We are dying, after all, with the earth we have poisoned as a consequence of extractive capitalism and our addiction to power conferred by control of oil as a strategic resource, for the benefit of elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege who have enslaved and doomed us all. So, each year we perform nine nights of purging our destroyers from among us and bringing Reckonings to systems of unequal power and oppression, and the restoration of balance in an amok time in which nothing is Forbidden.
Happy monkeywrenching, friends.
If we the people of earth can find the political will to take action for our survival, what must be done?
Anyone who has studied the history of social movements and revolutions understands implicitly the dangers of ideological fracture; it caused the collapse of the Industrial Workers of the World early labor movement and the Socialist Party in America over the issue of peace during World War One, divided the Democratic Socialists in Germany and removed them as an oppositional force to the rise of Hitler, divided the civil rights movement and marginalized dissent, fragmented the Students For a Democratic Society and prolonged the Vietnam War, and during the seventies and eighties threatened to sabotage the emergent ecological movement.
The ideology and praxis of ecology was at this time polarizing as Deep Ecology, utopians who wanted to forge or reclaim a universal religion of all living beings as equals and return to a mythic Golden Age as a preindustrial society living in harmony with nature, and Social Ecology, scientific rather than religious in orientation, focused on capital and social hierarchy as causes of ecological disaster and rooted in Marxist dialectical theory. Proposals such as the Green New Deal are developments of Social Ecology, and of the historical Socialist Left intellectual tradition which comes to us through Murray Bookchin.
Some of these differences are those of strategy; education and legislation versus direct action and mass protest. Others are monsters born of our class differences, membership in the intelligentsia which privileges ideology or in labor which directs us toward action.
For myself, I coined the slogan Educate Systemic Change, Legislate Structural Change, because one cannot legislate values nor bring change to institutions by moral suasion alone; each requires its own solution. As to the street theatre and spectacle of mass and direct action, so critical to the performance of identity, to solidarity of action and to organizing, to consciousness raising and motivation, to be effective it must be performed as part of a strategy to shape opinion and generate a base for mass action, as motive forces for political and social change.
Both Social and Deep Ecology can provide informing, motivating, and shaping forces for revolutionary struggle and the reimagination and transformation of our civilization and of humankind. Along with the tactics of mass and direct action for institutional and structural change through legislation, the strategies of systemic change through education can bring a revisioning of our society.
We need both kinds of change, structural and systemic, harnessed together as a team if we are to solve both the how and the why of restoring the balance between nature and humankind.
Because the flaws of our humanity which have unleashed a war on nature which now threatens us with extinction has two parts; the limitless greed of extractive capitalism is the instrument of ecological destruction, and its origin is the human fear of nature, to which we react with a need to dominate and control a universe which is fundamentally irrational and uncontrollable.
We will restore our balance and harmony with nature only if and when we embrace our fear of the wildness of nature, and the wildness of ourselves.
As Murray Bookchin, anarchist philosopher and Social Ecology theorist teaches us in his 1989 debate with Dave Foreman, founder and principal figure of Earth First and spokesman of the Deep Ecology movement; “The ultimate moral appeal of Earth First! is that it urges us to safeguard the natural world from our ecologically destructive societies, that is, in some sense, from ourselves. But, I have to ask, who is this “us” from which the living world has to be protected? This, too, is an important question. Is it “humanity?” Is it the human “species” per se? Is it people, as such? Or is it our particular society, our particular civilization, with its hierarchical social relations which pit men against women, privileged whites against people of color, elites against masses, employers against workers, the First World against the Third World, and, ultimately, a cancerlike, “grow or die” industrial capitalist economic system against the natural world and other life-forms? Is this not the social root of the popular belief that nature is a mere object of social domination, valuable only as a “resource?”
All too often we are told by liberal environmentalists, and not a few Deep Ecologists, that it is “we” as a species or, at least, “we” as an amalgam of “anthropocentric” individuals that are responsible for the breakdown of the web of life. I remember an “environmental” presentation staged by the Museum of Natural History in New York during the 1970s in which the public was exposed to a long series of exhibits, each depicting examples of pollution and ecological disruption. The exhibit which closed the presentation carried a startling sign, “The Most Dangerous Animal on Earth.” It consisted simply of a huge mirror which reflected back the person who stood in front of it. I remember a black child standing in front of that mirror while a white school teacher tried to explain the message which this arrogant exhibit tried to convey. Mind you, there was no exhibit of corporate boards of directors planning to deforest a mountainside or of government officials acting in collusion with them.
One of the problems with this asocial, “species-centered” way of thinking, of course, is that it blames the victim. Let’s face it, when you say a black kid in Harlem is as much to blame for the ecological crisis as the President of Exxon, you are letting one off the hook and slandering the other. Such talk by environmentalists makes grassroots coalition-building next to impossible. Oppressed people know that humanity is hierarchically organized around complicated divisions that are ignored only at their peril. Black people know this well when they confront whites. The poor know this well when they confront the wealthy. The Third World knows it well when it confronts the First World. Women know it well when they confront patriarchal males. The radical ecology movement needs to know it too.
All this loose talk of “we” masks the reality of social power and social institutions. It masks the fact that the social forces that are tearing down the planet are the same social forces which threaten to degrade women, people of color, workers, and ordinary citizens. It masks the fact that there is a historical connection between the way people deal with each other as social beings and the way they treat the rest of nature. It masks the fact that our ecological problems are fundamentally social problems requiring fundamental social change. That is what I mean by Social Ecology. It makes a big difference in how societies relate to the natural world whether people live in cooperative, non-hierarchical, and decentralized communities or in hierarchical, class-ridden, and authoritarian mass societies. Similarly, the ecological impact of human reason, science, and technology depends enormously on the type of society in which these forces are shaped and employed.
Perhaps the biggest question that all wings of the radical ecology movement must satisfactorily answer is just what do we mean by “nature.” If we are committed to defending nature, it is important to clearly understand what we mean by this. Is nature, the real world, essentially the remnants of the Earth’s prehuman and pristine biosphere that has now been vastly reduced and poisoned by the “alien” presence of the human species? Is nature what we see when we look out on an unpeopled vista from a mountain? Is it a cosmic arrangement of beings frozen in a moment of eternity to be abjectly revered, adored, and untouched by human intervention? Or is nature much broader in meaning? Is nature an evolutionary process which is cumulative and which includes human beings?
The ecology movement will get nowhere unless it understands that the human species is no less a product of natural evolution than blue-green algae, whales, and bears. To conceptually separate human beings and society from nature by viewing humanity as an inherently unnatural force in the world leads, philosophically, either to an anti-nature “anthropocentrism” or a misanthropic aversion to the human species. Let’s face it, such misanthropy does surface within certain ecological circles. Even Arne Naess admits that many deep ecologists “talk as if they look upon humans as intruders in wonderful nature.”
We are part of nature, a product of a long evolutionary journey. To some degree, we carry the ancient oceans in our blood. To a very large degree we go through a kind of biological evolution as fetuses. It is not alien to natural evolution that a species called human beings has emerged over billions of years which is capable of thinking in sophisticated ways. Our brains and nervous systems did not suddenly spring into existence without long antecedents in natural history. That which we most prize as integral to our humanity — our extraordinary capacity to think on complex conceptual levels — can be traced back to the nerve network of primitive invertebrates, the ganglia of a mollusk, the spinal cord of a fish, the brain of an amphibian, and the cerebral cortex of a primate.
We need to understand that the human species has evolved as a remarkably creative and social life-form that is organized to create a place for itself in the natural world, not only to adapt to the rest of nature. The human species, its different societies, and its enormous powers to alter the environment were not invented by a group of ideologues called “humanists” who decided that nature was “made” to serve humanity and its needs. Humanity’s distinct powers have emerged out of eons of evolutionary development and out of centuries of cultural development. These remarkable powers present us, however, with an enormous moral responsibility. We can contribute to the diversity, fecundity, and richness of the natural world — what I call “first nature” — more consciously, perhaps, than any other animal. Or, our societies — “second nature” — can exploit the whole web of life and tear down the planet in a rapacious, cancerous manner.
The future that awaits the world of life ultimately depends upon what kind of society or “second nature” we create. This probably affects, more than any other single factor, how we interact with and intervene in biological or “first nature.” And make no mistake about it, the future of “first nature,” the primary concern of conservationists, is dependent on the results of this interaction. The central problem we face today is that the social evolution of “second nature” has taken a wrong turn. Society is poisoned. It has been poisoned for thousands of years, from before the Bronze Age. It has been warped by rule by elders, by patriarchy, by warriors, by hierarchies of all sorts which have led now to the current situation of a world threatened by competitive, nuclear-armed, nation-states and a phenomenally destructive corporate capitalist system in the West and an equally ecologically destructive, though now crumbling, bureaucratic state capitalist system in the East.
We need to create an ecologically oriented society out of the present anti-ecological one. If we can change the direction of our civilization’s social evolution, human beings can assist in the creation of a truly “free nature,” where all of our human traits — intellectual, communicative, and social — are placed at the service of natural evolution to consciously increase biotic diversity, diminish suffering, foster the further evolution of new and ecologically valuable life-forms, and reduce the impact of disastrous accidents or the harsh effects of harmful change. Our species, gifted by the creativity of natural evolution itself, could play the role of nature rendered self-conscious.”
“I also want to say that I think that many of the political differences between Dave and myself are complementary. Dave and Earth First! work on preserving the wilderness; I and others are trying to create a new grassroots municipal politics, a new cooperative economics, a new pattern of science and technology to go along with their direct action, demonstrations, rallies, and protests to protect wilderness. We need to learn that we are different aspects of a single movement. We also need to try to amicably deal with those principled political differences that do exist between us. There are probably still some major problems between us that have to be explored. Yet, even if we can’t straighten them all out, we must at least learn how to better work together on what we can agree on. Our future depends on it.”
So for the Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology ideological fracture and the dangers of division and fragmentation of power to bring change to systems of oppression which are driving us to extinction, and the dialectics of capitalism as fear of the wildness of nature and the wildness of ourselves.
There is a third ideology which synthesizes Social and Deep Ecology in dialectical process, the Holistic philosophy of Gregory Bateson which I encountered in my twenties.
Years before as a high school senior I began to see in the events and natural history of our material environment allegories and metaphors of human being and processes in which we are embedded from reading Annie Dillard’s luminous Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; already a survivalist and enthusiast of wilderness adventures, her book inspired me to spend the summer after high school and before university trekking across the Olympic Peninsula and exploring the coastal islands. Much later Basho’s poetry similarly motivated me to wander along his route of travel in The Narrow Road to the North to see where they were written; I have traveled in many places and lived with many peoples very different from myself, whose stories are beyond the scope of this essay and for another time, but in all of them there was a literary voice which became for me the voice of the wild.
What I have learned from all of this is that it is necessary to develop a personal relationship with nature, both our own and that of the world, of respect for our limits, love for our interdependence, and responsibility for the consequences of our actions.
As to wildness, of which Gary Snyder writes in The Practice of the Wild, Earth Day presents us with an opportunity to renew our commitments to our partnerships with our world and each other, and seek out new unknowns and possibilities of becoming human in harmony with nature through ecstatic trance and poetic vision in the reimagination and transformation of ourselves and the choices we make about how to be human together.
And don’t forget to run amok and be ungovernable, make mischief for tyrants and those who would enslave us, sabotage the machine of our falsification, commodification, and dehumanization, question, expose, mock, disbelieve, disobey, and delegitimize authority, violate normalities and transgress boundaries of the Forbidden, seize power as Living Autonomous Zones and dance beyond all laws and all limits in the joy of total freedom, of refusal to submit to the force and control of Authority and in defiance of the terror of our nothingness, and stand in solidarity with all those who do the same regardless of how different they and their forms of liberation struggle may be.
Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, by Gregory Bateson, Mary Catherine Bateson (Foreword by)
As I have been visited in strange dreams which are doorways to Infinitude, possibilities of being human, and journeys beyond the boundaries of time and of the Forbidden, so I wish to share with you glimpses into Earth Day Past, Present, and Future, fragmentary and conditional though they are, in the hope that we may be situated in our pivotal historical moment as agents of change and transformation, make empowered choices and take actions in our lives with awareness and responsibility for their consequences.
For in dreams we are free from the limits of our form, and may see beyond the illusion of the world and our own condition and place in it to discover paths forward to the healing of the world and the flaws of our humanity.
If you are wondering why I have chosen to frame my Earth Day posts as a revision of A Christmas Carol, the story in which Charles Dickens wed socialism to Christian allegory and thereby originated Liberation Theology, it is because of the relevance of his primary insight, that the quality of our humanity is interdependent with the material conditions of our environment, and that our salvation from such conditions rests with our interdependence, solidarity of action, and duty of care for others, and also relevant to the existential threats we face today.
Herein I do not describe what I believe to be true about the continuance and balance of our past and future; I ask instead that each of us discover our own vision and work toward its realization. For the myriad pathways we will create together through our uniqueness and individual autonomy will overwhelm any barriers of authoritarian force and control in our path to a better future.
Because we need both kinds of truth, history and the poetic or metaphorical truth of literature with which to create ourselves, both Apollonian and Dionysian forces as Nietzsche called them, I offer here the witness of history by a founder of Earth Day, Denis Hayes, and that of Kurt Vonnegut both real and imagined.
The story of Earth Day at its founding and now, in the wake of the mass protests of Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg which seized the world at its balance, and when the Green New Deal promises to save us from our own greed and the need for control born of fear of nature, and after intervening generations of landmark legislation and the direct action of heroes of human survival and multitudes of organizations such as Earth First, can be usefully framed by bookend articles in The Village Voice in which Kurt Vonnegut stands in for all of us as he witnesses the spectacle of Earth Day.
As written by Anna Mayo in her article of 1970 entitled, Vonnegut & Earth Day: Can a Granfalloon Save the Planet?; “It was the night before Earth Day. Kurt Vonnegut, set off by the ambience of the Algonquin Hotel, looked more like Mark Twain than Hal Holbrook.
He was talking about the environment.
“Do you think, Mr. Vonnegut, that the environmental movement is a granfalloon or a universal karass?”
“Everybody knows the answer to that question. But that’s not for publication,” he said. “Not today. By next week, you might as well tell ’em.”
(In Vonnegutian, a granfalloon is a false and meaningless association of people. The Daughters of the American Revolution, citizens of a nation, the International Communist Party, and All-Persons-Under-30 are the examples of granfalloons. A karass, on the other hand, is a true connection among persons meant to be with one another.)
It’s now a week after Earth Day. It’s okay to print the answer. Which everybody knows anyway.
The environmental movement is a granfalloon. “It’s a big soppy pillow,” said Vonnegut. “Nobody’s going to do anything.” He did cheer up briefly and told about a man he’d heard of out at G.M. who’s “invented a big grinder to grind up all the automobiles. Last week they got rid of all the old cars in Cleveland.” He described the grinder with enthusiasm as looking like one a kid would design. He indicated a big crank.
Later he spoke, as in his novel The Sirens of Titan, of the essential capacity to bear pain. In Sirens, the hero is challenged to put up with shocks sent to antennae fixed in his brain whenever he starts to think about anything personal and/or true.
People read his books, Vonnegut supposes, because they’re interested in God. Also, he added, “I’m very funny. I’m the funniest writer in America. That’s always a trump.… All you can teach ’em,” he summed up, “all you can teach anybody, is how to endure.”
At noon, Earth Day, on the steps of the New York City Public Library, the Manhattan College of Music Brass Ensemble played fanfares, the sun burst forth, and whooshes of pigeons filled the air.
Kurt Vonnegut, famous author and Weary Space Traveler, emerged from the library portals and descended to the speakers’ platform. Among the several dignitaries, he was the gloomiest.
“It is unusual,” he began, “for a total pessimist to be speaking at a spring celebration. Anyway here we all are — the peaceful demonstrators. Mostly white… President Nixon has our power and our money and the best thing for him to do is get out of the war business. Will he do it? No.”
And as the war goes on, “meanwhile we are free to walk up and down Fifth Avenue picking up the trash missed by the Sanitation Department.… We can surely look forward to some great advertising campaigns.… Now polluters are looked upon as ordinary Joes just doing their jobs. In the future, they will be looked upon as swine.… Will the president do anything about pollution? Probably not.”
In closing, Vonnegut consoled the crowd — after his fashion. “Those who try their best to save the planet will find a loose, cheerful, sexy brass band waiting to honor them right outside the Pearly Gates. What will the band be playing? ‘When the Saints Come Marching In.’ ”
People in the crowd reacted to Vonnegut in various ways. One elderly lady paced this way and that, talking fiercely throughout all the speeches, including Vonnegut’s. Her name, she said, was Lydia Petrovna, and she looked it. She said she had been born just east of Odessa but had grown up in Yugoslavia. She was wearing black socks on her bulgy ankles, a large dusty black felt hat, and a Belgrade style maxi-coat. A gold monkey pin with green rhinestone eyes was pinned on the back of the hat and she carried a sturdy rubber-tipped cane. Although much of what she had to say was in Yugoslavian, she did get across in English that “the trouble is we don’t listen to the right teachers.”
This could be.
A music professor from Iowa with a neat white mustache walked down the middle of Fifth Avenue. He was holding a flower. He didn’t have time to make much of a comment on Vonnegut’s speech since he was intent on singing the 12th century canon, “Summer Is Icumen In,” in old English, all parts.
He preferred not to give his name, as he didn’t trust reporters. “Bad experiences, you know.” But he didn’t mind being called “Mr. Daffodil” for the day. “Like the roast beef once eaten on Fridays by resourceful medieval monks who baptized it as fish. ‘Te baptizo carpem.’ You can baptize me Daffodil,” he said rosily.
He and Lydia Petrovna gave the impression they knew a lot about how to endure.”
And today Kurt Vonnegut speaks to us during his afternoon tea on a break from time traveling, as written by Ali Smith in her article entitled Kurt Vonnegut Revisits Earth for Earth Day; “We talk with the space-and-time-traveling author about the plight of our planet, and if there is still hope for its rescue.
In 1970, Fred McDarrah captured pedestrians thronging NYC’s streets on the first Earth Day. Along with American flags, the Voice’s staff photographer was careful to include a fallout shelter sign in his frame.
“Sea pirates” named this land “America” back in 1492. They then proceeded to plunder, pillage, and poison it in the name of progress, as pirates will do. Four hundred and seventy-eight years later, a large group of these so-called “Americans” gathered in New York City for an event meant to send the message that in regard to all that plundering, pillaging, and poisoning, enough was enough.
On April 22, 1970, Fifth Avenue was shut down to traffic from 59th to 14th streets. Flyers urged “Come on foot, bicycle or roller skates … but leave your car at home!” People were sincere. They were angry. They were hopeful. They meant it! It was the first (soon to be annual) Earth Day.
At high noon, beloved social satirist, science fiction writer, humanist, and self-proclaimed pessimist Kurt Vonnegut faced the optimistic crowd from a stage at the feet of Patience and Fortitude, the marble lions that guard the New York Public Library, in midtown Manhattan. Mayor Lindsay was there, as were Leonard Bernstein, Paul Newman, Ali MacGraw, and many visionary scientists and pandering politicians. The general sense seemed to be that if corporations and regular people just understood the unprecedented damage we were doing to the planet, they would immediately want to change their behavior. (This was proved wrong.)
The night before, Village Voice writer Anna Mayo had asked Vonnegut whether the environmental movement was a “granfalloon” or a “universal karass,” the former being a false and meaningless association of people, the latter a much more sincere group (both terms coined by the author in his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle). “Everybody knows the answer to that question,” he replied, as Mayo reported in her Voice article. “But that’s not for publication.” On the stage on Earth Day, Vonnegut abstractly addressed her question when he used the red-hot tip of his Pall Mall unfiltered cigarette to pop the bubble of optimism the crowd had been bouncing around in: “Now polluters are looked upon as ordinary Joes just doing their jobs. In the future, they will be looked upon as swine.… Will the president do anything about pollution? Probably not.”
He went on deflating the mood before ending with a faint glimmer of encouragement in these words: “Those who try their best to save the planet will find a loose, cheerful, sexy brass band waiting to honor them right outside the Pearly Gates. What will the band be playing? ‘When the Saints Come Marching In.’”
I’ve often wondered why Vonnegut doubled down on pessimism on that monumental day. After all, as he told Mayo back in 1970, “I’m very funny. I’m the funniest writer in America.” And humor always suggests a light at the end of the tunnel. It alleviates the pressure we feel about the things we’re most terrified of, and lets us know we’re not alone.
Vonnegut wrote and spoke for decades about our relentless, merciless destruction of the earth, long before “climate change” was in common parlance. I was sure a man this dedicated to the subject could offer gleaned knowledge and concrete advice.
So I was thrilled to secure the following interview with Kurt Vonnegut’s … ghost? … spirit? … time-traveling doppelgänger? …
Ali Smith: What is it you’d like me to call you, Mr. Vonnegut?
Kurt Vonnegut: I am a space wanderer named Kurt who has become unstuck in time.
OK, then. With your permission, I’ll call you Kurt-Vonnegut-Space-Wanderer. I’m not sure where you are right now or how much time we’ll have, so I’ll cut right to it. In your 1970 Earth Day speech, why didn’t you feel compelled to offer positivity to young people about their future on this planet?
Well, young people have been swindled. Persuaded that it is now up to them to save the world. It isn’t up to them. They don’t have the money and the power. They don’t even know how to handle dynamite. It is up to older people to save the world. Young people can help them. I thought somebody ought to tell it to them straight.
Do you believe that we—older people—can still fix the planet?
All that is required is that we become less selfish than we are. The planet is being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what is being manufactured is lousy, by and large. Something we have never had but desperately need is a Secretary of the Future, who can come up with concrete plans to help my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren. We also have to stop choosing abysmally ignorant optimists for positions of leadership. They were useful only so long as nobody had a clue as to what was really going on—during the past seven million years or so. The sort of leaders we need now are not those who promise ultimate victory over Nature through perseverance in living as we do right now but those with the courage and intelligence to present to the world what appears to be Nature’s stern but reasonable surrender terms.
What are those terms?
Mother Earth hasn’t told me directly—not even on this spectral plane where I currently reside. But she’s been sending very clear messages to the still-living in the form of hurricanes, sinkholes, failed crops, burnt-to-a-crisp forests, and her continued cosmic joke of producing psychopathic personalities, hell-bent on attaining leadership roles so they can kill as many of us as possible in as many ways as they can dream up.
Here are a few of the things we must do:
• Stop poisoning the air, the water, and the topsoil.
• Teach our kids, and ourselves, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
• Stop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
• Return all the automobiles to their home planet of Lingo-Three, where they can live and reproduce freely, rather than poisoning our atmosphere.
• If the government is really waging a war on drugs, let them go after petroleum.
• Reduce and stabilize our population.
• Stop thinking our grandchildren will be OK no matter how wasteful or destructive we may be since they can go to a nice new planet on a spaceship.
On that note, did you know that billionaires have recently been hurtling themselves into space inside rocket ships that look like giant penises? What do you think of them for doing that?
Kurt-Vonnegut-Space-Wanderer’s translucent hand draws, in glowing light in the air in front of him, his signature symbol—a 12-point asterisk meant to be an asshole.
Don’t you agree, though, that Earth Day was a step in the right direction? After all, since the first one, President Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, the modern versions of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were enacted, the first U.S. wind farms went up in New Hampshire, New York closed the Indian Point Nuclear Facility, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established, electric cars were invented, the bald eagle was taken off the endangered species list, Fridays for Future marches have mobilized youth worldwide, and the Green New Deal is being discussed seriously (at least by some) at the highest levels of government. Aren’t these reasons to be optimistic?
KVSW’s image is glitching wildly now and I sense my time with him is coming to a close. The desperation in my own voice surprises me:
WAIT! Please don’t go. WILL THIS ALL WORK OUT?
Surely he’s learned something out there in the great beyond. Surely, like me, he’s only a pessimist because he cares for creation so deeply he can’t bear to watch it destroyed. Surely … there’s hope.
But already he’s just a floating set of lips, a mustache, and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses obscured by smoke, with a static-laced voice that sounds like it’s being transmitted over a thin radio wave from outer space.
There is hope as long as you poison the minds of the young with humanity and encourage them to make a better world. Apologize to future generations for mortally wounding this sweet life-supporting planet. Tell them we were roaring drunk on petroleum. Possessions didn’t help alleviate our loneliness as much as advertisers said they would. We were Planet-Gobblers. Hopefully, they will forgive us.
And with a “pop,” he’s gone, and I’m left feeling abandoned and sad. But wait. Vonnegut’s given me all the advice needed for this descendant of what he described as “sea pirates” to stop huffing on the tailpipe of the American dream. Let the billionaires float away in their penis-shaped evacuation zeppelins. I’ll stay here, feet rooted firmly to this beautiful, wounded planet, with its mess and suffering, alongside others who aspire to give more than they take. I will work hard to become less selfish.
As for all the obstacles in my way? I can hear his voice now:
So it goes.“ ❖
The history of the founding of Earth Day is written in a 2019 Time magazine interview of one of its principal organizers Denis Hayes by Olivia B. Waxman; “Nearly 50 years after 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, more than 190 countries mark the annual day for raising awareness of environmental causes. And the stakes only grow as the years go by.
Though Earth Day has been dogged by rumors that it was founded by a murderer and as communist propaganda, the truth is much more straightforward — but no less fascinating. TIME spoke to Denis Hayes, a real organizer of the first Earth Day, dubbed “Mr. Earth Day” by the magazine in 1999. Hayes is now the president of the Bullitt Foundation, which doles out grants to environmental efforts.
Here, he tells the true story of founding of Earth Day, its proudest accomplishments and the work that still needs to be done.
TIME: Where did the idea for the first Earth Day come from?
HAYES: A number of issues basically all came to a head by the late ’60s, starting in 1962, with Rachel Carson publishing Silent Spring, about the dangers of pesticides. In 1969, an oil spill in the elite community of Santa Barbara, Calif., brought it home to people in a terribly visual way — they saw animals covered in goo, people trying to get it off, and you watched them die on camera. Then we had the fire on the Cuyahoga River; the juxtaposition with water, which puts out fire, made a splash. Then interstate highways were being built. That’s when people who didn’t self-identify as conservationists were out there trying to protect their neighborhoods from horrible air pollution. The stuff coming out of tailpipes was all from leaded gasoline, poisoning their children. At the same time that people were trying to talk about organic produce and the impact of pesticides on the foods that people were eating, those pesticides were being sprayed onto the backs of farm workers, so the Chicano movement saw the environmental issues as a way to mobilize public support for their objectives.
What we did was take all of those myriad strands, including wildlife protection issues, and wove them all together. It sounds strange today, but back then, the folks involved with those various causes didn’t think of themselves as having anything in common with one another. No one was asking that question at the end of the 1970s.
How was the first Earth Day organized?
Senator [Gaylord] Nelson reached out to me to build his staff and organize it. I was the most senior of the paid staff and I was 25 years old. Youthful vitality and passion forms the engine of these things.
One of the secrets of Earth Day is that the head of the United Automobile Workers union gave us a budget for an 800 number so we could communicate directly with organizers. Walter Philip Reuther [the head of the UAW] was a genuinely progressive guy who cared about workplace conditions and supported public transit because his workers were making the buses for GM. He was horrified by the pollution coming out of the tailpipes of cars. He supported legislation like the Clean Air Act to protect the industry from people refusing to buy these cars. We were operating on a shoestring budget, so the ability to make free phone calls made it possible for us to be in instant communication with people in the biggest cities.
Gaylord thought something similar to the youth-dominated anti-war movement could be done in the environmental movement, so I went out and hired a number of superb, experienced organizers who had been in anti-war, Hispanic and civil rights movements. But there was almost no interest in our cause on college campuses because we had a war going on. So I looked back at the mail to the Senator’s office, and it was overwhelmingly from relatively young women, mostly college educated, with one or two kids in a single-wage-earner family, with time on their hands, who had gotten frustrated by not being involved in the social tumult of the era and who were deeply affected by environmental threats to their children. They formed a real nexus we organized around. Once the thing got visibility, and it became clear this was a vehicle for change, then the students climbed on board afterwards.
Why is Earth Day on April 22?
[The rationale] was straight forward. This whole thing was envisioned by Senator Gaylord Nelson as a campus teach-in, so it was all about making sure this would be attractive enough to the largest number of college students. He chose the date before he hired me. He came from Wisconsin, which has cold winters, and he wanted to find a date late enough in the year that a teach-in wouldn’t be snowed in, but early enough that college students wouldn’t be cramming for final exams. And he wanted it to be in the middle of the week so people wouldn’t be away on weekend trips. So, he chose a Wednesday near the end of April, and that Wednesday happened to be April 22. Wednesday, candidly, is a terrible day for something other than an environmental teach-in. I live in Seattle; nine out of 10 times there’s a torrential rainstorm at that time of year. It’s a terrible day for organizing stuff outside. After Earth Day was such a spectacular success, it started appearing on calendars. There’s no way to change the date. I’ve had people beg me to declare it’s the spring equinox or summer solstice, but we’re stuck with it.
How did Earth Day get its name?
Madison Avenue. A progressive advertising guy stopped by our office asking, ‘Anything I can do to help?’ I said, well, in brand terms, I think this teach-in thing isn’t going anyplace, and it’s not relevant to the folks who are most responsive to environmental issues. Why don’t you think of ways for us to re-brand it? A couple of weeks later he comes back with some print-outs on newsprint of ads with new names. He suggested names like Ecology Day, E-Day, Environment Day, Earth Day and Green Day. We all sat around with pizza and beer one night and tried to figure out which one would resonate, and Earth Day just sounded right. Fortuitously, Earth Day turned out to be something that translated beautifully in every language.
What was the role in Earth Day’s founding of Ira Einhorn, who was convicted of murder in 2002?
I thought that idea had been long buried. He was onstage as an announcer of the Philadelphia Earth Day — a marginal character in one Earth Day in one city. There’s no way you could think of him as the founder, even of the Earth Day in Philadelphia. If you asked me to name 50 people really crucial to that organizing of that first Earth Day, he certainly wouldn’t be on that list.
Holly [Maddux, of whose murder Einhorn was convicted] was a beautiful, wonderful, gracious person.
How Did Earth Day Influence the Nixon Administration?
The environmentalist in the White House was Nixon’s domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman. Before Watergate, he pushed for everything that was progressive that came out of the White House and pretty much across the board. I had actually known him before he got into the White House and we interacted occasionally when he was in the White House.
One of his sons was a paralegal who worked for me at a law firm in Silicon Valley, and one day Ehrlichman takes us out to dinner. This was after he got out of the slammer. He tells this story about how on Earth Day in 1970, Nixon looked out the window and saw this giant crowd on the mall and went out and tried to mingle, but he was incredibly socially awkward. Then, he saw on television the gigantic crowd that formed when we shut down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and the Mayor of New York John Lindsay, a Republican, was standing on a platform, talking about this environmental stuff.
Here’s when it becomes iffy because it is in Ehrlichman’s interest to tell me this story because it puts him in a good light, and my interest to believe the story because it makes me very influential. Nixon says, What am I going to do become a player here? Ehrlichman reminded him of a commission that Nixon had set up when he was first elected, to reorganize government. He suggested we create a new agency that pulls together the environmental initiatives that the various agencies are doing. Create an Environmental Protection Agency with an executive order, and suddenly you’re a major player. You might even save some money by making it more efficient. According to Ehrlichman, that’s how, on Earth Day, they made the decision that they later implemented to create the EPA.
How do you think Earth Day has held up over the years?
The weakness of Earth Day is the “day” concept. When you do something every year, it can become tired and used for unrelated reasons. In the 1960s — before we had cable news and social media and an avalanche of information — a march to the Pentagon, or from Selma to Montgomery, would get enough visibility for long enough that it left a change in the public consciousness. In none of those cases was something done on that day, but you create a climate in which something that was previously impossible becomes almost inevitable.
Have there been any failed Earth Days?
The Earth Day that took place in 1990, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, was probably the second most important Earth Day. The main theme was climate change and to move aggressively towards a renewably powered future. But we didn’t have a wave there. We were trying to create a wave from basically nothing but intellectual discourse. Did we succeed? The answer to that nearly 30 years later is pretty obvious, though I’m not sure there was a way it could succeed.
What would you say has been the legacy of Earth Day?
The big advances were all within five years of that first Earth Day: an amended Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; the Safe Drinking Water Act; the Endangered Species Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). With that early wave of environmental legislation I’m not letting any cat out of the bag out of the bag when I say we didn’t know what we were doing. We really did the best that we could but everyone thought, mistakenly, that we’d pass it, see what worked and what didn’t work, and then go back three or four years later and revise it.
A great many people are buying “greener” cars and light bulbs, and choosing how many children to have because of environmental values. Look at the explosive growth of solar energy, wind power, the dramatic cost reductions of battery and other forms of storage innovations in smart utility grids. There’s been a profound cultural shift. Most public, private and religious schools observe Earth Day. Kids go home and are talking to their parents about this environmental stuff, and that’s important because almost every parent wants to be a hero to their kids.
What’s the future of Earth Day?
To make climate change an issue we will vote on. I’m unaware of any important elected official who has ever lost office because of their position on climate change.”
And for those who may be wondering about Ira Einhorn, the man who was erased from the history of Earth Day, possibly a murderer, possibly framed by American political counterintelligence agencies just as they assassinated Malcolm X and countless others in the brutal campaign of repression of dissent and infiltration and subversion of organizations which challenged the status quo and its systems of unequal power, including the Students For a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and many others turned against themselves and rendered powerless in ideological fracture and division. The story of Ira Einhorn is part of that history of state terror and the silencing of our truth tellers.
Here is a Rashomon Gate of relative and ambiguous truths; speaking in the interview after having attempted to cut his own throat he is clearly mad; but the world is also mad, our fear of nature driving forces of dominance as capitalist exploitation which may now be the cause of our extinction, and he knew this and spoke of it with brilliance and passion when decades younger.
This does not make him guilty of the tragic and horrific death of his girlfriend, nor a martyr in the cause of liberation struggle, for both or neither may be true. He remains a man who saw our common peril and spoke truth to power at the risk of his life and all that he loved to give us warning. Yet we celebrate the Ride of Paul Revere, and have erased Ira Einhorn in damnatio memoriae.
I’d like to change that; for we must never accept the terms of struggle of the enemy, nor play by the rules of his game.
Everything the enemy says is a lie.
The personal qualities of a leader are no indication of the merits of his cause. Like the lives of authors, everything real about them is in their works.
Did he found Earth Day? No one voice founds a global mass movement, but no voice is without significance and meaning.
This Earth Day, find yours and give it free reign. Speak your truth with passion and conviction; be unguarded, transparent, raw even, with authenticity and total truth. Perform the Four Primary Duties of a Citizen; Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority. Embrace the pursuit of truth as a sacred calling, and with poetic vision enact the reimagination and transformation of ourselves, our choices about how to be human together, and our future.
If we all do this with solidarity and fearlessness in seizures of power, and with respect, tolerance, and inclusion for each other’s uniqueness and strange angles of view, we may yet find new ways to change the systems of our oppression and extinction and unite to create a free society of equals. The costs of our failure to do so may be read in the story of Ira Einhorn and our whitewashed and defanged Earth Day.
The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer (1999) Naomi Watts, Kevin Anderson Full Movie – Part 1
As the Ukrainian Front of the Third World War rages on, two years ago today I stood before an audience of multitudes who had answered our call for volunteers to take the fight to the enemy and bring a Reckoning for the war crimes of Russia in Ukraine, to liberate Russia from tyranny as a free society of equals and bring peace to Europe and the future of humankind in allyship and solidarity with the peace network within the Russian military and the democracy mass movement now pervasive within her society, to bring peace by confusion and destruction of Russia’s warfighting systems of manufacture, logistics, and communications, and to prepare networks of Resistance for the Russian invasion of Eastern Europe which Putin plans to begin with Moldova and the Baltic States.
Who would come to hear us, I wondered, witnesses to the horrors of war from a distant land few had ever seen, who had failed to save a city from annihilation and her people from slavery and genocide?
The descendants of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 remembered and came, from all over the world; the nation of Poland remembered the invasion of 1939 and came, the historical Allied nations of the Second World War remembered and came, Europe remembered the tyranny and terror of the war and Occupation and came, and a city flooded with Ukrainian refugees welcomed and united in solidarity with Russian peace and democracy activists and foreign volunteers like myself.
It was a glorious moment, wherein solidarity promised to redeem the flaws of our humanity and the brokenness of the world. What can be made of it remains to be seen, if placing our lives in the balance can tip the momentum of history toward democracy and away from fascism and tyranny, toward peace and not war, but the fact remains that we are unbroken, we humans, not subjugated by abjection and learned helplessness but united in the cause of our liberty and as guarantors of each other’s universal human rights, and this gives me hope.
There are no Russians, no Ukrainians; only people like ourselves, and the choices we make about how to be human together.
April 20 2022 What is the Meaning of Mariupol? Address to the Volunteers in Warsaw
As we gather and prepare to take the fight to the enemy in direct action against the regime of Russia itself, against Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs and elites who sit at the helm of power and are now complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity both in Ukraine and her province of Crimea in the imperial conquest of a sovereign and independent nation and in Russia in the subjugation of their own citizens, and in the other theatres of this the Third World War, Syria, Libya, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Africa, and in the capture of the American state in the Stolen Election of 2016 which put Putin’s treasonous and dishonorable agent and proxy Donald Trump, Our Clown of Terror, in the White House to oversee the infiltration and subversion of democracy by the Fourth Reich, we are confronted with countless horrific examples of the future that awaits us at the hands of Putin’s regime, and we have chosen Resistance as the only alternative to slavery and death.
As we bring a Reckoning for tyranny, terror, and the horrors of war, in the crimes against humanity by Russia in Ukraine which include executions, torture, organized mass rape and the trafficking of abducted civilians, the capture of civilian hostages and use of forced labor, cannibalism using mobile factories, genocidal attacks, erasure of evidence of war crimes using mobile crematoriums which indicates official planning as part of the campaign of terror and proof that the countless crimes against humanity of this war are not aberrations but by design and at the orders of Putin and his commanders, threats of nuclear annihilation against European nations sending humanitarian aid, and the mass destruction of cities, we are become a court of last appeal in the defense of our universal human rights and of our humanity itself.
The Russian strategy of conquest as Total War opens with sustained and relentless bombardment and destruction of hospitals, bomb shelters, stores of food, power systems, water supply, corridors of humanitarian aid and the evacuation of refugees; anything which could help citizens survive a siege. Once nothing is left standing, a campaign of terror as organized mass rape, torture, cannibalism, and looting begins, and any survivors enslaved or executed. This is a war of genocide and erasure, and to fascism there can be but one reply; Never Again!
In this war which is now upon us, Putin’s goal is to restore the Russian Empire in the conquest of the Ukraine and the Black Sea as a launchpad for the conquest and dominion of the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; but he has a parallel and far more dangerous purpose in the abrogation of international law and our universal human rights. The true purpose of the Fourth Reich and its puppetmaster Vladimir Putin in this war is to make meaningless the idea of human rights.
This is a war of tyranny and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil against democracy and a free society of equals, for the idea that we all of us have meaning and value which is uniquely ours and against enslavement and the theft of our souls.
Within the limits of our form, of the flaws of our humanity and the brokenness of the world, we struggle to achieve the human; ours is a revolution of Tikkun Olam, a Hebrew phrase meaning repair of the world which refers to our interdependence and duty of care for each other as equals who share a common humanity.
I’m sure all of us here know what Shlomo Bardin meant when he repurposed the phrase from the Kabbalah of Luria and the Midrash, but what do I mean by this?
There are only two kinds of actions which we human beings are able to perform; those which affirm and exalt us, and those which degrade and dehumanize us.
We live at a crossroads of history which may define the fate of our civilization and the future possibilities of becoming human, in the struggle between tyranny and liberty and between solidarity and division, and we must each of us choose who we wish to become, we humans; masters and slaves, or a free society of equals?
As you know, my friends and I come to you from the Siege of Mariupol, a battle of flesh against unanswerable force and horror, of solidarity against division, of love against hate, and of hope against fear.
Here, as in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which we celebrated yesterday, the human will to freedom is tested by an enemy who exults in the embrace of the monstrous, whose policies and designs of war as terror gladly and with the open arrogance of power instrumentalize utter destruction and genocide, a war wherein atrocities and depravities are unleashed as tactics of shock and awe with intent of subjugation through learned helplessness and overwhelming and generalized fear.
In Mariupol now as in Warsaw then, we affirm and renew our humanity in refusal to submit or to abandon our duty of care for each other. The Defenders of Mariupol who have sworn to die together and have refused many demands for surrender make their glorious Last Stand not as a gesture of defiance to a conqueror and tyrant, or to hold the port to slow and impede the Russian campaign in the Donbas now ongoing and prevent the seizure of the whole seaboard and control of the Black Sea, though these are pivotal to the liberation of Ukraine, but to protect the hundreds, possibly thousands, of refugees who now shelter in the tunnels of the underground fortress at the Azovstal and Ilyin Steel and Iron Works, especially the many children in makeshift hospitals who cannot be moved.
This is the meaning of Mariupol; we stand together and remain human, regardless of the cost. This is what it means to be human, how it is achieved, and why solidarity is important. Among our values, our duty of care for others is paramount, because it is instrumental to everything else, and all else is contingent on this.
To paraphrase America’s Pledge of Allegiance not as an oath to a nation but as the declaration of a United Humankind; We, the People of Earth, pledge ourselves to each other, as one humankind, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
This brings us to my purpose in speaking to you today, for one of you has asked a question which is central to our mission of the Liberation of Russia and Ukraine, and to the solidarity of the international community in this our cause; how can ordinary people like ourselves hope for victory over the unanswerable force and overwhelming power of tyranny, terror, and war?
There are two parallel and interdependent strategies of Resistance in asymmetrical warfare; the first and most important is to redefine the terms of victory. This is because we are mortal, and the limits of our form impose conditions of struggle; we must be like Jacob wrestling the angel, not to conquer this thing of immense power but to escape being conquered by it. We can be killed, imprisoned, tortured; but we cannot be defeated or conquered if we but refuse to submit.
Power without legitimacy becomes meaningless, and authority crumbles when met with disbelief. This is why journalism and teaching as sacred callings in pursuit of truth are crucial to democracy, and why the Four Primary Duties of a Citizen are Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority.
What of the use of police in brutal repression by carceral states? The social use of force is hollow and brittle, and fails at the point of disobedience. When the police are an army of Occupation and the repression of dissent, they can be Resisted on those terms; my point here is simply that victory against unanswerable force consists of refusal to submit.
Who refuses to submit and cannot be compelled becomes Unconquered and is free. This is a kind of victory which cannot be taken from us.
Second is our strategy for survival against an enemy who does not regard us as human, and will use terror to enforce submission through learned helplessness. By any means necessary, as this principle is expressed in the famous dictum of Sartre in his 1948 play Dirty Hands, quoted by Frantz Fanon in his 1960 speech Why We Use Violence, and made immortal by Malcolm X.
In Mariupol I began referring to this in its oldest form, war to the knife. Its meaning for us is simple; those who would enslave us and who abandon all laws and all limits may hide behind none.
The question to which I speak today in reply intrigued me, because it was nearly identical to a line which sets up one of the greatest fictional military speeches in literature, Miles Vorkosigan’s speech to the Maurilacans in The Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold.
In this story, Miles has just led a mass prisoner of war escape, from a prison which like all fascist tyrannies is fiendishly designed to produce abjection, as described by Julia Kristeva in her famous essay, in circumstances of horror such as those which my friends here and I have just survived, and in which we now find ourselves like the Marilacans having achieved an army, and about to take the fight to the enemy on his own ground.
One of the volunteers says, ”The defenders of Mariupol had those crazy Cossack warriors, swearing an oath to die rather than surrender, professional mercenaries from everywhere, all of them elite forces and utterly fearless. We just can’t fight on those terms; its been seventy years since we fought a Total War of survival, and most of us here are professionals and university intellectuals. Poland is civilized, maybe too civilized for what’s coming our way.”
To this I answer with Miles; “Let me tell you about the defenders of Mariupol. Those who sought a glorious death in battle found it early on. This cleared the chain of command of accumulated fools.
The survivors were those who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win and win and win. And for whom nothing, not comfort nor security, not family nor friends nor their immortal souls, was more important than victory.
They were not supermen or more than human. They sweated in confusion and darkness.
And with not one half the resources Poland possesses, Ukraine remains unconquered. When you’re all that stands between liberty and tyranny, freedom and slavery, life and death, between a people and genocide, when you’re human, there is no mustering out.”
To this wonderful speech of a fictional hero who simply refuses to stay down to the fictional survivors of the very real horror of being held captive and powerless by a tyrant, whether as prisoners of war or citizens of an occupied city, I must add this; how if Poland and Ukraine stand together, with all of Europe and America united in Resistance?
And if you are telling me you could not today fight a Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, this I do not believe. Nor would you do so alone, for during this Passover as the Jewish community remembers the story of the Exile, the world also remembers; we watch it in our news every day, enacted once again in Ukraine. This, too, is a Haggadah, in which all of humankind can share, and which yet again teaches us the necessity of our interdependence and solidarity.
As written by Alan Moore in V For Vendetta; “Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.”
Here is a truth to which all of us here today can bear witness.
But there is a thing which tyrants never learn; the use of force and violence obeys the Third Law of Motion, and creates resistance as its own counterforce. And when the brutality and crimes against humanity of that force and violence are performed upon the stage of the world, visible to all and a history which cannot be erased, part of the story of every human being from now until the end of our species, repression finds answer in reckoning as we awaken to our interdependence and the necessity of our solidarity and duty of care for each other.
And so I offer to all of you the Oath of the Resistance as it was given to me by the great Jean Genet on that fateful day in 1982, in a burning house, in a lost cause, in a time of force and darkness, after we refused to surrender and about to be burned alive; “We swear our loyalty to each other, to resist and yield not, and abandon not our fellows.”
An unusual fellow, but behind the concealment of his literary notoriety he remained the Legionnaire he had once been, and after spying on the Nazis in Berlin in 1939 had returned to Paris to make mischief for her unwelcome guests, and there in 1940 repurposed the oath of the Foreign Legion for what allies he could gather. He said it was the finest thing he ever stole.
My hope is that I have lived, and written, at the beginning of the story of humankind, and not at its end.
What is the meaning of Mariupol?
Here we may look to its precedents as Last Stands, battles, and sieges; Thermopylae, Malta, Washington crossing the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton, Gallipoli which I hope we can avoid refighting, Stalingrad, and its direct parallel the Siege of Sarajevo. Moments of decision wherein the civilization of humankind hung in the balance, and with it our future possibilities of becoming human.
Who do we want to become, we humans; slaves and tyrants or a free society of equals? And how much of our humanity are we willing to trade for the chance of such futures?
What of ourselves can we not afford to lose, without also losing who we are? How much of our humanity can we claw back from the darkness in refusal to submit to those who would enslave us, and in solidarity with each other?
We must each of us face our own Gate of Fire, as did the Spartans at Thermopylae, and choose.
What are we worth, if we permit ruthless bandit kings to commit atrocities, plunder, and enslave others?
What is western civilization worth, if we will not live up to our fine words? And fine words they remain, such as these written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, a synthesis and revisioning of ideas from Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau; “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
What is America, if not a guarantor of democracy and our universal human rights, and a beacon of hope to the world?
Let us reply with the words written by J.R.R. Tolkien between 1937 and 1955 in his luminous reimagination of the Second World War and the conflict of dominion which immediately followed it between tyranny and democracy, first against fascism and then between the allies who defeated it as spheres of dominion and systems of economic and political organization but both for different dreams of a free society of equals, in the iconic speech of Aragorn at the Black Gate in The Return of the King which unites ethos, logos, pathos, and kairos; “A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight.”
Join us.
This Day We Fight: Aragorn’s Speech at the Black Gate
20 באפריל 2023 יום השנה לארגון מחדש של חטיבת אברהם לינקולן של אוקראינה למען מאבק השחרור ברוסיה בעקבות הבריחה שלנו ממריופול
בעוד החזית האוקראינית של מלחמת העולם השלישית מתמשכת, לפני שנה היום עמדתי מול קהל של המונים שענו לקריאתנו למתנדבים לקחת את הקרב מול האויב ולהביא חשבון לפשעי המלחמה של רוסיה באוקראינה, לשחרר את רוסיה מהעריצות כחברה חופשית של שווים ולהביא שלום לאירופה ולעתיד האנושות בברית וסולידריות עם רשת השלום בתוך הצבא הרוסי ותנועת ההמונים הדמוקרטית הנפוצה כעת בחברה שלה, להביא שלום על ידי בלבול ו השמדת מערכות הלחימה של רוסיה לייצור, לוגיסטיקה ותקשורת, ולהכנת רשתות התנגדות לפלישה הרוסית למזרח אירופה שפוטין מתכנן להתחיל עם מולדובה והמדינות הבלטיות.
מי יבוא לשמוע אותנו, תהיתי, עדים לזוועות המלחמה מארץ רחוקה שמעטים ראו אי פעם, שלא הצליחו להציל עיר מהשמדה ואת אנשיה מעבדות ורצח עם?
צאצאי מרד גטו ורשה של 1943 זכרו ובאו, מכל העולם; האומה של פולין זכרה את הפלישה של 1939 ובאה, מדינות בעלות הברית ההיסטוריות של מלחמת העולם השנייה זכרו ובאו, אירופה זכרה את העריצות והאימה של המלחמה והכיבוש ובאה, עיר מוצפת פליטים אוקראינים התקבלו בברכה והתאחדו בסולידריות עם פעילי שלום ודמוקרטיה רוסים ומתנדבים זרים כמוני.
זה היה רגע מפואר, שבו הסולידריות הבטיחה לגאול את פגמי האנושות שלנו ואת השבר של העולם. מה אפשר לעשות מזה נותר לראות, אם הצבת חיינו באיזון יכולה להטות את המומנטום של ההיסטוריה לכיוון דמוקרטיה ולהתרחק מפאשיזם ועריצות, לשלום ולא למלחמה, אבל העובדה היא שאנחנו לא נשברים, אנו בני האדם , לא כפופים על ידי סלידה וחוסר אונים מלומד אלא מאוחדים למען חירותנו וכערבים זה לזכויות האדם האוניברסליות של זה, וזה נותן לי תקווה.
אין רוסים, אין אוקראינים; רק אנשים כמו עצמנו, והבחירות שאנחנו עושים לגבי איך להיות בני אדם ביחד.
20 באפריל 2022 מה המשמעות של מריופול? כתובת למתנדבים בוורשה
בעודנו מתאספים ומתכוננים לקחת את המאבק אל האויב בפעולה ישירה נגד משטר רוסיה עצמה, נגד ולדימיר פוטין והאוליגרכים והאליטות שלו היושבים בראש השלטון וכעת שותפים לפשעי מלחמה ופשעים נגד האנושות אוקראינה ומחוז קרים שלה בכיבוש האימפריאלי של אומה ריבונית ועצמאית וברוסיה בהכנעת אזרחיהם, ובשאר התיאטראות של זה מלחמת העולם השלישית, סוריה, לוב, בלארוס, קזחסטן, נגורנו קרבאך , ובתפיסה של המדינה האמריקנית בבחירות הגנובות של 2016, שהכניסה את סוכנו ובוגדתו של פוטין וחסר הכבוד דונלד טראמפ, ליצן הטרור שלנו, בבית הלבן כדי לפקח על חדירתה וחתרנות הדמוקרטיה על ידי הרייך הרביעי, אנו מתמודדים עם אינספור דוגמאות מחרידות לעתיד המצפה לנו בידי משטרו של פוטין, ובחרנו בהתנגדות כאלטרנטיבה היחידה לעבדות ומוות.
כאשר אנו מביאים חשבון לעריצות, טרור וזוועות המלחמה, בפשעים נגד האנושות על ידי רוסיה באוקראינה הכוללים הוצאות להורג, עינויים, אונס המוני מאורגן וסחר באזרחים חטופים, לכידת בני ערובה אזרחיים ושימוש בכפייה עבודה, קניבליזם באמצעות מפעלים ניידים, התקפות רצח עם, מחיקת עדויות לפשעי מלחמה באמצעות משרפות ניידות המעידות על תכנון רשמי כחלק ממסע הטרור והוכחה לכך שאינספור הפשעים נגד האנושות של מלחמה זו אינם סטיות אלא בתכנון ובתכנון. פקודות של פוטין ומפקדיו, איומים בהשמדה גרעינית נגד מדינות אירופה ששולחות סיוע הומניטרי, והשמדה המונית של ערים, הפכנו לבית משפט של ערעור אחרון בהגנה על זכויות האדם האוניברסליות שלנו ועל האנושות שלנו עצמה.
אסטרטגיית הכיבוש הרוסית נפתחת בהפצצה מתמשכת ובלתי פוסקת ובהרס של בתי חולים, מקלטים, מאגרי מזון, מערכות חשמל, אספקת מים, מסדרונות של סיוע הומניטרי ופינוי פליטים; כל דבר שיכול לעזור לאזרחים לשרוד מצור. ברגע ששום דבר לא נשאר עומד, מתחיל מסע טרור כמו אונס המוני מאורגן, עינויים, קניבליזם וביזה, וכל ניצול משועבד או מוצא להורג. זוהי מלחמה של רצח עם ומחיקה, ולפשיזם יכולה להיות רק תשובה אחת; לעולם לא שוב!
במלחמה זו אשר כעת עלינו, מטרתו של פוטין היא להחזיר את האימפריה הרוסית בכיבוש אוקראינה והים השחור כנקודת שיגור לכיבוש ושליטה של הים התיכון, אירופה, אפריקה והמזרח התיכון; אבל יש לו מטרה מקבילה ומסוכנת הרבה יותר בביטול החוק הבינלאומי וזכויות האדם האוניברסליות שלנו. המטרה האמיתית של הרייך הרביעי ומנהל הבובות שלו ולדימיר פוטין במלחמה זו היא להפוך את רעיון זכויות האדם לחסר משמעות.
זוהי מלחמת עריצות ופשיזם של דם, אמונה ואדמה נגד הדמוקרטיה וחברה חופשית של שווים, על הרעיון שלכולנו יש משמעות וערך שהם ייחודיים שלנו ונגד שיעבוד וגניבת נפשנו.
בתוך גבולות הצורה שלנו, של פגמי אנושיותנו ושבירת העולם, אנו נאבקים להשיג את האדם; שלנו היא מהפכה של תיקון עולם, ביטוי עברי שמשמעותו תיקון העולם, המתייחס לתלות ההדדית ולחובת הזהירות שלנו זה לזה כשווים החולקים אנושיות משותפת.
אני בטוח שכולנו כאן יודעים למה התכוון שלמה ברדין כשחיזר את הביטוי מקובלת לוריא ומהמדרש, אבל למה אני מתכוון בזה?
ישנם רק שני סוגים של פעולות שאנו בני האדם מסוגלים לבצע; אלה שמאשרים ומעלים אותנו, ואלה שמבזים ומבטלים אותנו.
אנו חיים בצומת של היסטוריה שעשוי להגדיר את גורל הציוויליזציה שלנו ואת האפשרויות העתידיות להיות אנושיות, במאבק בין עריצות לחירות ובין סולידריות לפילוג, ועלינו כל אחד מאיתנו לבחור למי ברצוננו להיות, אנו בני אנוש; אדונים ועבדים, או חברה חופשית של שווים?
כפי שאתם יודעים, חברי ואני באים אליכם מהמצור על מריופול, קרב של בשר נגד כוח ואימה שאין להם מענה, של סולידריות נגד פילוג, של אהבה נגד שנאה ושל תקווה נגד פחד.
כאן, כמו במרד גטו ורשה שחגגנו אתמול, נבחן הרצון האנושי לחירות על ידי אויב המתמוגג בחיקם של המפלצתיים, שמדיניותו ותכנוני המלחמה שלו כטרור בשמחה וביהירות הגלויה של הכוח מכשירים באופן מוחלט. הרס ורצח עם, מלחמה שבה זוועות וקללות משתחררים כטקטיקות של הלם ויראה מתוך כוונה להכניע באמצעות חוסר אונים נלמד ופחד מוחץ ומוכלל.
Polish
20 kwietnia 2023 Rocznica reorganizacji Brygady Walk Wyzwoleńczych Ukrainy im. Abrahama Lincolna w Rosji po naszej ucieczce z Mariupola
Podczas gdy Front Ukraiński Trzeciej Wojny Światowej szaleje, rok temu dzisiaj stałem przed liczną publicznością, która odpowiedziała na nasze wezwanie ochotników do podjęcia walki z wrogiem i rozliczenia zbrodni wojennych Rosji na Ukrainie, uwolnić Rosję od tyranii jako wolnego społeczeństwa równych i zaprowadzić pokój w Europie i przyszłość ludzkości w sojuszu i solidarności z siecią pokojową w rosyjskim wojsku i masowym ruchem demokratycznym, który jest obecnie wszechobecny w jej społeczeństwie, zaprowadzić pokój przez zamęt i zniszczenie rosyjskich wojennych systemów produkcyjnych, logistycznych i komunikacyjnych oraz przygotowanie sieci ruchu oporu na rosyjską inwazję na Europę Wschodnią, którą Putin planuje rozpocząć od Mołdawii i krajów bałtyckich.
Zastanawiałem się, kto przyjdzie nas wysłuchać, świadków okropności wojny z odległej krainy, którą niewielu widziało, którzy nie zdołali ocalić miasta przed zagładą, a jego mieszkańców przed niewolnictwem i ludobójstwem.
Potomkowie powstania w getcie warszawskim z 1943 roku pamiętali i przyjeżdżali z całego świata; naród polski przypomniał sobie inwazję z 1939 roku i przybył, historyczne narody alianckie II wojny światowej przypomniały sobie i przybyły, Europa przypomniała sobie tyranię i terror wojny i okupacji i przybyła, miasto zalane uchodźcami ukraińskimi powitane i zjednoczone w solidarności z rosyjskimi działaczami na rzecz pokoju i demokracji oraz zagranicznymi wolontariuszami, takimi jak ja.
To była chwalebna chwila, w której solidarność obiecała odkupienie wad naszego człowieczeństwa i załamania świata. Co z tego da się zrobić, dopiero się okaże, czy umieszczenie naszego życia w równowadze może przechylić pęd historii w stronę demokracji, z dala od faszyzmu i tyranii, w stronę pokoju, a nie wojny, ale pozostaje faktem, że jesteśmy niezłomni, my, ludzie nie ujarzmionych poniżeniem i wyuczoną bezradnością, ale zjednoczonych w sprawie naszej wolności i jako gwarantów wzajemnych powszechnych praw człowieka, i to daje mi nadzieję.
Nie ma Rosjan, nie ma Ukraińców; tylko ludzie tacy jak my i wybory, których dokonujemy, dotyczące tego, jak być razem ludźmi.
20 kwietnia 2022 Co oznacza Mariupol? Adres do Wolontariuszy w Warszawie
Gdy zbieramy się i przygotowujemy do podjęcia walki z wrogiem w bezpośredniej akcji przeciwko reżimowi samej Rosji, przeciwko Władimirowi Putinowi oraz jego oligarchom i elitom, które zasiadają u steru władzy i są teraz współwinne zbrodni wojennych i zbrodni przeciwko ludzkości zarówno w Ukraina i jej prowincja Krym w imperialnym podboju suwerennego i niepodległego narodu, a w Rosji w ujarzmieniu własnych obywateli, a w innych teatrach tej III wojny światowej, Syrii, Libii, Białorusi, Kazachstanie, Górskim Karabachu , a także w zdobyciu państwa amerykańskiego w skradzionych wyborach 2016, które umieściły zdradzieckiego i niehonorowego agenta Putina i pełnomocnika Donalda Trumpa, naszego klauna terroru, w Białym Domu, aby nadzorować infiltrację i niszczenie demokracji przez Czwartą Rzeszę, my mamy do czynienia z niezliczonymi przerażającymi przykładami przyszłości, która czeka nas z rąk reżimu Putina, a my wybraliśmy Ruch Oporu jako jedyną alternatywę dla niewolnictwa i śmierci.
Kiedy wprowadzamy rozliczenie za tyranię, terror i okropności wojny, w zbrodniach przeciwko ludzkości dokonanych przez Rosję na Ukrainie, które obejmują egzekucje, tortury, zorganizowane masowe gwałty i handel uprowadzonymi cywilami, schwytanie cywilnych zakładników i użycie sił pracy, kanibalizm z wykorzystaniem mobilnych fabryk, ludobójcze ataki, wymazywanie dowodów zbrodni wojennych z wykorzystaniem mobilnych krematoriów, co wskazuje na oficjalne planowanie w ramach kampanii terroru i dowód, że niezliczone zbrodnie przeciwko ludzkości w tej wojnie nie są aberracją, ale celowo i na rozkazy Putina i jego dowódców, groźby nuklearnej zagłady narodów europejskich wysyłających pomoc humanitarną oraz masowe niszczenie miast, stajemy się ostatnim sądem apelacyjnym w obronie naszych uniwersalnych praw człowieka i samego naszego człowieczeństwa.
Rosyjska strategia podboju rozpoczyna się ciągłym i bezlitosnym bombardowaniem i niszczeniem szpitali, schronów bombowych, magazynów żywności, systemów zasilania, zaopatrzenia w wodę, korytarzy pomocy humanitarnej i ewakuacji uchodźców; wszystko, co mogłoby pomóc obywatelom przetrwać oblężenie. Gdy nic nie zostanie ocalone, rozpoczyna się kampania terroru, polegająca na zorganizowanych masowych gwałtach, torturach, kanibalizmie i grabieży, a wszyscy, którzy przeżyli, zostają zniewoleni lub straceni. To jest wojna ludobójstwa i wymazywania, a na faszyzm może być tylko jedna odpowiedź; Nigdy więcej!
W tej wojnie, która teraz nad nami, celem Putina jest przywrócenie Imperium Rosyjskiego w podboju Ukrainy i Morza Czarnego jako platformy startowej do podboju i panowania nad Morzem Śródziemnym, Europą, Afryką i Bliskim Wschodem; ale ma on równoległy i znacznie bardziej niebezpieczny cel, polegający na uchyleniu prawa międzynarodowego i naszych uniwersalnych praw człowieka. Prawdziwym celem Czwartej Rzeszy i jej marionetkowego mistrza Władimira Putina w tej wojnie jest uczynienie bezsensownej idei praw człowieka.
To jest wojna tyranii i faszyzmów krwi, wiary i ziemi przeciwko demokracji i wolnemu społeczeństwu równych, o ideę, że my wszyscy mamy sens i wartość, która jest wyłącznie nasza i przeciwko zniewoleniu i kradzieży naszych dusz.
W granicach naszej formy, wad naszego człowieczeństwa i zepsucia świata, walczymy o osiągnięcie człowieczeństwa; nasza jest rewolucją Tikkun Olam, hebrajskiego wyrażenia oznaczającego naprawę świata, które odnosi się do naszej współzależności i obowiązku troski o siebie nawzajem jako równych, którzy mają wspólne człowieczeństwo.
Jestem pewien, że każdy z nas tutaj wie, co miał na myśli Shlomo Bardin, gdy zmienił frazę z Kabały Lurii i Midraszu, ale co mam przez to na myśli?
Są tylko dwa rodzaje działań, które my, ludzie, jesteśmy w stanie wykonać; te, które nas utwierdzają i wywyższają, oraz te, które nas poniżają i odczłowieczają.
Żyjemy na skrzyżowaniu historii, które mogą określić los naszej cywilizacji i przyszłe możliwości stania się człowiekiem, w walce między tyranią a wolnością oraz między solidarnością a podziałem, i każdy z nas musi wybrać, kim chce się stać, ludzie; panowie i niewolnicy czy wolne społeczeństwo równych?
Ukrainian
20 квітня 2023 р. Річниця реорганізації бригади імені Авраама Лінкольна України для визвольної боротьби в Росії після нашої втечі з Маріуполя.
У той час, як Український фронт Третьої світової війни триває, рік тому сьогодні я стояв перед аудиторією з безлічі людей, які відгукнулися на наш заклик до добровольців прийняти бій з ворогом і відплатити за військові злочини Росії в Україні, звільнити Росію від тиранії як вільне суспільство рівних і принести мир Європі та майбутньому людству в союзі та солідарності з мережею миру в російській армії та масовим демократичним рухом, який зараз поширюється в її суспільстві, принести мир через плутанину та знищення російських бойових систем виробництва, логістики та зв’язку, а також для підготовки мереж Опору для російського вторгнення в Східну Європу, яке Путін планує розпочати з Молдови та країн Балтії.
Хто прийде послухати нас, — думав я, — свідків жахів війни з далекої країни, яку небагато коли-небудь бачили, які не змогли врятувати місто від знищення, а його людей — від рабства й геноциду?
Нащадки повстання у Варшавському гетто 1943 року згадали та приїхали з усього світу; нація Польщі згадала вторгнення 1939 року і прийшла, історичні країни-союзники Другої світової війни згадали і прийшли, Європа згадала тиранію та терор війни та окупації і прийшла, місто, заповнене українськими біженцями, зустрінуте та об’єднане в солідарності з російськими активістами миру та демократії та іноземними волонтерами, такими як я.
Це був чудовий момент, коли солідарність обіцяла спокутувати вади нашої людяності та зламаність світу. Що з цього можна зробити, ще невідомо, чи може постановка нашого життя на терези схилити імпульс історії в бік демократії та від фашизму та тиранії, у бік миру, а не війни, але факт залишається фактом: ми незламані, ми, люди , не підкорені відразою та навченою безпорадністю, але об’єднані у справі нашої свободи та як гаранти універсальних прав людини одне одного, і це дає мені надію.
Немає ні росіян, ні українців; лише такі люди, як ми самі, і вибір, який ми робимо щодо того, як бути людьми разом.
20 квітня 2022 Що означає Маріуполь? Звернення до волонтерів у Варшаві
Збираючись і готуючись до боротьби з ворогом у прямих діях проти режиму самої Росії, проти Володимира Путіна та його олігархів та еліт, які сидять біля керма влади і зараз є причетними до військових злочинів і злочинів проти людства як у Україна та її провінція Крим в імперському завоювання суверенної і незалежної нації і в Росії в підкоренні власних громадян, а на інших театрах цієї Третьої світової війни, Сирії, Лівії, Білорусі, Казахстану, Нагірного Карабаху , а також під час захоплення американської держави на викрадених виборах 2016 року, коли зрадницького й безчесного агента Путіна та довіреної особи Дональда Трампа, нашого клоуна терору, у Білий дім для нагляду за проникненням і підривом демократії Четвертим рейхом, ми ми стикаємося з незліченною кількістю жахливих прикладів майбутнього, яке чекає на нас від рук режиму Путіна, і ми обрали Опір як єдину альтернативу рабству і смерті.
Оскільки ми приносимо розплату за тиранію, терор і жахи війни, за злочини проти людства, зроблені Росією в Україні, які включають страти, катування, організовані масові зґвалтування та торгівлю викраденими цивільними особами, захоплення цивільних заручників та використання примусових праця, канібалізм з використанням пересувних фабрик, напади геноциду, знищення доказів військових злочинів за допомогою мобільних крематоріїв, що вказує на офіційне планування як частину кампанії терору та доказ того, що незліченна кількість злочинів проти людства цієї війни не є відхиленнями, а задумом і накази Путіна та його командирів, загрози ядерного знищення європейських країн, які надсилають гуманітарну допомогу, і масове знищення міст, ми стаємо останньою апеляційною інстанцією у захисті наших універсальних прав людини та нашого людства.
Російська завойовницька стратегія починається з постійних і невпинних бомбардувань і руйнувань лікарень, бомбосховищ, складів продовольства, енергосистем, водопостачання, коридорів гуманітарної допомоги та евакуації біженців; все, що могло б допомогти громадянам пережити облогу. Після того, як нічого не залишиться, починається кампанія терору як організовані масові зґвалтування, тортури, канібалізм та мародерство, а будь-які вижили поневолені або страчені. Це війна на геноцид і стирання, і на фашизм може бути лише одна відповідь; Ніколи знову!
У цій війні, яка зараз на нас, мета Путіна — відновити Російську імперію у завоювання України та Чорного моря як стартовий майданчик для завоювання та панування Середземномор’я, Європи, Африки та Близького Сходу; але він має паралельну й набагато більш небезпечну мету — скасування міжнародного права та наших універсальних прав людини. Справжня мета Четвертого рейху та його маріонетка Володимира Путіна у цій війні – позбутися сенсу ідеї прав людини.
Це війна тиранії та фашизму крові, віри та ґрунту проти демократії та вільного суспільства рівних за ідею, що всі ми маємо сенс і цінність, яка є унікальною, а також проти поневолення та крадіжки наших душ.
У межах нашої форми, вад нашої людяності та зламаності світу ми боремося за досягнення людського; наша – це революція Тіккуна Олама, єврейської фрази, що означає відновлення світу, яка стосується нашої взаємозалежності та обов’язку піклуватися один про одного як рівних, хто об’єднує спільне людство.
Я впевнений, що всі ми тут знаємо, що мав на увазі Шломо Бардін, коли переробив фразу з Каббали Лурія і Мідраш, але що я маю на увазі під цим?
Є лише два види дій, які ми, люди, здатні виконувати; ті, що стверджують і підносять нас, і ті, що принижують і дегуманізують нас.
Ми живемо на перехресті історії, яка може визначити долю нашої цивілізації та майбутні можливості стати людиною, у боротьбі між тиранією та свободою, між солідарністю та поділом, і кожен із нас має вибрати, ким хоче стати, ми люди; панів і рабів, чи вільне суспільство рівних?
Russian
20 апреля 2023 Годовщина реорганизации Бригады Авраама Линкольна Украины за освободительную борьбу в России после нашего побега из Мариуполя
В то время как бушует Украинский фронт Третьей мировой войны, ровно год назад я стоял перед аудиторией множества людей, которые откликнулись на наш призыв добровольцев принять бой с врагом и принести расплату за военные преступления России в Украине, освободить Россию от тирании как свободное общество равных и принести мир Европе и будущему человечества в союзе и солидарности с мирной сетью в российских вооруженных силах и демократическим массовым движением, которое сейчас проникает в ее общество, принести мир путем беспорядка и разрушение российских боевых систем производства, логистики и коммуникаций, а также подготовка сетей Сопротивления к российскому вторжению в Восточную Европу, которое Путин планирует начать с Молдовы и стран Балтии.
Кто придет послушать нас, думал я, свидетелей ужасов войны из далекой страны, которую мало кто когда-либо видел, кто не смог спасти город от уничтожения, а его народ от рабства и геноцида?
Потомки восстания в Варшавском гетто 1943 года помнили и приехали со всего мира; народ Польши вспомнил вторжение 1939 года и пришел, исторические союзные народы Второй мировой войны вспомнили и пришли, Европа вспомнила тиранию и террор войны и оккупации и пришла, город, наводненный украинскими беженцами, приветствовали и объединились в солидарности с российскими активистами мира и демократии и иностранными волонтерами, такими как я.
Это был славный момент, когда солидарность обещала искупить недостатки нашей человечности и сломленность мира. Что из этого можно сделать, еще предстоит увидеть, если балансировка наших жизней может склонить инерцию истории к демократии и от фашизма и тирании, к миру, а не войне, но факт остается фактом: мы не сломлены, мы, люди. , не порабощенные отвращением и ученой беспомощностью, но объединенные в деле нашей свободы и как гаранты универсальных человеческих прав друг друга, и это вселяет в меня надежду.
Русских нет, украинцев нет; только люди, подобные нам, и выбор, который мы делаем о том, как быть людьми вместе.
20 апреля 2022 Что такое Мариуполь? Обращение к волонтерам в Варшаве
Пока мы собираемся и готовимся принять бой с врагом в прямом действии против самого режима России, против Владимира Путина и его олигархов и элит, которые сидят у руля власти и ныне причастны к военным преступлениям и преступлениям против человечности как в Украина и ее провинция Крым в имперском завоевании суверенной и независимой нации и в России в подчинении собственных граждан, и на других театрах этой Третьей мировой войны, Сирия, Ливия, Беларусь, Казахстан, Нагорный Карабах , а также в захвате американского государства на украденных выборах 2016 года, когда изменнический и бесчестный агент и доверенное лицо Путина Дональд Трамп, наш клоун террора, попал в Белый дом, чтобы наблюдать за проникновением и подрывом демократии Четвертым рейхом, мы столкнулись с бесчисленными ужасными примерами будущего, которое ожидает нас от рук путинского режима, и мы выбрали Сопротивление как единственную альтернативу рабству и смерти.
Поскольку мы приносим расплату за тиранию, террор и ужасы войны, за преступления против человечности, совершенные Россией на Украине, включая казни, пытки, организованные массовые изнасилования и торговлю похищенными гражданскими лицами, захват гражданских заложников и применение насильственных труд, каннибализм с использованием передвижных заводов, акты геноцида, стирание доказательств военных преступлений с использованием передвижных крематориев, что указывает на официальное планирование как часть кампании террора и доказательство того, что бесчисленные преступления против человечности в ходе этой войны не являются отклонением от нормы, а являются преднамеренными и преднамеренными приказы Путина и его командиров, угрозы ядерного уничтожения европейским странам, отправляющим гуманитарную помощь, и массовое разрушение городов, мы становимся судом последней инстанции в защиту наших универсальных прав человека и самой нашей человечности.
Российская стратегия завоевания начинается с непрерывных и безжалостных бомбардировок и разрушений больниц, бомбоубежищ, складов продовольствия, энергосистем, водоснабжения, коридоров гуманитарной помощи и эвакуации беженцев; все, что может помочь гражданам пережить осаду. Как только ничего не остается, начинается кампания террора с организованными массовыми изнасилованиями, пытками, каннибализмом и грабежами, а все выжившие порабощаются или казнятся. Это война геноцида и стирания, и фашизму может быть только один ответ; Больше никогда!
В этой войне, которая сейчас надвигается, цель Путина состоит в том, чтобы восстановить Российскую империю путем завоевания Украины и Черного моря в качестве стартовой площадки для завоевания и господства в Средиземноморье, Европе, Африке и на Ближнем Востоке; но у него есть параллельная и гораздо более опасная цель в отмене международного права и наших универсальных прав человека. Истинная цель Четвертого рейха и его кукловода Владимира Путина в этой войне состоит в том, чтобы лишить смысла идею прав человека.
Это война тирании и фашизма крови, веры и почвы против демократии и свободного общества равных, за идею о том, что у всех нас есть смысл и ценность, которые принадлежат только нам, и против порабощения и кражи наших душ.
В пределах нашей формы, недостатков нашей человечности и разбитости мира мы боремся за достижение человеческого; наша — это революция Тиккун Олам, фразы на иврите, означающей восстановление мира, которая указывает на нашу взаимозависимость и обязанность заботиться друг о друге как о равных, разделяющих общую человечность.
Я уверен, что все мы здесь знаем, что имел в виду Шломо Бардин, когда он переделал фразу из Каббалы Лурии и Мидраша, но что я имею в виду под этим?
Есть только два вида действий, которые мы, человеческие существа, можем совершать; те, которые утверждают и возвышают нас, и те, которые унижают и дегуманизируют нас.
Мы живем на перекрестке истории, который может определить судьбу нашей цивилизации и будущие возможности стать людьми, в борьбе между тиранией и свободой, между солидарностью и разделением, и каждый из нас должен выбрать, кем мы хотим стать, мы люди; господа и рабы или свободное общество равных?
Each year we commemorate the eight Days of Remembrance of the Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust, in Israel with moments of silence as whole cities pause while air raid sirens warn of impending attack, lest we forget and think the danger is long past and we ourselves safe, and throughout the world those engaged in revolutionary struggle against brutal tyrannies and in resistance to the force and control of fascisms of blood, faith, and soil reflect on the example of our sacred dead and their glorious Last Stand in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which affirms our common human being, meaning, and value.
I wonder now, on the eighty first anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, if we have learned its lessons; of vigilance against fascisms of blood, faith, and soil and tyrannies of force and control, especially which may arise within ourselves as atavisms of instinct and fear shaped by submission to authority and systems of unequal power, of divisions of exclusionary otherness and belonging, and the existential threats of falsification, commodification, and dehumanization, and of solidarity in resistance and our duty of care for others.
We see the lines of fracture in our systems as we struggle to birth a true free society of equals and emerge from the legacies of our history and from elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege, and nowhere on earth are we free from our addiction to power and its manifold consequences. Yet we resist and cease not, and abandon not our fellows, as the Oath of the Resistance given to me by Jean Genet goes; and this is the hope of humankind.
In the end, all that matters is what we do with our fear, and how we use our power. Do something beautiful with yours.
All over the world, those whom Frantz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth, the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, will remember and rise again to claw their way out of the ruins and make yet another Last Stand.
Who resists and refuses to submit to force cannot be conquered or subjugated. This is the great lesson of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and why we remember it; because we must if we are to remain human, owners of ourselves if nothing more, and free.
To disambiguate between our two days of remembrance, the United Nation’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27 marks the day in 1945 when the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camp; an achievement of liberation struggle and international solidarity, a good and noble cause to celebrate. But Israel and the United States have chosen the Yom HaShoah date of Nisan 27 on the Hebrew calendar for the 8-day DRVH commemoration something else entirely; the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Not the rescue of the Holocaust’s victims, but the resistance unto death and solidarity with each other of a people who refused to submit to unjust authority, tyranny, and state terror.
In Resistance we become Unconquered and free.
It began with a teenage girl who threw a Molotov cocktail at the Nazis as they marched into the Ghetto. One little girl, with no weapons and no training, who said no.
As described by the only surviving commander of the Uprising, Dr. Marek Edelman, author of Resisting the Holocaust: Fighting Back in the Warsaw Ghetto, who fought on as the city was burned around them, they fought against impossible odds not to escape, for there was nowhere to escape to in occupied Poland, nor to buy time, for no help was coming, but only “to pick the time and place of our deaths”.
This I dispute, for the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising did far more than to claim their own freedom in seizing ownership of their lives in challenge to authority and refusal to obey force and control; they showed the rest of us how to live, and how to become free.
In the words of Max Stirner; “Freedom cannot be granted; it must be seized.”
As written by Ben Cohen in the Jerusalem Press, in an article entitled ‘From Every Floor, From Every Window:’ Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; “Now something unprecedented took place. Three officers with lowered machine pistols appeared. They wore white rosettes in their buttonholes – emissaries. They desired to negotiate with the Area Command. They proposed a 15-minute truce to remove the dead and the wounded. They were also ready to promise all inhabitants an orderly evacuation to working camps in Poniatow and Trawniki, and to let them take along all their belongings. Firing was our answer. Every house remained a hostile fortress. From every floor, from every window, bullets sought hated German helmets, hated German hearts.”
There are many inspiring stories from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943, the 80th anniversary of which is being marked this week, but the passage quoted above is probably the one that left the deepest impression upon me.
I first read it many years ago, when I picked up a copy of “The Ghetto Fights,” a memoir by Marek Edelman, who was a leader of the Bund, the pre-war Jewish Socialist party, and who participated in the uprising against the Nazi occupiers. Edelman was describing the aftermath of the epic battle that commenced on April 19, 1943, when the Germans attempted to liquidate the ghetto with columns of troops, armored vehicles and tanks, and with heavy artillery pieces placed outside its walls. But the Jewish resistance fighters inside had anticipated their arrival; in the ensuing combat, the Germans became trapped at the intersection of Mila and Zamenhofa Streets, with their intended path to a safe retreat fatally exposed to the guns wielded by the fighters of the ZOB and the ZZW, the two Jewish military organizations in the ghetto. “Not a single German left this area alive,” wrote Edelman.
At the same time, further German units were pinned down in Nalewki and Gesia streets. “German blood flooded the street,” Edelman recalled. “German ambulances continuously transported their wounded to the small square near the Community buildings. Here the wounded lay in rows on the sidewalk awaiting their tum to be admitted to the hospital.” By 2 p.m. that same day, the Jewish fighters realized that they had won a key battle over their oppressors.
The Germans returned to the ghetto walls 24 hours later and were again met with hails of bullets and deadly attacks using what we now call Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). It was at this point that the three German officers described by Edelman came begging for a ceasefire, in order to collect their dead and wounded. In that precise moment, the role of the Jew and the German, of the “Untermensch” and the “Aryan”—cemented over the previous decade by the growing power of the Third Reich—was utterly inverted. Every bullet fired at the Germans was a riposte to the grotesque slogan carved into the gates of Auschwitz, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Makes You Free”). And every German who fell while attempting to rescue his wounded comrades was a sign that the humanity of the Jews had not been extinguished—that they were real agents making real decisions, including the decision to deny the enemy any form of mercy or regard amid the heat of the fighting.
The energy and the intensity shown by the 700 poorly armed young Jewish fighters reflected the understanding, deep in their hearts, that the battle for the ghetto was not ultimately one in which they would prevail. “We knew we couldn’t win,” wrote Mira Fuchrer, just 21 years old, one of the women fighters who came from the ranks of the Labor Zionist Hashomer Hatzair organization.
“We fought so we could die with dignity.” For Fuchrer’s boyfriend, the 22-year-old commander of the ZOB, Mordechai Anielewicz, the sheer fact of the uprising was a fillip to Europe’s Jews in their darkest hour, and therefore in itself a victory. “The dream of my life has risen to become fact,” he reflected at the height of the fighting. “Self-defense in the ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts! I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men of battle.”
Like other aspects of the Holocaust and World War II more generally, the details of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising have become richer and more complicated with further research over time. Critically, thanks largely to the painstaking work of the late Moshe Arens, a former Israeli cabinet minister, we now know that there was not just one—as was assumed for several decades—but two military groups in the ghetto. As well as the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), which drew supporters of the non-Zionist Bund and left-wing Zionists such as Dror and Hashomer Hatzair, there was the Jewish Military Union (ZZW), commanded by Pawel Frenkel and rooted in the Revisionist Zionist Betar movement of Vladimir Jabotinsky.
The political divide between these two organizations was unmistakable, as was the internal split within the ZOB between those leftists who supported the creation of a Jewish state and those who saw Zionism as a needless deviation from the proletarian class struggle (but not, I should emphasize, as a “racist,” “colonialist” project in the manner of those who define themselves as anti-Zionists today). Yet the imperative of defeating the Germans was overwhelming, and so the ZOB and the ZZW, Betarniks and Bundists alike, forged a strategic alliance. The ZOB distributed its fighters at different points around the ghetto while the ZZW concentrated its forces in Muranowska Square, flying a blue-and-white Zionist flag alongside a Polish one from its headquarters as it pushed back against the German advance.
The vicious urban fighting lasted for nearly a month before the Germans were able to declare victory. “The former Jewish Quarter in Warsaw is no more,” announced the SS Commander Jurgen Stroop in a May 16, 1943 cable to his superiors in Berlin.
In the event, the ghetto was razed, and most of the surviving fighters committed suicide rather than face capture and humiliation at the hands of the Germans. The 42,000 Jews who still remained in the ghetto two years after the Germans began the mass deportation of the community were transported either to the Majdanek concentration camp or the labor camps at Poniatow and Trawnicki. Most of them were murdered at those locations during a two-day mass shooting operation in November 1943.
“Never say that you are walking the final road/Though leaden skies obscure blue days,” the ghetto fighters would sing. “The hour we have been longing for will still come/Our steps will drum—we are here!”
Eighty years later, as their descendants wrestle with a resurgence of antisemitism (albeit in far more favorable circumstances—the existence of a Jewish state, full civil and political rights in most countries where Jews live) we should not only wish that their memory remains a blessing. Let it strengthen us, too.”
Montage From The Pianist film, set to music by Matt Maltese, As the World Caves In
19 באפריל 2024 לעולם לא עוד: ימי הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה
בכל שנה אנו מציינים את שמונת ימי הזיכרון לחללי הקדושים וגיבורי השואה, בישראל ברגעי דממה כאשר ערים שלמות עוצרות בזמן שסירנות תקיפות אוויר מזהירות מפני תקיפה צפויה, שמא נשכח ונחשוב שהסכנה עברה מזמן ואנחנו בעצמנו. בטוחים, וברחבי העולם העוסקים במאבק מהפכני נגד עריצות אכזרית ובהתנגדות לכוח ולשליטה של פשיזם של דם, אמונה ואדמה משקפים את הדוגמה של המתים הקדושים שלנו ועמידתם האחרונה המפוארת במרד גטו ורשה. מאשר את האדם המשותף, המשמעות והערך שלנו.
אני תוהה עכשיו, במלאת 80 שנה למרד גטו ורשה, אם למדנו את לקחיו; של ערנות מפני פשיזם של דם, אמונה ואדמה ועריצות של כוח ושליטה, במיוחד שעלולים להתעורר בתוכנו כאטביזם של אינסטינקט ופחד המעוצבים על ידי כניעה לסמכות ולמערכות של כוח לא שוויוני, של חלוקות של אחרות ושייכות מוציאות, ו האיומים הקיומיים של זיוף ודה-הומניזציה ושל סולידריות בהתנגדות וחובתנו לדאוג לזולת.
אנו רואים את קווי השבר במערכות שלנו כאשר אנו נאבקים להוליד חברה חופשית אמיתית של שווים ולצאת ממורשת ההיסטוריה שלנו ומהגמוניות עילית של עושר, כוח וזכות, ובשום מקום על פני כדור הארץ איננו חופשיים מההתמכרות שלנו. לכוח ולהשלכותיו הרבות. אולם אנו מתנגדים ואינם מפסיקים, ואינו נוטשים את חברינו, כפי שנאמרת שבועת ההתנגדות שניתנה לי על ידי ז’אן ז’נה; וזוהי התקווה של האנושות.
בסופו של דבר, כל מה שחשוב הוא מה אנחנו עושים עם הפחד שלנו, ואיך אנחנו משתמשים בכוח שלנו. תעשה משהו יפה עם שלך.
בכל רחבי העולם, אלה שפרנץ פאנון כינה עלובי הארץ, חסרי הכוח והמנושלים, המושתקים והמחוקים, יזכרו ויקומו שוב כדי לצאת מהחורבות ולעשות עוד דוכן אחרון.
מי שמתנגד ומסרב להיכנע לכוח אי אפשר לכבוש או להכניע. זהו הלקח הגדול של מרד גטו ורשה, ומדוע אנו זוכרים אותו; כי עלינו להישאר אנושיים, הבעלים של עצמנו אם לא יותר, וחופשיים.
כדי לבלבל בין שני ימי הזיכרון שלנו, יום הזיכרון הבינלאומי לשואה של האו”ם, 27 בינואר, מציין את היום בשנת 1945 שבו שחרר הצבא האדום הסובייטי את מחנה הריכוז אושוויץ-בירקנאו; הישג של מאבק שחרור וסולידריות בינלאומית, מטרה טובה ואצילית לחגוג. אבל ישראל וארה”ב בחרו את תאריך יום השואה כ”ז בניסן בלוח העברי להנצחת DRVH בת 8 ימים משהו אחר לגמרי; יום השנה למרד גטו ורשה ב-1943. לא הצלת קורבנות השואה, אלא התנגדות למוות וסולידריות זה עם זה של עם שסירב להיכנע לסמכות בלתי צודקת, לעריצות ולטרור המדינה.
בהתנגדות אנו הופכים ללא כבש וחופשי.
זה התחיל בילדה מתבגרת שזרקה בקבוק תבערה לעבר הנאצים כשצעדו לגטו. ילדה אחת קטנה, בלי נשק ובלי הכשרה, שאמרה לא.
כפי שתיאר המפקד היחיד שנותר בחיים של המרד, ד”ר מרק אדלמן, מחבר הספר “התנגדות לשואה: נלחם בחזרה בגטו ורשה”, שנלחם בזמן שהעיר נשרפה סביבם, הם נלחמו כנגד סיכויים בלתי אפשריים לא לברוח, שכן לא היה לאן לברוח בפולין הכבושה, וגם לא לקנות זמן, כי שום עזרה לא הגיעה, אלא רק “לבחור את הזמן והמקום של מותנו”.
על זה אני חולק, שכן גיבורי מרד גטו ורשה עשו הרבה יותר מאשר לתבוע את חירותם בעצמם בכיבוש הבעלות על חייהם תוך אתגר לסמכות וסירוב לציית לכוח ולשליטה; הם הראו לכולנו איך לחיות, ואיך להיות חופשיים.
במילותיו של מקס סטירנר; “לא ניתן להעניק חופש; יש לתפוס אותו.”
Polish
19 kwietnia 2024 Nigdy więcej: Dni Pamięci o Męczennikach i Bohaterach Holokaustu
Każdego roku upamiętniamy osiem Dni Pamięci Męczenników i Bohaterów Holokaustu w Izraelu chwilami ciszy, gdy całe miasta zatrzymują się, podczas gdy syreny alarmowe ostrzegają przed zbliżającym się atakiem, abyśmy nie zapomnieli i nie pomyśleli, że niebezpieczeństwo już dawno minęło, a my sami bezpieczni, a na całym świecie ci, którzy angażują się w rewolucyjną walkę przeciwko brutalnej tyranii oraz w opór wobec siły i kontroli faszyzmu krwi, wiary i ziemi, zastanawiają się nad przykładem naszych świętych zmarłych i ich chwalebną ostatnią walką w powstaniu w getcie warszawskim, które potwierdza naszą wspólną istotę ludzką, znaczenie i wartość.
Zastanawiam się teraz, w 80. rocznicę powstania w getcie warszawskim, czy wyciągnęliśmy z niego wnioski; czujności wobec faszyzmu krwi, wiary i ziemi oraz tyranii siły i kontroli, zwłaszcza tych, które mogą powstać w nas jako atawizmy instynktu i strachu ukształtowane przez poddanie się władzy i systemom nierównej władzy, podziałom wykluczającej inności i przynależności oraz egzystencjalne zagrożenia fałszerstwem i dehumanizacją, solidarnością w oporze i naszym obowiązkiem troski o innych.
Widzimy linie pęknięcia w naszych systemach, gdy walczymy o narodziny prawdziwie wolnego społeczeństwa równych i wyłaniamy się z dziedzictwa naszej historii oraz z elitarnych hegemonii bogactwa, władzy i przywilejów, i nigdzie na ziemi nie jesteśmy wolni od naszego uzależnienia władzy i jej wielorakich konsekwencji. Jednak opieramy się i nie przestajemy, i nie opuszczamy naszych towarzyszy, jak mówi Przysięga Oporu dana mi przez Jeana Geneta; i to jest nadzieja ludzkości.
Ostatecznie liczy się tylko to, co zrobimy z naszym strachem i jak wykorzystamy naszą moc. Zrób coś pięknego ze swoim.
Na całym świecie ci, których Frantz Fanon nazwał Nędznikami Ziemi, bezsilni i wywłaszczeni, wyciszeni i wymazani, będą pamiętali i powstaną ponownie, by wydostać się z ruin i stoczyć kolejną Ostatnią Bastion.
Kto stawia opór i odmawia poddania się sile, nie może zostać pokonany ani ujarzmiony. To jest wielka lekcja powstania w getcie warszawskim i dlaczego ją pamiętamy; ponieważ musimy, jeśli mamy pozostać ludźmi, właścicielami samych siebie i wolnymi.
Aby ujednoznacznić nasze dwa dni pamięci, Międzynarodowy Dzień Pamięci o Holokauście ustanowiony przez ONZ, 27 stycznia to dzień wyzwolenia przez Armię Czerwoną obozu koncentracyjnego Auschwitz-Birkenau w 1945 roku; osiągnięcie walki wyzwoleńczej i międzynarodowej solidarności, dobry i szlachetny powód do świętowania. Ale Izrael i Stany Zjednoczone wybrały datę Yom HaShoah 27 Nisan w kalendarzu hebrajskim na 8-dniowe obchody DRVH na coś zupełnie innego; rocznica powstania w getcie warszawskim 1943 r. Nie ratowanie ofiar Holokaustu, ale opór aż do śmierci i wzajemna solidarność narodu, który nie poddał się niesprawiedliwej władzy, tyranii i państwowemu terrorowi.
W Ruchu Oporu stajemy się Niezwyciężeni i wolni.
Zaczęło się od nastolatki, która rzuciła koktajlem Mołotowa w nazistów maszerujących do getta. Jedna mała dziewczynka, bez broni i bez wyszkolenia, która powiedziała nie.
Jak opisał jedyny żyjący dowódca Powstania, dr Marek Edelman, autor Resisting the Holocaust: Fighting Back in the Warsaw Ghetto, który walczył dalej, gdy wokół nich płonęło miasto, walczyli z niemożliwymi szansami, by nie uciec, bo w okupowanej Polsce nie było dokąd uciec, ani kupić czasu, bo pomoc nie nadchodziła, a jedynie „wybrać czas i miejsce naszej śmierci”.
Kwestionuję to, ponieważ bohaterowie powstania w getcie warszawskim zrobili znacznie więcej niż tylko domaganie się własnej wolności, przejmując odpowiedzialność za swoje życie, rzucając wyzwanie władzy i odmawiając posłuszeństwa wobec siły i kontroli; pokazali reszcie z nas, jak żyć i jak stać się wolnymi.
Słowami Maxa Stirnera; „Wolności nie można przyznać; trzeba go przejąć”.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, a reading list
Resisting the Holocaust: Fighting Back in the Warsaw Ghetto, Marek Edelman,
Shielding the Flame: An Intimate Conversation with Dr. Marek Edelman, the Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Hanna Krall, Marek Edelman, Lawrence Weschler (Translator), Joanna Stasinska (Translator)
This is the anniversary of a tragic and glorious Last Stand the world must never forget, and I cannot.
Here follows my journal of the final day as Russian forces sealed off the city from aid or escape, and after making what mischief we could for the enemy my friends and I fled along the underground railroad to Warsaw to organize resistance and revolution within Russia, and bring a Reckoning for war crimes in Mariupol to her destroyers.
For fear of nuclear annihilation and other retaliation by and direct conflict with Russia, America and the world have avoided bringing a Reckoning to Putin’s regime for its crimes against humanity in Ukraine; we have not counter-invaded, liberated the Black Sea, destroyed the airfields, supply lines, and manufacture of war material, nor given Ukraine the means to do so for herself.
As the survival of humankind depends upon our abandonment of weapons of mass destruction and global nuclear disarmament, disengagement works on the existential level, but we know from Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” that appeasement does not. As the famous line from the film Darkest Hour that Churchill never said goes; “You can not reason with a Tiger when your head is in its mouth.”
Between war with Russia and refusing our duty of care for others regardless of whose citizens they may be which entails the abandonment of our principles of universal human rights and the natural right of sovereignty of all human beings, there is a vast and enormous space of free play in which to act in solidarity and anticolonial struggle with those under threat of imperial conquest and dominion and all of the atrocities and horrors of war. This is true of Palestine as well as Ukraine, and far too many other failures of our humanity.
Let us bring regime change to Russia, for this is the only way Putin’s mad quest to re-found the Russian Empire, which now unfolds in ten theatres of war including Ukraine and America in our elections, will truly end; when the people of Russia liberate themselves. I can say the same for the Gaza War and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; it ends when the people of Israel liberate themselves from the Netanyahu settler regime and bring true democracy to Israel in abandoning the re-enactment of Auschwitz which is the Occupation, and unite with the people of Palestine as fully equal citizens in one nation wherein fascisms of blood, faith, and soil are renounced for ideals of equality, diversity, inclusion, and a secular state.
Legislation now awaits a vote in our Congress which Janus-like offers us a chiaroscuro of good and evil; funds to combat tyranny and terror for Ukraine, and funds to enforce tyranny and terror for Israel.
Our policy in Israel must be to silence the bombs of genocide, break the blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and bring regime change.
For Ukraine we must do far more than fund resistance; we must bring the fight to the enemy on his own ground, in solidarity with the people of Russia versus the regime and in alliance with the democracy movement now pervasive throughout civil society and the antiwar movement within the Russian military. This is how we brought a Reckoning to Prigozhin as a war criminal, and it is how we will bring a Reckoning to Putin and his regime.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
April 18 2022 Last Stand at Mariupol: Fight at the Steel Works
Fighting at the Azovstal and Ilyin Iron and Steel Works remains ongoing; among the vast warrens and maze of tunnels here, with its arsenals, hospitals, communications centers, and routes of resupply as in other underground fortresses in Mariupol and elsewhere, Resistance to the Russian Occupation may be waged for years if necessary. A machinist and leader of the steelworkers who armed themselves in defense, called Big Yuri, has even jury rigged an arms factory which can manufacture rifles and ammunition indefinitely. This, unfortunately, is not the same as holding the ground.
We are the Spartans; our lives buy time for our civilization to awaken to its peril and the threat of fascist tyranny and imperial conquest by Russia in this the Third World War.
For Mariupol and far too many of the people of Ukraine, this will come too late; no one is coming to help, and many of her defenders have nothing left to fight with on this forty seventh day of the Siege of Mariupol which began on the second of March, and of the Battle which began February 24th.
But it is not too late for you and yours, whomever you may be or wherever you may live. This truth must suffice, as the hope for our future.
I speak herein as a witness of history who has been in Mariupol from March 22, and offer this testimony on behalf of our universal human rights in any Reckoning brought to the perpetrators of this vast and horrific war crime.
This has been from its beginning a battle of aerial and artillery bombardment against the city itself and the civilian population, of tanks against riflemen, of flesh against unanswerable force and horror, of division against solidarity, of hate against love, and of fear against hope.
Here the human will to freedom is tested by an enemy who exults in the embrace of the monstrous, whose policies and designs of war as terror gladly and with the open arrogance of power instrumentalize utter destruction and genocide, a war wherein atrocities and depravities are unleashed as tactics of shock and awe with intent of subjugation through learned helplessness and overwhelming and generalized fear.
Here as in Nanking and countless other places, this produces not submission but resistance. Politics is about fear as a basis of exchange, and in the Calculus of Fear, where limited state terror against its own citizens in concert with total control of information may be useful internally in the manufacture of consent to be governed, provided the legitimacy of authority remains unquestioned by those in whose name it claims to act, in war what is uncontrollable and unimaginable creates conditions in which there is nothing more to lose.
Such are my people, all those with nothing left to lose, here and in all times and places throughout history and among all humankind, and when we stand in solidarity with each other we are Unconquerable and beyond any force of subjugation or control.
Too much or too little fear, and where and how it is used, can destabilize totalitarian regimes. When law becomes meaningless and is replaced by power and force, authority is delegitimized, the consent to be governed is lost, and order becomes chaos.
Guillermo del Toro, in his magnificent epic of migration and racial equality Carnival Row, episode seven The World to Come, has a scene in which two young successors to leadership of traditionally rival factions find themselves in love and in need of allies in a subplot which reimagines Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; the rebellious hellion Jonah Breakspear asks his Machiavellian lover Sophie Longerbane, “Who is chaos good for?” To which she replies, “Chaos is good for us. Chaos is the great hope of the powerless.”
As Jean Genet said to me in Beirut nearly forty years ago as we were surrounded by soldiers in a house they had set on fire and about to be burned alive; “When there is no hope, we are free to do impossible things, glorious things.”
Resistance has always been a war to the knife. Curious phrase, that; among the few words and whole phrases which come into modern English unchanged from the original Norse; krig på kniven. Its meaning for us is simple; those who would enslave us and who abandon all laws and all limits may hide behind none.
By any means necessary, as this principle is expressed in the famous dictum of Sartre in his 1948 play Dirty Hands, quoted by Frantz Fanon in his 1960 speech Why We Use Violence, and made immortal by Malcolm X.
Why is this terrible war happening, in Mariupol a campaign of terror which includes executions, torture, organized mass rape and the trafficking of abducted civilians, the capture of civilian hostages and use of forced labor, cannibalism using mobile factories, genocidal attacks, erasure of evidence of war crimes using mobile crematoriums which indicates official planning as part of the campaign of terror and proof that the countless crimes against humanity of this war are not aberrations but by design, threats of nuclear annihilation against European nations sending humanitarian aid, and the mass destruction of cities?
The Russian strategy of conquest as Total War opens with sustained and relentless bombardment and destruction of hospitals, bomb shelters, stores of food, power systems, water supply, corridors of humanitarian aid and the evacuation of refugees; anything which could help citizens survive a siege. Once nothing is left standing, a campaign of terror as organized mass rape, torture, cannibalism, and looting begins, and any survivors enslaved or executed. This is a war of genocide and erasure, which has no parallel in modern Europe other than the Siege of Sarajevo; and here I speak as a witness of history to both.
Why? What could possibly be worth purchasing with your humanity and that of your nation and people?
Russia wants to conquer Ukraine for the same reason Japan invaded Manchuria; because it is an industrial heartland from which the conquest of the world may be launched, and the warm water ports of Mariupol and Odesa are key to this imperial plan of dominion, as well as to control of a land corridor to Crimea.
The sixty-five ports of the Black Sea connect Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine, and all of these with the Mediterranean, dominion of which Russia has long disputed with Turkey in Libya and Syria. If Russia intends to follow the conquest of Ukraine with that of Eastern Europe, the capture of Romania’s Port of Constanta would open the whole of the Danube region to invasion. The Black Sea remains as crucial to the dominion of the Mediterranean, and of Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, as it was when Mithridates VI of Pontus contested for it in his wars with the Roman Empire, or at the Battle of Gallipoli which we seem doomed to refight in Crimea.
At stake in the fight at the steelworks in Mariupol is the major regional industrial plant and the strategic resource of keeping a fleet alive, decisive in diverting Russian troops and resources from the Donbas campaign and in preventing Russia from fully colonizing Crimea and coastal Ukraine. Denying Russia the ability to refit and repair its ships from local resources may be key to defeating the invasion of the Ukrainian seaboard.
The Azovstal and Ilyin Iron and Steel Works are also a vast and labyrinthine fortress from which the defense of Mariupol may be waged, like Fort St Elmo from which the Knights of Malta made their heroic Last Stand.
What is happening in Mariupol now, among the confusion and devastation of a city of ghosts wherein the Russian army has given free rein to the depravity of war?
As Ukraine seizes the initiative in the north and drives Russia back across the border, and begins to contest and retake the Black Sea with the stunning victory of crippling the Moskva, flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet to which the defenders of Snake Island gave famous reply, savage fighting for the port and the steelworks continues though Russia has claimed a thousand Ukrainian Marines surrendered, with the implication that Mariupol itself has also surrendered.
To this disinformation aimed at the will of the Ukrainian people to refuse to submit and remain Unconquered I say; First, that Mariupol is without question under Occupation and in enemy hands, but the city has not surrendered nor ever will. Suicide teams who have volunteered to remain and harry the enemy as opportunities arise will see to that, and networks of Resistance among her citizens await the hour of Liberation.
The Russians have published their estimate of the forces gathered here at the steel works as twenty five hundred Ukrainians and four hundred foreign volunteers of the International Legion, including the independent Abraham Lincoln Brigade, we Americans who named ourselves after the legendary unit of the Spanish Civil War. Others still hold the port itself under Ukrainian control, a fact to the advantage of any such force of Liberation who may bring a fleet to this fight.
Second, there is nothing dishonorable in surrender if it means you live to fight another day, and the 36th Marines Brigade who have on the forty sixth day of their heroic defense of Mariupol declared in their last message to the world, days ago now, that they have nothing left to fight with, no ammunition, water, anything, and that they are either captive or dead, bear only honor with them into a future which must now be chosen by others.
I have never seen a Ukrainian surrender. Casually stroll into an enemy checkpoint and pull the pin on a grenade, laughing, to open the way for a hospital truck to rescue others, yes. Share a bottle of poisoned vodka with an enemy sentry and die together while refugees are escorted through the lines, yes.
Such people cannot be conquered. The use of force and violence is fragile and power is hollow when it has no legitimacy but only brutal repression to sustain it; for all such things fail at the point of disobedience and disbelief.
Whosoever refuses to submit becomes Unconquered, and is free. This is a kind of victory against which no tyranny or terror can win.
I have seen a fierce bearded fellow attack a pair of Russian tanks with an ax, running from cover to leap onto the turret and behead the commander, and vanish into the ruins like a shadow of wrath summoned by the city’s pain, grief, and fear. Called The Headsman, in him Ukraine has found an avenger. The remaining tank crewmen bailed out and ran in panic, the commanding officer in the second tank opened fire on the deserters and actually shot one of them, and he was shot in turn by a fellow Russian soldier who emerged behind him from the tank, put a gun to his head, and then simply walked across the street with hands raised and changed sides. The soldier who chose our common humanity over nationalism and solidarity over division is now the commander of that tank, but with the Ukrainian flag painted on it. Saint Andrei, they are calling him.
Putin has sent slaves to conquer a free people. He forgot to wonder, what happens when the slaves join together with their fellow victims of tyranny whom they were sent to conquer, in solidarity of action to liberate themselves?
While the Russian army has an active peace movement and networks of solidarity working with their Ukrainian counterparts, and many incidents of desertion and mutiny including fragging officers, the Ukrainians, often frozen, starving, and out of ammunition like the founders of America who crossed the Delaware with Washington on that fateful Christmas Day in 1776, remain defiant and Unconquered.
There is also the legend of the Wolf of Mariupol, a girl who tore out her attacker’s throat like a wolf. A myth of war, possibly; but I saw what was left of the Russian soldier in question. It is said she now leads a team of women who rescue others from the Butterfly Collectors, the soldiers capturing women for abduction to Russia and trafficking as a criminal syndicate within the Russian military. In her Ukraine has found a Harriet Tubman.
A group of Ukrainian Marines has last week broken through to link up with elements of the Azov National Guard, very stubborn fellows who have held the steel works in grim conditions; but several zones of conflict are unfolding and rapidly changing. Russian officers have tried to compel surrender using civilian hostages in a different incident, but not to my knowledge with success.
The war crimes of the Russians have awakened a resistance of victory or death; like the defenders at the Siege of Malta in 1565 or George Washington who coined that phrase as a password at the Battle of Trenton, the Ukrainian soldiers, civilian partisans including steelworkers and others who armed themselves when Russia attacked, and international volunteers I have witnessed swearing an oath to die in place rather than surrender anything to a conqueror will not go quietly.
What happens next? As Lenin asked in his essay that founded a political party and a Revolution which was destined to transform the world, What is to be done?
Today the Russian Occupation forces impose passports of travel required of all persons on the streets, begin capturing civilians and sending them to processing centers to choose some for forced labor camps and others for summary execution, and all access to the world beyond Mariupol and from the world to here cordoned off entirely. Mariupol is to be emptied, the population totalized as dead or enslaved, and remaining persons systematically hunted to extinction.
Putin intends to leave us nothing to defend and nowhere from which to fight. And in so doing he has freed us to begin the next phase of struggle, and take the fight to the enemy.
Sometimes I think he doesn’t know how to play this game at all.
Fortunately for us, being a KGB Colonel is not precisely the same as being a professional revolutionary, and seems to have made of Putin a truncated and misshapen thing, of limited intellect and no morals whatever, no visionary evil genius nor embodiment of Hegelian world-historical forces but merely an overseer of the carceral state. Vladimir Putin is much like Adolf Eichmann, as described by Hannah Arendt in her historic work on the Nuremberg Trials.
As I consider my goals and objectives regarding the war to be obvious to anyone, I don’t mind outlining them for you here.
First and beyond all other priorities, for only this will truly end the threat of war, we must act in solidarity with the Russian peoples to help bring regime change and the Liberation of Russia from the tyranny of Vladimir Putin and his oligarchy.
Second, we must bring a direct and personal Reckoning to Putin, his oligarchs, high command, political allies and minions, and all those complicit in war crimes in Ukraine.
Third, we must bring destruction to Russia’s ability to wage this war, especially the artillery and airfields which reduce whole cities to ruin in the opening phase of any such enemy assault.
Fourth, we must seize control of the Black Sea or prevent Russia from doing so, to deny its use as a launching pad for the imperial Russian conquest and dominion of the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
We’re going to need a pirate fleet for that last bit, and I know just where I can find one.
Herein the overarching strategic reality which must drive our decisions is the fact that World War Three has now been ongoing for some time, whose theatres of war include Russia, America, Syria, Libya, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and now Ukraine inclusive of her province Crimea.
Should we fail to stop this war of imperial conquest and dominion here in Ukraine where all our humanitarian values and international laws are violated with brutal savagery, and allow it to become a general global war between liberty and tyranny, my fear is that the world may enter an age of tyranny and centuries of war which humankind will not survive.
For Putin’s hand rests on the button of our nuclear annihilation and extinction, and it calls to him, whispering; “Set me free, and I’ll make you powerful.”
”圮地則行；圍地則謀；死地則戰“; as written by Sun Tzu in Chapter Eleven of The Art of War, “In death ground, fight.”
This principle of action was once demonstrated for me in Angola, during the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, in a tactical situation similar to ours here in Mariupol. While the spectacle of this grand final battle in a decades long liberation struggle against colonialism and Apartheid was unfolding, I was making mischief behind enemy lines in the bush. Here I discovered a lost unit, mainly Zulu though with Soviet and Cuban volunteers, which was encircled by Apartheid forces.
After reporting what I knew of the area to the command group and a brief conference in several languages, an old fellow who had heretofore been silent stood up from the shadows of the tent, whose shirtless form displayed a fearsome and magnificent scar from a lion’s claws, and said; “We are surrounded and outnumbered with no ammunition and worse, no water, and no one is coming to help us. We must attack.”
The sergeant smiled at this as if he had been given a marvelous gift, strode outside, and gave the order which if you are lucky you will never hear; “Fix bayonets!”
And the men about to die erupted in song. “Usuthu! Umkhonto wami womile!” “My spear is thirsty”, that last.
We too can emerge victorious from our war of survival against even an immensely more vast and powerful foe, as did the heroes of Cuito Cuanavale, if we unleash the full will and force of our nations against an emergent Russian Empire, as a United Humankind; especially if we do so against its weak spots and lines of fracture.
Ukraine is such a weak spot of imperial ambition, while she yet resists and remains Unconquered. And the Russian invasion of Europe can be derailed by political action in Russia through the democracy and peace movements which have challenged Putin’s tyranny.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity goes the motto of the Revolution which birthed democracies in America and France; the first two parts of which proclaim universal principles of human being, and the third part, which refers to what we call solidarity, interdependence, and our duty of care for others, is instrumental to the realization of our liberty and equality as a free society of equals.
We can be victorious in the triumph of democracy over tyranny, of solidarity over division, and of love over hate. But there is only one way this works; we must act as one United Humankind.
As written by Tom Bateman of the BBC; “Russian troops started their encirclement of Mariupol in early March, gradually tightening the noose.
There are growing signs Russia could be on the brink of fully capturing Mariupol, the besieged southern port city which has suffered a devastating, six-week assault.
Officially, Ukraine’s armed forces say they are sustaining its defence and are in “continuous contact” with their troops on the ground. But they concede it is likely Moscow will try to take full control of the city, while a regional Russian-backed separatist leader claims Mariupol is close to falling.
Ukrainian troops have said they are running out of ammunition, and are believed to have been pushed back into two isolated pockets adjoining the coastline.
The city’s fate is likely to be critical for the next phase of the war. In Russian hands it would provide control of a clear swathe of territory connecting Moscow’s two fronts in the south and east. It would release large numbers of forces to redeploy, and provide President Vladimir Putin with a moment of strategic “victory” after a lethally shambolic first stage to his invasion.
It would mark a huge loss, if by now an expected one, for Ukraine’s leadership which has described Mariupol as “the heart of this war today”.
It is believed Ukraine’s forces have been forced back to the port area and the Azovstal iron and steel plant.
Russian troops started their encirclement of Mariupol in early March. The siege has killed thousands of civilians and unleashed an appalling struggle for survival for trapped residents who remain.
Thousands of people have escaped further north, risking a deadly journey through the front line. Here, in Zaporizhzhia, I have watched civilians arrive day after day, describing how they have witnessed the obliteration of their city.
In recent days Russian forces are thought to have pushed in further by dividing the remaining holdout of Mariupol’s defenders, according to think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
It’s believed Ukraine’s forces have been forced back to the port area and the Azovstal plant, a massive iron and steel works from where they had launched counter-attacks for weeks.
Videos have emerged of fighters apparently from the 36th marine brigade vowing not to surrender their positions.
“We are holding on to every bit of the city wherever possible,” says one in a video posted to social media channels on Tuesday.
“But the reality is the city is encircled and blocked and there was no re-supply of ammunition or food,” he adds. Part of the footage shows him alongside several other marines in a room that looks like a basement shelter. One of the men has crutches leaning against his chair.
A post on Monday on the brigade’s Facebook page described the situation as “the last battle… It is death for some of us, and captivity for the rest,” it said, adding they had been “pushed back” and “surrounded” by Russian troops.
Ukrainian analysts differed over whether the post could be relied on as genuine, with some claiming the page had been hacked. But more than 36 hours later the post remained on the site.
The siege and a resulting collapse in communications in Mariupol mean it is difficult to independently verify reports about changes on the ground.
There is little doubt Ukrainian forces have been desperate for new supplies of weapons, ammunition, food and water.
Mariupol – home to more than 400,000 people before the war – has been virtually wiped out by weeks of heavy Russian shelling.
Ukraine’s military reportedly managed over the weeks to resupply troops with kit including night and thermal vision goggles, portable battery charging packs and even anti-tank munitions; but it became increasingly hard.
“Ultimately, the city was surrounded so soon into the invasion that there was never a chance to build up supplies,” says Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
“They’ve already held out far, far longer than any external analysis would have predicted possible. So it’s difficult to say how much longer they can go on,” he says, adding that they have “achieved extraordinary results with very little”.
Ukrainian attempts to rotate forces or evacuate the wounded also became much more high risk as Russia tightened its siege.
In his video address to the nation late on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “The future of Ukraine directly depends on the strength of our resistance in all its forms. The future of us all, each of our cities, each of our villages.
“And I am grateful to everyone who understands this. Who does not stop resisting even when it seems that the result is very far. Because the darkest time is always before dawn.
“I want to separately address those heroes who are having a very hard time. Those who defend Mariupol. A marine battalion of the 36th marine brigade, Azov special operations detachment, 12th operational brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine. Subdivisions of the State Border Guard Service. Volunteers of the “Right Sector”. The 555th military hospital and National Police employees.”
The full capture of the city could see significant numbers of Russian troops, so far used to contain and prevent resupply in Mariupol, reconstituted and moved elsewhere, particularly in other parts of the eastern Donbas region, where Moscow is gearing up for a major offensive.
It could also see Moscow consolidate its progress north of Mariupol, which is one of the reasons the Ukrainians were finding it so hard to relieve the city, according to Mr Bronk.
The forces could also be used to bolster Russian-occupied Kherson, where Ukrainian troops have been attempting to retake ground with some success.
President Zelensky continued his metaphor that Mariupol is the heart of the war. “If it stops beating then we will be… weaker,” he said.”
20 Days In Mariupol documentary film
Churchill’s speech in Darkest Hour: You cannot Reason With a Tiger When Your Head Is In Its Mouth
Inglourious Basterds: Shoshanna Prepares for German Night
This is my theme song for Last Stands, which I posted as I embarked for Mariupol in March 2022 and for Afghanistan in August 2021 after the Fall of Kabul.
18 квітня 2024 р. Друга річниця останнього стоянки на металургійному заводі в Маріуполі
Це річниця трагічної та славетної Останньої битви, яку світ ніколи не повинен забувати, а я не можу.
Ось мій щоденник останнього дня, коли російські війська блокували місто від допомоги чи втечі, і після того, як завдали ворогу скільки могли, ми з друзями втекли підземною залізницею до Варшави, щоб організувати опір і революцію в Росії, і принести відповідальність за військові злочини в Маріуполі її руйнівникам.
Через страх ядерного знищення та іншої помсти з боку Росії та прямого конфлікту з нею Америка та світ уникають розплати режиму Путіна за його злочини проти людства в Україні; ми не проводили контрвторгнення, не звільняли Чорне море, не знищували аеродроми, лінії постачання та виробництво військової техніки, не давали Україні для цього засобів.
Оскільки виживання людства залежить від нашої відмови від зброї масового знищення та глобального ядерного роззброєння, розмежування діє на екзистенціальному рівні, але ми знаємо з «Миру в наш час» Чемберлена, що умиротворення не діє. Як звучить відомий рядок із фільму “Найтемніша година”, про який Черчилль ніколи не говорив; «Не можна міркувати з тигром, коли твоя голова в його пащі».
Між війною з Росією та відмовою від нашого обов’язку піклуватися про інших, незалежно від того, чиїми громадянами вони можуть бути, що тягне за собою відмову від наших принципів універсальних прав людини та природного права на суверенітет усіх людей, існує величезний і величезний простір вільного гра, в якій діяти в солідарності та антиколоніальній боротьбі з тими, хто перебуває під загрозою імперського завоювання та панування, а також усіх звірств і жахів війни. Це стосується і Палестини, і України.
Давайте принесемо зміну режиму в Росії, бо це єдиний спосіб, яким справді закінчиться шалений пошук Путіна відновити Російську імперію, який зараз розгортається на десяти театрах війни, включаючи Україну та Америку на наших виборах; коли народ Росії звільниться. Я можу сказати те саме про війну в Газі та ізраїльсько-палестинський конфлікт; це закінчується, коли народ Ізраїлю звільняється від режиму поселенців Нетаньяху та приносить справжню демократію в Ізраїль, відмовляючись від реконструкції Освенціма, який є окупацією, і об’єднується з народом Палестини як повноправні громадяни в одній нації, в якій фашизм кров, віра та земля відмовляються заради ідеалів рівності, різноманітності, інклюзії та світської держави.
Законодавство тепер чекає на голосування в нашому Конгресі, який, як Янус, пропонує нам світлотінь добра і зла; кошти на боротьбу з тиранією та терором для України та кошти на посилення тиранії та терору для Ізраїлю.
Наша політика в Ізраїлі має полягати в тому, щоб заглушити бомби геноциду, прорвати блокаду гуманітарної допомоги в Газу та змінити режим.
Для України ми повинні зробити набагато більше, ніж фінансувати опір; ми повинні вести боротьбу з ворогом на його власній території, солідарно з народом Росії проти режиму та в союзі з демократичним рухом, який зараз поширений у громадянському суспільстві, та антивоєнним рухом у російській армії. Так ми розплатилися Пригожину як військовому злочинцю, так ми розплатимося Путіну та його режиму.
Бо нас багато, ми спостерігаємо, і ми майбутнє.
Russian
18 апреля 2024 Вторая годовщина последней битвы на металлургическом комбинате в Мариуполе
Это годовщина трагической и славной Последней битвы, которую мир никогда не должен забыть, а я не могу.
Здесь следует мой дневник последнего дня, когда русские войска изолировали город от помощи или побега, и, причинив врагу весь вред, который мы могли, мы с друзьями бежали по подземной железной дороге в Варшаву, чтобы организовать сопротивление и революцию внутри России, и принести расплату за военные преступления в Мариуполе ее эсминцам.
Опасаясь ядерного уничтожения и других возмездий со стороны России и прямого конфликта с ней, Америка и весь мир избегают расплаты режиму Путина за его преступления против человечности на Украине; мы не осуществили ответное вторжение, не освободили Черное море, не разрушили аэродромы, линии снабжения и производство военной техники и не предоставили Украине средств сделать это для себя.
Поскольку выживание человечества зависит от нашего отказа от оружия массового уничтожения и глобального ядерного разоружения, размежевание работает на экзистенциальном уровне, но из книги Чемберлена «Мир в наше время» мы знаем, что умиротворение этого не делает. Как гласит знаменитая фраза из фильма «Темные времена», которую Черчилль никогда не говорил; «Невозможно рассуждать с Тигром, когда твоя голова у него во рту».
Между войной с Россией и отказом от нашей обязанности заботиться о других, независимо от того, чьими гражданами они могут быть, что влечет за собой отказ от наших принципов универсальных прав человека и естественного права суверенитета всех людей, существует огромное и огромное пространство свободы. игра, в которой нужно действовать в духе солидарности и антиколониальной борьбы с теми, кто находится под угрозой имперского завоевания и владычества, а также всех зверств и ужасов войны. Это справедливо как для Палестины, так и для Украины.
Давайте осуществим смену режима в России, поскольку это единственный способ действительно положить конец безумному стремлению Путина заново основать Российскую империю, которое сейчас разворачивается на десяти театрах военных действий, включая Украину и Америку на наших выборах; когда народ России освободится. Я могу сказать то же самое о войне в Газе и израильско-палестинском конфликте; он закончится, когда народ Израиля освободится от поселенческого режима Нетаньяху и принесет Израилю истинную демократию, отказавшись от реконструкции Освенцима, который является оккупацией, и объединится с народом Палестины как полностью равные граждане в одной нации, где фашизм кровь, вера и почва отвергаются ради идеалов равенства, разнообразия, инклюзивности и светского государства.
Законодательство теперь ожидает голосования в нашем Конгрессе, которое, подобно Янусу, предлагает нам светотени добра и зла; фонды для борьбы с тиранией и террором в Украине и фонды для насаждения тирании и террора в Израиле.
Наша политика в Израиле должна заключаться в том, чтобы заставить замолчать бомбы геноцида, прорвать блокаду гуманитарной помощи Газе и добиться смены режима.
Для Украины мы должны сделать гораздо больше, чем просто финансировать сопротивление; мы должны начать борьбу с врагом на его собственной земле, в знак солидарности с народом России против режима и в союзе с демократическим движением, которое сейчас широко распространено в гражданском обществе, и с антивоенным движением в российских вооруженных силах. Вот как мы принесли расплату Пригожину как военному преступнику, и так мы принесем расплату Путину и его режиму.
Reading List for a Future History of the Battle and Siege of Mariupol, To Be Written
Such a history begins thus; Herein is my witness of history and truth telling in this, the first general history of World War Three. As with all things human, it is also fiction except when it is not, myth when it can be, poetic vision and the reimagination and transformation of human being, meaning, and value and of our limitless future possibilities of becoming human.
Are we not the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves and to others?
Always there remains the struggle between the masks we make for ourselves and those made for us by others.
This is the first revolution in which we all must fight; the struggle for ownership of ourselves.
There are no Ukrainians, no Russians; only people like ourselves, and the choices they make about how to be human together.
Ukrainian
Список для читання майбутньої історії битви та облоги Маріуполя, який буде написаний
Така історія починається так; Ось моє свідчення історії та правди в цій першій загальній історії Третьої світової війни. Як і все людське, це також вигадка, за винятком тих випадків, коли це не так, міф, коли він може бути, поетичне бачення та переосмислення і трансформація людського буття, сенсу й цінності та наших безмежних майбутніх можливостей стати людьми.
Хіба ми не ті історії, які розповідаємо про себе, собі та іншим?
Завжди залишається боротьба між масками, які ми робимо для себе, і тими, які роблять для нас інші.
Це перша революція, в якій ми всі повинні боротися; боротьба за володіння собою.
Немає ні українців, ні росіян; тільки такі люди, як ми, і вибір, який вони роблять щодо того, як бути людьми разом.
Russian
Список литературы для будущей истории битвы и осады Мариуполя, которую нужно написать
Такая история начинается так; Вот мой свидетель истории и правды в этой, первой общей истории Третьей мировой войны. Как и все человеческое, это также вымысел, за исключением случаев, когда это не так, миф, когда он может быть, поэтическое видение и переосмысление и трансформация человеческого бытия, смысла и ценности, а также наших безграничных будущих возможностей стать людьми.
Разве мы не истории, которые рассказываем о себе, себе и другим?
Всегда остается борьба между масками, которые мы делаем для себя, и масками, которые делают для нас другие.
Это первая революция, в которой мы все должны сражаться; борьба за право собственности на себя.
Нет ни украинцев, ни русских; только такие люди, как мы, и выбор, который они делают о том, как быть людьми вместе.
18 квітня 2022 року Останній бій у Маріуполі: бій на металургійному заводі
Бойові дії на «Азовсталі» та «Ільїнського металургійного комбінату» тривають; серед величезних лабіринтів і лабіринтів тунелів тут, з його арсеналом, госпіталем, центром зв’язку та маршрутами постачання, як і в інших підземних фортецях у Маріуполі та інших місцях, опір російській окупації можна вести роками, якщо буде потрібно. Машиніст і керівник металургійних робітників, які озброїлися для захисту, на ім’я Великий Юрій, навіть присяжні сфальсифікували збройовий завод, який може виробляти гвинтівки та боєприпаси необмежений час. Це, на жаль, не те саме, що тримати землю.
Ми спартанці; наше життя дає час для нашої цивілізації, щоб пробудитися до її небезпеки та загрози фашистської тиранії та імперського завоювання.
Для Маріуполя та дуже багатьох жителів України це станеться надто пізно; ніхто не йде на допомогу, а багатьом її захисникам нема з чим битися в цей сорок сьомий день облоги Маріуполя, що розпочалася 2 березня, і битви, що розпочалася 24 лютого.
Але ще не пізно для вас і ваших, ким би ви не були і де б ви не жили. Цієї правди має бути достатньо, як надії на наше майбутнє.
Я говорю тут як свідок історії, який перебував у Маріуполі з 22 березня, і пропоную це свідчення від імені наших універсальних прав людини в будь-якій розплаті винуватцям цього величезного та жахливого військового злочину.
З самого початку це була битва повітряних та артилерійських бомбардувань самого міста та цивільного населення, танків проти стрільців, плоті проти невідповідної сили та жаху, поділу проти солідарності, ненависті проти любові та страху проти надії. .
Тут людська воля до свободи випробовується ворогом, який радіє в обіймах жахливих, чия політика та задуми війни як терору з радістю та з відкритою зарозумілістю влади інструментують повне знищення та геноцид, війну, в якій розв’язуються звірства та розбещення. як тактика шоку і благоговіння з наміром підкорення через вивчену безпорадність і непереборний і загальний страх.
Тут, як і в Нанкіні та багатьох інших місцях, це викликає не підкорення, а опір. Політика стосується страху як основи обміну, а в Обчисленні страху, де обмежений державний терор проти власних громадян у поєднанні з повним контролем інформації може бути корисним для внутрішнього виробництва згоди на керування, за умови легітимності влади. залишається беззаперечним для тих, чиє ім’я вона претендує на дію, у війні те, що є неконтрольованим і немислимим, створює умови, в яких втрачати більше нічого.
Занадто великий або занадто малий страх, а також те, де і як він використовується, може дестабілізувати тоталітарні режими. Коли закон втрачає сенс і замінюється владою і силою, влада делегітимізується, втрачається згода на керування, а порядок стає хаосом.
Гільєрмо дель Торо у своїй чудовій епосі про міграцію та расову рівність Carnival Row, сьомий епізод «Світ, що прийде», містить сцену, в якій двоє молодих наступників лідерства традиційно ворогуючих фракцій опиняються закоханими та потребуючими союзників у сюжеті, який переосмислює «Ромео і Джульєтту» Шекспіра; бунтівний геліон Джона Брейкспір запитує свою кохану-макіавеллістську Софі Лонгербейн: «Кому хаос корисний?» На що вона відповідає: «Хаос корисний для нас. Хаос — велика надія безсилих».
Як сказав мені Жан Жене в Бейруті майже сорок років тому, коли ми були оточені солдатами в будинку, який вони підпалили і ось-ось спалили заживо; «Коли немає надії, ми вільні робити неможливі речі, славні речі».
Опір завжди був війною на ножа. Цікава фраза, що; серед небагатьох слів і цілих фраз, які приходять до сучасної англійської мови незмінними від оригінальної скандинавської мови; krig på kniven. Його значення для нас просте; ті, хто хоче нас поневолити і хто відмовляється від усіх законів і будь-яких обмежень, не можуть ховатися ні за ким.
У будь-якому разі, оскільки цей принцип виражений у знаменитому сентенції Сартра у його п’єсі «Брудні руки» 1948 року, цитованої Францом Фаноном у його промові 1960 року «Чому ми використовуємо насильство» і зробленій безсмертним Малькольмом Ікс.
Чому відбувається ця страшна війна, у Маріуполі проводиться кампанія терору, яка включає страти, катування, організовані масові зґвалтування та торгівлю викраденими цивільними, захоплення цивільних заручників та використання примусової праці, канібалізм з використанням пересувних заводів, напади геноциду, знищення докази військових злочинів із використанням мобільних крематоріїв, що вказує на офіційне планування як частину кампанії терору та доказ того, що незліченні злочини проти людства у цій війні є не відхиленнями, а задумом, загрозою ядерного знищення європейських країн, які надсилають гуманітарну допомогу, і масою руйнування міст?
Російська завойовницька стратегія починається з постійних і невпинних бомбардувань і руйнувань лікарень, бомбосховищ, складів продовольства, енергосистем, водопостачання, коридорів гуманітарної допомоги та евакуації біженців; все, що могло б допомогти громадянам пережити облогу. Після того, як нічого не залишиться, починається кампанія терору як організовані масові зґвалтування, тортури, канібалізм та мародерство, а будь-які вижили поневолені або страчені. Це війна на геноцид і стирання, яка не має аналогів у сучасній Європі, крім облоги Сараєво; і тут я виступаю як свідок історії для обох.
Чому? Що може бути варте того, щоб придбати з вашою людяністю та людськістю вашої нації та народу?
Росія хоче завоювати Україну з тієї ж причини, чому Японія вторглася в Маньчжурію; тому що це промисловий центр, з якого можна почати завоювання світу, а тепловодні порти Маріуполя та Одеси є ключовими для цього імперського плану панування, а також для контролю над сухопутним коридором до Криму.
Шістдесят п’ять портів Чорного моря з’єднують Румунію, Болгарію, Грузію, Молдову, Туреччину, Росію та Україну, і всі вони із Середземним морем, домінування якого Росія довгий час спорила з Туреччиною в Лівії та Сирії. Якщо Росія має намір продовжити завоювання України разом із завоюванням Східної Європи, захоплення румунського порту Констанца відкриє для вторгнення весь Дунайський регіон. Чорне море залишається таким же важливим для панування в Середземному морі, Східній Європі, Північній Африці та Близькому Сході, як і тоді, коли Мітрідат VI Понтійський змагався за нього у війнах з Римською імперією або в битві при Галіполі, з яким ми, здається, приречені на боротьбу в Криму.
На кону в боротьбі на металургійному заводі в Маріуполі стоїть головний регіональний промисловий завод і стратегічний ресурс підтримки флоту, який вирішальний у відверненні російських військ і ресурсів від кампанії на Донбасі та у запобіганні повної колонізації Росією Криму та прибережної України. Відмова Росії в можливості переобладнати та ремонтувати свої кораблі з місцевих ресурсів може стати ключем до перемоги над вторгненням на українське узбережжя.
«Азовсталь» та «Ільїнський металургійний комбінат» також є величезною фортецею-лабіринтом, з якої можна вести оборону Маріуполя, як форт Святого Ельмо, з якого мальтійські лицарі зробили свій героїчний Останній бій.
Що зараз відбувається в Маріуполі, серед сум’яття і розрухи міста привидів, де російська армія дала волю розбещеності війни?
Коли Україна перехоплює ініціативу на півночі й штовхає Росію назад через кордон, а також починає змагатися та відвоювати Чорне море з приголомшливою перемогою, пошкодивши Москву, флагман російського Чорноморського флоту, якому захисники Зміїного острова дали славу Відповідь, жорстокі бої за порт і металургійний завод тривають, хоча Росія заявляла про капітуляцію тисячі українських морських піхотинців, маючи на увазі, що сам Маріуполь також здався.
На цю дезінформацію, спрямовану на волю українського народу відмовитися підкоритися і залишитися Нескореним, я кажу; По-перше, що Маріуполь безперечно знаходиться під окупацією і в руках ворога, але місто не здалося і ніколи не здалося. Команди самогубців, які добровільно зголосилися залишитися і боротися з ворогом, коли з’являться можливості, подбають про це, а мережі Опору серед її громадян чекають години Визволення.
Росіяни опублікували свою оцінку сил, зібраних тут на металургійному заводі: двадцять п’ятсот українців і чотириста іноземних добровольців Міжнародного легіону, включаючи бригаду Авраама Лінкольна, американців, які назвали себе на честь легендарного підрозділу громадянської війни в Іспанії. Інші досі тримають сам порт під контролем України, що вигідно будь-якій такій силі визволення, яка може привести флот до цієї боротьби.
По-друге, немає нічого безчесного в капітуляції, якщо це означає, що ви живете, щоб воювати ще один день, а 36-та бригада морської піхоти, яка на сорок шостий день героїчної оборони Маріуполя, оголосила в своєму останньому посланні світові, кілька днів тому, що їм нема з чим битися, ні боєприпасів, ні води, ні чого, і те, що вони або полонені, або мертві, несуть із собою лише честь у майбутнє, яке тепер мають вибрати інші.
Я ніколи не бачив капітуляції українців. Невимушено зайдіть на ворожий контрольно-пропускний пункт і, сміючись, потягніть шпильку на гранату, щоб відкрити шлях лікарняній вантажівці, щоб врятувати інших, так. Поділіться пляшкою отруєної горілки з ворожим сторожем і помріте разом, поки біженців супроводжують через ряди, так.
Таких людей неможливо перемогти. Застосування сили та насильства є крихким, а влада порожньою, коли вона не має легітимності, а лише жорстокі репресії для її підтримки; бо всі такі речі зазнають непокори й невіри.
Кожен, хто відмовляється підкоритися, стає Нескореним і вільний. Це свого роду перемога, проти якої не може перемогти жодна тиранія чи терор.
Я бачив, як лютий бородатий хлопець атакував пару російських танків із сокирою, бігаючи з укриття, щоб стрибнути на вежу і відрубати голову командиру, і зникав у руїнах, як тінь гніву, викликана болем, горем і страхом міста. . Називається Головою, в ньому Україна знайшла месника. Решта танкістів вирвалась і в паніці побігла, командир другого танка відкрив вогонь по дезертирам і фактично застрелив одного з них, а його по черзі застрелив російський побратим, який вийшов за ним з танка, поклав пістолет йому в голову, а потім просто пішов через вулицю з піднятими руками й перейшовши на бік. Солдат, який вибрав нашу спільну людяність, а не націоналізм і солідарність, а не розкол, тепер є командиром того танка, але з намальованим українським прапором. Святий Андрій, його кличуть.
Путін послав рабів, щоб підкорити вільний народ. Він забув поцікавитися, що станеться, коли раби об’єднаються зі своїми побратимами-жертвами тиранії, яких їх послали завоювати, на знак солідарності, щоб звільнитися?
У той час як російська армія має активний рух за мир і мережі солідарності, які працюють зі своїми українськими колегами, а також багато випадків дезертирства та заколотів, у тому числі підривних офіцерів, українці, часто заморожені, голодні й позбавлені боєприпасів, як засновники Америки, які перетнули Делавер з Вашингтоном у той фатальний Різдво 1776 року залишаються зухвалими і Нескореними.
Існує також легенда про Маріупольського Вовка, дівчину, яка, як вовк, розірвала своєму нападникові горло. Можливо, міф про війну; але я бачив, що залишилося від російського солдата. Кажуть, що зараз вона очолює команду жінок, які рятують інших від колекціонерів метеликів, солдатів, які захоплюють жінок для викрадення в Росію та торгівлі людьми як злочинний синдикат в російських військових. У ній Україна знайшла Гаррієт Табмен.
Минулого тижня група українських морських піхотинців прорвалася, щоб зв’язатися з елементами Азовської Національної гвардії, дуже впертими хлопцями, які тримали металургійний завод у похмурих умовах; але кілька зон конфлікту розгортаються і швидко змінюються. Російські офіцери намагалися змусити здатися з використанням цивільних заручників у іншому інциденті, але, наскільки мені відомо, не вдалося.
Військові злочини росіян пробудили опір перемоги чи смерті; як захисники під час облоги Мальти в 1565 році або Джордж Вашингтон, який придумав цю фразу як пароль у битві при Трентоні, українські солдати, цивільні партизани, включаючи сталеварів та інших, які озброїлися під час нападу Росії, і міжнародні добровольці, свідками яких я був, як лаялися клятва померти на місці, а не здати щось завойовнику не пройде спокійно.
Що буде далі? Як запитав Ленін у своєму есе про створення політичної партії, якій судилося змінити світ, що робити?
Сьогодні російсько-окупаційні війська встановлюють паспорти проїзду, необхідні для всіх людей на вулицях, починають захоплювати мирних жителів і відправляти їх у центри обробки, щоб вибирати одних у табори примусової праці, а інших для розстрілу, а також доступ у світ за межами Маріуполя та з Світ тут повністю оточений. Маріуполь має бути спустошений, населення узагальнено як мертве чи поневолене, а решта особи систематично вимирають.
Путін має намір не залишити нам нічого, щоб захищати і ні звідки воювати. І тим самим він звільнив нас, щоб ми розпочали наступну фазу боротьби і перенесли боротьбу з ворогом.
Іноді мені здається, що він взагалі не знає, як грати в цю гру.
На наше щастя, бути полковником КДБ – це не те саме, що бути професійним революціонером, і, здається, зробив з Путіна урізану та деформовану річ, обмеженого інтелекту та будь-якої моралі, ні прозорливого злого генія, ні втілення гегелівського світу… історичні сили, а лише наглядач за карцерською державою. Володимир Путін дуже схожий на Адольфа Ейхмана, як описала Ханна Арендт у своїй історичній роботі про Нюрнберзький процес.
Оскільки я вважаю свої цілі та завдання щодо війни очевидними для всіх, я не проти окреслити їх тут.
Перш за все, і крім усіх інших пріоритетів, оскільки тільки це по-справжньому покінчить із загрозою війни, ми повинні діяти солідарно з російськими народами, щоб допомогти змінити режим і звільнити Росію від тиранії Володимира Путіна та його олігархії.
По-друге, ми повинні принести пряму та особисту розплату Путіну, його олігархам, верховному командуванню, політичним союзникам і прихильникам, а також усім, хто причетний до військових злочинів в Україні.
По-третє, ми повинні знищити здатність Росії вести цю війну, особливо артилерію та аеродроми, які руйнують цілі міста на початковій фазі будь-якого такого нападу ворога.
По-четверте, ми повинні взяти контроль над Чорним морем або перешкодити Росії зробити це, заперечити його використання як стартовий майданчик для імперського завоювання і панування в Середземному морі, Європі, Африці та Близькому Сході.
Для цього останнього нам знадобиться піратський флот, і я знаю, де його знайти.
Тут всеохоплюючою стратегічною реальністю, яка повинна керувати нашими рішеннями, є той факт, що вже деякий час триває Третя світова війна, театри якої включають Росію, Америку, Сирію, Лівію, Білорусь, Казахстан, Нагірний Карабах, а тепер і Україну включно. її губернії Крим.
Якщо ми не зможемо зупинити цю війну імперського завоювання і панування тут, в Україні, де всі наші гуманітарні цінності та міжнародні закони порушуються з жорстоким дикістю, і дозволимо їй перетворитися на загальну глобальну війну між свободою та тиранією, я боюся, що світ може вступити в епоху тиранії та століть воєн, яких людство не переживе.
Бо рука Путіна лежить на кнопці нашого ядерного знищення й вимирання і кличе його, шепоче; «Звільни мене, і я зроблю тебе могутнім».
”圮地則行；圍地則謀；死地則戰“; як написав Сунь Цзи в одинадцятому розділі «Мистецтво війни» «На землі смерті боріться».
Цей принцип дій був мені колись продемонстрований в Анголі, під час битви при Куіто-Куанавале в 1988 році, в тактичній ситуації, подібній до нашої тут, у Маріуполі. Поки розгорталося видовище цієї грандіозної останньої битви в десятирічній визвольній боротьбі проти колоніалізму та апартеїду, я робив зло в тилу ворога в кущах. Тут я виявив загублений загін, переважно зулуський, але з радянськими та кубинськими добровольцями, який був оточений силами апартеїду.
Після доповіді про те, що я знав про місцевість, командній групі та короткої конференції кількома мовами, старий хлопець, який досі мовчав, піднявся з тіні намету, на обличчі якого без сорочки був страшний і чудовий шрам від кігтів лева. , і сказав; «Ми оточені та перевершені, без боєприпасів і, що ще гірше, без води, і ніхто не йде нам на допомогу. Ми повинні атакувати».
Сержант посміхнувся на це, ніби отримав чудовий подарунок, вийшов надвір і віддав наказ, якого, якщо пощастить, ви ніколи не почуєте; «Поправити багнети!»
І чоловіки, які ось-ось померли, вибухали піснею. «Усутху! Umkhonto wami womile!» «Мій спис спраглий», останнє.
Ми також можемо вийти переможцями в нашій війні на виживання проти навіть набагато більшого й могутнього ворога, як це зробили герої Куіто Куанавале, якщо ми випустимо повну волю та силу наших націй проти Російської імперії, що виникає, як об’єднане людство; особливо якщо ми робимо це проти його слабких місць і ліній зламу.
Україна є таким слабким місцем імперських амбіцій, а вона все ще чинить опір і залишається Нескореною. А російське вторгнення в Європу може бути зірвано політичними діями в Росії через рухи за демократію та мир, які кинули виклик тиранії Путіна.
Свобода, рівність, братерство – девіз революції, яка породила демократії в Америці та Франції; перші дві частини яких проголошують універсальні принципи людського буття, а третя частина, яка стосується того, що ми називаємо солідарністю, взаємозалежністю та нашим обов’язком піклуватися про інших, є інструментом для реалізації нашої свободи та рівності як вільного суспільства. рівних.
Ми можемо перемогти у тріумфі демократії над тиранією, солідарності над розколом і любові над ненавистю. Але це працює лише одним способом; ми повинні діяти як єдине об’єднане людство.
Russian
18.04.2022 Последняя битва под Мариуполем: бой на металлургическом заводе
Бои на Азовстали и металлургическом комбинате имени Ильина продолжаются; среди обширных лабиринтов и лабиринтов туннелей здесь, с его арсеналом, госпиталем, узлом связи и путями снабжения, как и в других подземных крепостях в Мариуполе и других местах, Сопротивление русской оккупации может вестись годами, если это необходимо. Машинист и лидер сталеваров, вооружившихся для обороны, по имени Большой Юрий даже присяжными устроил оружейный завод, который может бесконечно производить винтовки и боеприпасы. Это, к сожалению, не то же самое, что удерживать землю.
Мы спартанцы; наши жизни выигрывают время, чтобы наша цивилизация проснулась перед опасностью и угрозой фашистской тирании и империалистического завоевания.
Для Мариуполя и слишком многих жителей Украины это произойдет слишком поздно; никто не идет на помощь, и многим ее защитникам нечем сражаться в этот сорок седьмой день осады Мариуполя, начавшейся второго марта, и битвы, начавшейся 24 февраля.
Но еще не поздно для вас и ваших близких, кем бы вы ни были и где бы вы ни жили. Эта истина должна быть достаточной, как надежда на наше будущее.
Я говорю здесь как свидетель истории, который был в Мариуполе с 22 марта, и предлагаю это свидетельство от имени наших всеобщих прав человека в любой расплате, привлеченной к виновным в этом огромном и ужасном военном преступлении.
С самого начала это была битва воздушных и артиллерийских бомбардировок против самого города и гражданского населения, танков против стрелков, плоти против неопровержимой силы и ужаса, разделения против солидарности, ненависти против любви и страха против надежды. .
Здесь человеческая воля к свободе испытывается врагом, ликующим в объятиях чудовищного, чья политика и замыслы войны как террора с радостью и с открытым высокомерием власти превращают в инструмент полнейшее разрушение и геноцид, войну, в которой развязываются зверства и разврат. как тактика шока и трепета с намерением подчинения посредством выученной беспомощности и подавляющего и всеобщего страха.
Здесь, как и в Нанкине, и во множестве других мест, это вызывает не подчинение, а сопротивление. Политика — это страх как основа обмена, и в Исчислении страха, где ограниченный государственный террор против собственных граждан в сочетании с полным контролем информации может быть полезен внутри страны для производства согласия на управление при условии легитимности власти. не подвергается сомнению со стороны тех, чье имя претендует на то, чтобы действовать, на войне то, что является неконтролируемым и невообразимым, создает условия, в которых больше нечего терять.
Слишком много или слишком мало страха, а также то, где и как он используется, могут дестабилизировать тоталитарные режимы. Когда закон теряет смысл и заменяется властью и силой, власть утрачивает легитимность, теряется согласие на то, чтобы ею управляли, а порядок превращается в хаос.
Гильермо дель Торо в великолепной эпопее о миграции и расовом равенстве «Карнивал Роу», в седьмом эпизоде «Грядущего мира», есть сцена, в которой двое молодых преемников во главе традиционно соперничающих фракций оказываются влюбленными и нуждаются в союзниках в сюжетной линии, которая переосмысливает «Ромео и Джульетту» Шекспира; мятежный геллион Джона Брейкспир спрашивает свою макиавеллиевскую возлюбленную Софи Лонгербейн: «Кому полезен хаос?» На что она отвечает: «Хаос полезен для нас. Хаос — великая надежда бессильных».
Как сказал мне Жан Жене в Бейруте почти сорок лет назад, когда мы были окружены солдатами в доме, который они подожгли и собирались сжечь заживо; «Когда нет надежды, мы свободны делать невозможные вещи, славные вещи».
Сопротивление всегда было войной на нож. Любопытная фраза, что; среди нескольких слов и целых фраз, которые вошли в современный английский язык без изменений из оригинального норвежского языка; криг для ножа. Его смысл для нас прост; те, кто хочет поработить нас и кто отказывается от всех законов и всех ограничений, не могут ни за кем спрятаться.
Любыми необходимыми средствами, как этот принцип выражен в знаменитом изречении Сартра в его пьесе 1948 года «Грязные руки», процитированном Францем Фаноном в его речи 1960 года «Почему мы используем насилие» и увековеченном Малкольмом Икс.
Почему происходит эта страшная война, в Мариуполе кампания террора, которая включает в себя расстрелы, пытки, организованные массовые изнасилования и торговлю похищенными гражданскими лицами, захват гражданских заложников и использование принудительного труда, каннибализм с использованием передвижных заводов, геноцидные нападения, стирание доказательства военных преступлений с использованием мобильных крематориев, что указывает на официальное планирование как часть кампании террора и доказательство того, что бесчисленные преступления против человечности в этой войне являются не отклонением от нормы, а намеренно, угрозы ядерного уничтожения европейским странам, отправляющим гуманитарную помощь, и массовое разрушение городов?
Российская стратегия завоевания начинается с непрерывных и безжалостных бомбардировок и разрушений больниц, бомбоубежищ, складов продовольствия, энергосистем, водоснабжения, коридоров гуманитарной помощи и эвакуации беженцев; все, что может помочь гражданам пережить осаду. Как только ничего не остается, начинается кампания террора с организованными массовыми изнасилованиями, пытками, каннибализмом и грабежами, а все выжившие порабощаются или казнятся. Это война геноцида и стирания, которая не имеет аналогов в современной Европе, кроме осады Сараево; и здесь я говорю как свидетель истории обоим.
Почему? Что может стоить покупки с вашей человечностью и человечностью вашей нации и народа?
Россия хочет завоевать Украину по той же причине, по которой Япония вторглась в Маньчжурию; потому что это промышленный центр, из которого может быть начато завоевание мира, а тепловодные порты Мариуполя и Одессы являются ключом к этому имперскому плану господства, а также к контролю над сухопутным коридором в Крым.
Шестьдесят пять портов Черного моря соединяют Румынию, Болгарию, Грузию, Молдову, Турцию, Россию и Украину, и все они со Средиземным морем, господство над которым Россия давно оспаривает с Турцией в Ливии и Сирии. Если Россия намерена после завоевания Украины завоевать Восточную Европу, захват румынского порта Констанца откроет для вторжения весь Дунайский регион. Черное море остается столь же важным для господства в Средиземноморье, Восточной Европе, Северной Африке и на Ближнем Востоке, как это было, когда Митридат VI Понтийский боролся за него в своих войнах с Римской империей или в битве при Галлиполи, которые мы, похоже, обречены отыграть в Крыму.
На карту в битве на сталелитейном заводе в Мариуполе поставлено крупное региональное промышленное предприятие и стратегический ресурс для поддержания жизни флота, решающего в отвлечении российских войск и ресурсов от кампании на Донбассе и в предотвращении полной колонизации Россией Крыма и прибрежной Украины. Лишение России возможности переоборудовать и ремонтировать свои корабли за счет местных ресурсов может стать ключом к отражению вторжения на украинское побережье.
Металлургический комбинат «Азовсталь» и Ильинский металлургический комбинат — это также обширная и запутанная крепость, из которой можно вести оборону Мариуполя, подобно форту Святого Эльма, из которого мальтийские рыцари сделали свой последний героический бой.
Что происходит сейчас в Мариуполе, среди суматохи и разрухи города-призрака, где русская армия дала волю разврату войны?
Поскольку Украина перехватывает инициативу на севере и оттесняет Россию через границу, она начинает бороться и отвоевывать Черное море с ошеломляющей победой, выводя из строя «Москву», флагман российского Черноморского флота, которому защитники Змеиного острова дали знаменитую Ответ: ожесточенные бои за порт и сталелитейный завод продолжаются, хотя Россия заявила о сдаче в плен тысячи украинских морских пехотинцев, подразумевая, что сдался и сам Мариуполь.
На эту дезинформацию, направленную на волю украинского народа отказаться подчиниться и остаться непокоренным, я говорю; Во-первых, что Мариуполь, несомненно, находится под оккупацией и в руках врага, но город не сдался и никогда не сдастся. Об этом позаботятся отряды самоубийц, которые вызвались остаться и изводить врага, когда представится возможность, а сети Сопротивления среди ее граждан ждут часа Освобождения.
Русские опубликовали свою оценку сил, собранных здесь, на сталелитейном заводе, в двадцать пятьсот украинцев и четыреста иностранных добровольцев Интернационального легиона, включая бригаду Авраама Линкольна, американцев, которые назвали себя в честь легендарного подразделения гражданской войны в Испании. Другие до сих пор держат сам порт под украинским контролем, что выгодно любой силе Освобождения, которая может привлечь флот для этой битвы.
Во-вторых, нет ничего постыдного в капитуляции, если это означает, что вы будете жить, чтобы сражаться в другой день, и 36-я бригада морской пехоты, которая на сорок шестой день своей героической обороны Мариуполя заявила в своем последнем послании миру, несколько дней назад, что им не с чем сражаться, нет боеприпасов, воды, чего угодно, и то, что они либо пленники, либо мертвы, несет с собой только честь в будущее, которое теперь должны выбрать другие.
Я никогда не видел капитуляции Украины. Случайно зайдите на вражеский контрольно-пропускной пункт и, смеясь, вытащите чеку из гранаты, чтобы открыть путь для госпитального грузовика, чтобы спасти других, да. Поделитесь бутылкой отравленной водки с вражеским часовым и умрите вместе, пока беженцев провожают через строй, да.
Таких людей невозможно победить. Применение силы и насилия хрупко, а власть бесполезна, когда у нее нет легитимности, а только жестокие репрессии для ее поддержания; ибо все подобные вещи терпят неудачу в момент непослушания и неверия.
Тот, кто отказывается подчиниться, становится Непокоренным и свободен. Это своего рода победа, против которой не может победить ни тирания, ни террор.
Я видел, как свирепый бородач напал на пару русских танков с топором, выбежал из укрытия, прыгнул на башню, обезглавил командира и исчез в руинах, как тень гнева, вызванная городской болью, горем и страхом. . По прозвищу Палач, в нем Украина нашла мстителя. Остальные танкисты выскочили и в панике побежали, командир второго танка открыл огонь по дезертирам и фактически застрелил одного из них, а его в свою очередь застрелил однополчанин русский солдат, выскочивший за ним из танка, положил пистолет к голове, а затем просто перешел улицу с поднятыми руками и перешел на другую сторону. Солдат, который предпочел нашу общность человечности национализму и солидарность дивизии, теперь командир этого танка, но с нарисованным на нем украинским флагом. Святой Андрей, его зовут.
Путин послал рабов покорять свободный народ. Он забыл спросить, что происходит, когда рабы объединяются со своими собратьями-жертвами тирании, которых они были посланы завоевывать, в знак солидарности действий ради собственного освобождения?
В то время как в российской армии есть активное движение за мир и сети солидарности, работающие со своими украинскими коллегами, и много случаев дезертирства и мятежа, включая фраги офицеров, украинцы, часто замерзшие, голодные и без боеприпасов, как основатели Америки, которые пересекли Делавэр с Вашингтоном в то судьбоносное Рождество 1776 года остаются дерзкими и непокоренными.
Существует также легенда о мариупольской Волчице, девушке, которая, как волк, разорвала нападавшему глотку. Возможно, миф о войне; но я видел, что осталось от рассматриваемого русского солдата. Говорят, что теперь она возглавляет команду женщин, которые спасают других от Коллекционеров бабочек, солдат, захвативших женщин для похищения в Россию и торговли ими в качестве преступного синдиката внутри российской армии. В ней Украина нашла Гарриет Табман.
На прошлой неделе группа украинских морских пехотинцев прорвалась, чтобы соединиться с частями Национальной гвардии «Азов», очень упрямыми ребятами, которые удерживали сталелитейный завод в тяжелых условиях; но несколько зон конфликта разворачиваются и быстро меняются. Российские офицеры пытались заставить сдаться, используя гражданских заложников в другом инциденте, но, насколько мне известно, безуспешно.
Военные преступления русских пробудили сопротивление победы или смерти; как защитники при осаде Мальты в 1565 году или Джордж Вашингтон, придумавший эту фразу в качестве пароля в битве при Трентоне, украинские солдаты, гражданские партизаны, включая сталелитейщиков и других, которые вооружились, когда Россия напала, и международные добровольцы, которых я видел ругающимися клятва скорее умереть на месте, чем отдать что-либо завоевателю, не пройдет спокойно.
Что происходит дальше? Как спрашивал Ленин в своем сочинении об основании политической партии, которой суждено было изменить мир, что делать?
Сегодня российские оккупационные силы вводят проездные документы, необходимые всем лицам на улицах, начинают захватывать мирных жителей и отправлять их в центры обработки для отбора одних в исправительно-трудовые лагеря, других для суммарной казни, а также полный доступ в мир за пределами Мариуполя и из мир здесь оцеплен полностью. Мариуполь должен быть опустошен, население подсчитано как мертвое или порабощенное, а оставшиеся люди систематически истреблены.
Путин намерен оставить нам нечего защищать и не от чего воевать. И тем самым Он освободил нас, чтобы начать следующую фазу борьбы и дать бой врагу.
Иногда мне кажется, что он вообще не умеет играть в эту игру.
К счастью для нас, быть полковником КГБ — это не совсем то же самое, что быть профессиональным революционером, и, кажется, Путин превратился в усеченного и уродливого, с ограниченным интеллектом и без всякой морали, не визионерского злого гения и не воплощения гегелевского миросозерцания. исторические силы, а всего лишь надзиратель за карцеральным государством. Владимир Путин очень похож на Адольфа Эйхмана, как описала Ханна Арендт в своей исторической работе о Нюрнбергском процессе.
Поскольку я считаю свои цели и задачи в отношении войны очевидными для всех, я не возражаю изложить их здесь для вас.
Прежде всего и помимо всех других приоритетов, поскольку только это действительно положит конец угрозе войны, мы должны действовать солидарно с русскими народами, чтобы способствовать смене режима и Освобождению России от тирании Владимира Путина и его олигархии.
Во-вторых, мы должны привлечь к прямой и личной ответственности Путина, его олигархов, высшее командование, политических союзников и приспешников, а также всех причастных к военным преступлениям на Украине.
В-третьих, мы должны разрушить способность России вести эту войну, особенно артиллерию и аэродромы, которые превращают в руины целые города в начальной фазе любого такого нападения противника.
В-четвертых, мы должны захватить контроль над Черным морем или помешать России сделать это, чтобы лишить его возможности использовать его в качестве стартовой площадки для империалистического российского завоевания и господства в Средиземноморье, Европе, Африке и на Ближнем Востоке.
Для этого нам понадобится пиратский флот, и я знаю, где его найти.
Здесь всеобъемлющей стратегической реальностью, которая должна определять наши решения, является тот факт, что уже некоторое время продолжается Третья мировая война, театры военных действий которой включают Россию, Америку, Сирию, Ливию, Беларусь, Казахстан, Нагорный Карабах, а теперь и Украину. ее губернии Крым.
Если мы не сможем остановить эту войну империалистического завоевания и господства здесь, в Украине, где все наши гуманитарные ценности и международные законы нарушаются с жестокой жестокостью, и позволим ей превратиться во всеобщую глобальную войну между свободой и тиранией, я боюсь, что мир может вступить в эпоху тирании и столетий войн, которых человечество не переживет.
Ибо рука Путина держится на кнопке нашего ядерного уничтожения и вымирания, и она зовет его шепотом; «Освободи меня, и я сделаю тебя сильным».
”圮地則行；圍地則謀；死地則戰“; как писал Сунь-Цзы в одиннадцатой главе «Искусства войны»: «На земле смерти сражайся».
Этот принцип действия мне когда-то продемонстрировали в Анголе, во время битвы при Куито-Куанавале в 1988 году, в тактической ситуации, похожей на нашу здесь, в Мариуполе. Пока разворачивалось зрелище этой грандиозной финальной битвы за многолетнюю освободительную борьбу против колониализма и апартеида, я творил зло в тылу врага в кустах. Здесь я обнаружил потерянный отряд, в основном зулусский, хотя и с советскими и кубинскими добровольцами, который был окружен силами апартеида.
После доклада командной группе того, что я знал об этом районе, и краткого совещания на нескольких языках из тени палатки встал старик, который до сих пор хранил молчание, чье тело без рубашки демонстрировало устрашающий и великолепный шрам от когтей льва. , и сказал; «Мы окружены и в меньшинстве, без боеприпасов и, что еще хуже, без воды, и никто не идет нам на помощь. Мы должны атаковать».
Сержант улыбнулся при этом, как будто ему был дан чудесный подарок, вышел наружу и отдал приказ, который, если вам повезет, вы никогда не услышите; «Крепить штыки!»
И люди, собиравшиеся умереть, разразились песней. «Усуту! Умконто вами вомиле!» «Мое копье хочет пить», последнее.
Мы тоже можем выйти победителями из нашей войны за выживание против даже гораздо более обширного и могущественного врага, как это сделали герои Куито-Куанавале, если мы высвободим всю волю и силу наших народов против зарождающейся Российской империи, как Единое Человечество; особенно если мы делаем это против его слабых мест и линий перелома.
Украина – такое слабое место имперских амбиций, а она еще сопротивляется и остается Непокоренной. И российское вторжение в Европу может быть остановлено политическими действиями в России через движения за демократию и мир, которые бросили вызов путинской тирании.
Свобода, Равенство, Братство — вот девиз Революции, породившей демократии в Америке и Франции; первые две части которого провозглашают универсальные принципы человеческого бытия, а третья часть, в которой говорится о том, что мы называем солидарностью, взаимозависимостью и нашим долгом заботиться о других, способствует реализации нашей свободы и равенства как свободного общества. равных.
Мы можем одержать победу в триумфе демократии над тиранией, солидарности над разделением и любви над ненавистью. Но это работает только одним способом; мы должны действовать как единое человечество.
India’s month long electoral festival of democracy soon begins, in which both the resilience and fragility of democratic systems and societies will be on display, for Modi has imprisoned his viable opposition and has flooded films and other media with state propaganda. His objective, like that of Trump here in America, is the subversion of democracy and rulership as a tyrant, and both weaponize theocratic authority and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil in service to power.
Despair not, for there are signs of hope that change is possible in India, and with it as in America the Restoration of Democracy from capture by fascist tyranny.
First and most hopeful is the wave of mass protests which erupted four years ago as an urban front allied with the rural Maoist insurgency which controls a third of India and as a class war and revolutionary struggle against caste
As I wrote in my post of February 25 2020, India Erupts in Riot and Revolution as Protests Against Trump’s Visit Become a Nationwide Street Fight Against Modi’s Fascism of Race and Faith; Protests against Trump and Modi’s Nuremberg Rally became riots, open street fighting in Delhi against the government’s thugs, and then a nationwide revolution of the poor and those excluded and othered on the basis of race and faith against Modi’s fascist state, but also a classic struggle against plutocracy, semifeudal oligarchic looting and enslavement of eighty percent of the people by the wealthiest and most privileged two percent. Just as in so many nations throughout the world, hope is reborn as the old order collapses and a new society begins to emerge.
India awakes, and begins to throw off her chains. For this we owe a nod to Trump, whose personally odious and reprehensible inhumanity brought legions of ordinary Indians into the streets in every major city, who see in his support of Modi’s boundless barbarism and tyranny a threat of foreign intervention and the subversion of India’s independence, as well as the threat of reinforcement and codification which international recognition of Hindu Nationalism as a legitimate government would bring.
All this occurs against a background of unrestrained plutocratic looting of India’s resources, a majority living in extreme poverty and feudalistic slavery, and the long game of the Naxalite Maoist insurgency which today controls a third of rural India. Class war has riven the nation and erupted everywhere in its cities today; predictable when most people are starving, without clean water or any healthcare, are worked mercilessly and are without hope.
As Jean Genet said to me when he swore me to the Oath of the Resistance in Beirut 1982 during the Israeli siege; “When there is no hope, one may do impossible thing, glorious things.” In India, conditions are near ideal for revolutionary seizures of power, regime change, and a total reimagination and transformation of the state and of society.
Second, electoral politics and legislative and judicial action offer hope as aligned forms of struggle with mass action, as they did in the elections in Bengal and the ruling of the Kerala Supreme Court which both rejected Hindu Nationalism.
As I wrote in my post of January 30 2020, India Begins to Throw Off the Chains of Hindu Nationalism: a wave of mass protests over the new citizenship law and a challenge in the Supreme Court by the state of Kerala; On this day which marks the 1948 assassination of Gandhi by a Hindu Nationalist, India begins to throw off the chains of Hindu Nationalism: a wave of mass protests over the new citizenship law and a challenge in the Supreme Court by the state of Kerala.
At issue are two key questions of a democratic society; the franchise, who gets to vote, and citizenship, who gets to be Indian. The problem with Modi’s Hindu Nationalist government is that valorizing Hinduism as a unifying principle in the long struggle against British colonialism and imperialist rule has resulted not only in leveraging independence, but also in othering non-Hindu peoples to whom the Nationalists would now deny citizenship with all its legal protections.
In a single stroke of the pen Modi would transform a pluralistic and inclusive model democracy into a fascist state of blood, faith, and soil. With himself as its tyrant.
India is a nation of staggering complexity and diversity, in which all things are layered with historical meanings and resonances which extend throughout ten thousand years of continuous civilization, three times older than Babylon as dated from landforms described in the Vedas, humankind’s oldest known written records. India contains 67 cultures, and among its 850 languages and dialects 14 are official languages. Until Independence, it was a checkerboard of 562 sovereign states, each with its own laws, armies, postal systems, aristocracies; and was further divided by the persistent though now illegal caste system into around three thousand layers of social stratification, each with its own laws and rules governing social functions. To this list one must add divisions of faith, though Hinduism is broadly inclusive and contains two different sets of deities and mythologies from the original Dravidians and the later Aryan migration, from which Jainism and Buddhism are branches, and the Sikhs are a reconciliation hybrid of Hinduism and Islam.
How does one unite such a nation in resistance to a brutal and treacherous occupation like that of the British Empire? Appeals to nationalism and to identity are powerful tools in the struggle for liberation; the problem with such postcolonial successor states is that they inherit the identitarian, militaristic, and authoritarian structures and characteristics of their revolutionary period as tyrannies of force and control.
This is a universal process which can be avoided both by organizing revolution as a nonhierarchical anarchic movement in the stage of struggle rather than under a charismatic leader, as the Revolution is doing now throughout the world, and also by birthing nations founded on freedom and the equality and universal rights of all human beings.
By this I mean exactly as it sounds; just government must treat all persons as equal under the law regardless of any differences, such as those of gender, race, faith, language or historical origin, or any other kinds of identity lesser than that of our common human species.
A free society of equals requires each of us to be exactly the same under the law.
As I wrote in my post of May 6 2021, A Faultline Opens in the Monolith of Hindu Nationalism: West Bengal Renounces Modi’s Fascist Tyranny; Beneath the hammer of the Pandemic, a faultline opens in the monolith of Hindu Nationalism in India as the people of West Bengal renounce Modi’s fascist tyranny as a deceiver which has betrayed them to their deaths.
In a system where divisions of blood, faith, and soil are endemic and pervasive at all levels of society and as fear and hate have been weaponized by authority in identitarian politics to subjugate a nation, the horrific consequences of the government’s abandonment of its peoples have struck like a lightning bolt through India and produced a stunning electoral victory for democracy.
Tyranny and fascist state terror have begun to fracture in India; it only remains to be seen whether disruption and solidarity of action can become revolutionary struggle and liberation, and a new united India forged.
On the Third Front of the international community there is hope as well, for Modi blinks when put in check by exposure beyond his control.
As I wrote in my post of February 6 2021, Checking State Terror and Tyranny With Exposure: Rihanna and Greta Rally the World in Solidarity with India’s Farmers; As written by Alisha Ebrahimji for CNN; “On Tuesday, the Barbados-born superstar asked her 100 million followers, “Why aren’t we talking about this?!” and linked to a CNN story examining how India has cut off internet access around New Delhi after violent clashes between police and farmers protesting new agriculture laws approved in September.”
“More than half of India’s working population comes from the agricultural sector, according to India’s most recent Census in 2011. The laws could affect millions of Indian farmers and consumers, and they could also impact global consumers who rely on India for ingredients like pepper, turmeric and chilli.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi says the new laws will give farmers a chance to decide their own prices and sell directly to private businesses like grocery chains. That, he says, would cut out the middle man, in this case the Agricultural Produce Market Committee.
Farmers argue the new laws will help big companies drive down prices. They say that while farmers could sell crops at higher prices if the demand is there, they could struggle with lower prices in years when there is too much supply in the market.
Farmers argue that the laws will ravage their livelihoods and create an opportunity for large, private companies to exploit the agriculture sector.
India’s Supreme Court has put the farm laws on hold until further notice.”
Greta Thunberg, humankind’s moral compass, immediately amplified and endorsed this message, saying “via Twitter that she stood “in solidarity with the #FarmersProtests in India.” She reiterated her commitment after threats from Modi’s government; ‘”I still #StandWithFarmers and support their peaceful protest,” she tweeted. “No amount of hate, threats or violations of human rights will ever change that. #FarmersProtest.”
What I find interesting in this is that Modi’s government backed down under exposure and international pressure, a government of Hindu ethnic, sectarian, patriarchal, and oligarchic fascism and the dominion of hegemonic elites which is infamous for its use of genocide and state terror in the repression of dissent.
Had Rihanna and Greta been Indian women speaking out against the tyranny and cruelty of the state instead of celebrities using the power of their pulpits from the safety of foreign shores, they would now be martyrs in the cause of liberty, having been silenced like so many others by being raped, murdered, mutilated, and their corpses hung in public as a warning to other uppity women.
But not if the world is watching.
Not if we resist.
Not if we stand in solidarity to defy authority and our subjugation to tyranny and fascist division.
The use of force to subjugate others is fragile and cannot survive united challenge, disobedience, and resistance.
I say to you again what I have long said both in warning and as a message of hope for the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased;
We are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
Six weeks, 969 million voters, 2,600 parties: India’s mammoth election explained
भारत में लोकतंत्र का एक महीने तक चलने वाला चुनावी त्योहार जल्द ही शुरू हो रहा है, जिसमें लोकतांत्रिक प्रणालियों और समाजों की लचीलापन और नाजुकता दोनों प्रदर्शित होंगी, क्योंकि मोदी ने अपने व्यवहार्य विपक्ष को कैद कर लिया है और फिल्मों और अन्य मीडिया को राज्य के प्रचार से भर दिया है। उनका उद्देश्य, यहाँ अमेरिका में ट्रम्प की तरह, एक तानाशाह के रूप में लोकतंत्र और शासन को नष्ट करना है, और दोनों ही सत्ता की सेवा में ईश्वरीय सत्ता और रक्त, विश्वास और मिट्टी के फासीवाद को हथियार बनाते हैं।
निराश न हों, क्योंकि आशा के संकेत हैं कि भारत में परिवर्तन संभव है, और इसके साथ ही अमेरिका की तरह फासीवादी अत्याचार से लोकतंत्र की बहाली भी संभव है।
पहली और सबसे आशाजनक जन विरोध की लहर है जो चार साल पहले ग्रामीण माओवादी विद्रोह के साथ संबद्ध एक शहरी मोर्चे के रूप में उभरी थी, जो भारत के एक तिहाई हिस्से को नियंत्रित करता है और एक वर्ग युद्ध और जाति के खिलाफ क्रांतिकारी संघर्ष के रूप में उभरा था।
जैसा कि मैंने 25 फरवरी 2020 की अपनी पोस्ट में लिखा था, ट्रम्प की यात्रा के खिलाफ विरोध प्रदर्शन के रूप में भारत में दंगा और क्रांति भड़क उठी, जो मोदी की नस्ल और आस्था के फासीवाद के खिलाफ एक राष्ट्रव्यापी सड़क लड़ाई बन गई; ट्रम्प और मोदी की नूर्नबर्ग रैली के खिलाफ विरोध प्रदर्शन दंगे बन गए, सरकार के गुंडों के खिलाफ दिल्ली में खुली सड़क पर लड़ाई, और फिर मोदी के फासीवादी राज्य के खिलाफ नस्ल और विश्वास के आधार पर गरीबों और बहिष्कृत लोगों की एक राष्ट्रव्यापी क्रांति, बल्कि एक क्लासिक संघर्ष भी धनिकतंत्र, अर्धसामंती कुलीनतंत्रीय लूट और सबसे धनी और सबसे विशेषाधिकार प्राप्त दो प्रतिशत लोगों द्वारा अस्सी प्रतिशत लोगों को गुलाम बनाने के खिलाफ। ठीक वैसे ही जैसे दुनिया भर के कई देशों में, आशा का पुनर्जन्म होता है क्योंकि पुरानी व्यवस्था ढह जाती है और एक नया समाज उभरना शुरू हो जाता है।
भारत जाग गया, और अपनी जंजीरें उतार फेंकना शुरू कर दिया। इसके लिए हम ट्रम्प के प्रति आभार व्यक्त करते हैं, जिनकी व्यक्तिगत रूप से घृणित और निंदनीय अमानवीयता ने आम भारतीयों को हर प्रमुख शहर में सड़कों पर ला दिया, जो मोदी की असीमित बर्बरता और अत्याचार के उनके समर्थन में विदेशी हस्तक्षेप और भारत की स्वतंत्रता को नष्ट करने का खतरा देखते हैं। , साथ ही सुदृढीकरण और संहिताकरण का खतरा जो एक वैध सरकार के रूप में हिंदू राष्ट्रवाद की अंतरराष्ट्रीय मान्यता लाएगा।
यह सब भारत के संसाधनों की अनियंत्रित लूट, अत्यधिक गरीबी और सामंती गुलामी में रहने वाले बहुसंख्यक और नक्सली माओवादी विद्रोह के लंबे खेल की पृष्ठभूमि के खिलाफ होता है जो आज ग्रामीण भारत के एक तिहाई हिस्से को नियंत्रित करता है। वर्ग युद्ध ने देश को तोड़ दिया है और आज इसके शहरों में हर जगह भड़क उठा है; अनुमान तब लगाया जा सकता है जब अधिकांश लोग भूख से मर रहे हों, बिना साफ़ पानी या किसी स्वास्थ्य सेवा के, निर्दयतापूर्वक काम कर रहे हों और आशाहीन हों।
जैसा कि जीन जेनेट ने मुझसे कहा था जब उन्होंने 1982 में इजरायली घेराबंदी के दौरान बेरूत में प्रतिरोध की शपथ दिलाई थी; “जब कोई आशा नहीं होती, तो कोई असंभव कार्य, गौरवशाली कार्य कर सकता है।” भारत में, सत्ता पर क्रांतिकारी कब्ज़ा, शासन परिवर्तन और राज्य तथा समाज की संपूर्ण पुनर्कल्पना और परिवर्तन के लिए स्थितियाँ लगभग आदर्श हैं।
दूसरा, चुनावी राजनीति और विधायी और न्यायिक कार्रवाई जन कार्रवाई के साथ संघर्ष के संरेखित रूपों के रूप में आशा प्रदान करती है, जैसा कि उन्होंने बंगाल के चुनावों और केरल सुप्रीम कोर्ट के फैसले में किया था, जिसमें दोनों ने हिंदू राष्ट्रवाद को खारिज कर दिया था।
जैसा कि मैंने 30 जनवरी 2020 की अपनी पोस्ट में लिखा था, भारत ने हिंदू राष्ट्रवाद की जंजीरों को तोड़ना शुरू कर दिया है: नए नागरिकता कानून पर बड़े पैमाने पर विरोध प्रदर्शन की लहर और केरल राज्य द्वारा सुप्रीम कोर्ट में चुनौती; इस दिन, जो 1948 में एक हिंदू राष्ट्रवादी द्वारा गांधी की हत्या का प्रतीक है, भारत ने हिंदू राष्ट्रवाद की जंजीरों को तोड़ना शुरू कर दिया है: नए नागरिकता कानून पर बड़े पैमाने पर विरोध प्रदर्शन की लहर और केरल राज्य द्वारा सर्वोच्च न्यायालय में चुनौती।
मुद्दे पर लोकतांत्रिक समाज के दो प्रमुख प्रश्न हैं; मताधिकार, किसे वोट देना है, और नागरिकता, किसे भारतीय होना है। मोदी की हिंदू राष्ट्रवादी सरकार के साथ समस्या यह है कि ब्रिटिश उपनिवेशवाद और साम्राज्यवादी शासन के खिलाफ लंबे संघर्ष में एक एकीकृत सिद्धांत के रूप में हिंदू धर्म को महत्व देने के परिणामस्वरूप न केवल स्वतंत्रता का लाभ मिला है, बल्कि अन्य गैर-हिंदू लोगों को भी, जिन्हें राष्ट्रवादी अब नागरिकता देने से इनकार कर देंगे। इसके सभी कानूनी संरक्षण।
कलम के एक झटके में मोदी एक बहुलवादी और समावेशी मॉडल लोकतंत्र को खून, विश्वास और मिट्टी के फासीवादी राज्य में बदल देंगे। अपने आप को इसके तानाशाह के रूप में।
भारत चौंका देने वाली जटिलता और विविधता का देश है, जिसमें सभी चीजें ऐतिहासिक अर्थों और अनुगूंजों से भरी हुई हैं, जो दस हजार वर्षों की निरंतर सभ्यता तक फैली हुई हैं, जो मानव जाति के सबसे पुराने ज्ञात लिखित रिकॉर्ड वेदों में वर्णित भू-आकृतियों के अनुसार बेबीलोन से तीन गुना पुरानी है। . भारत में 67 संस्कृतियाँ हैं और इसकी 850 भाषाओं और बोलियों में से 14 आधिकारिक भाषाएँ हैं। आज़ादी तक, यह 562 संप्रभु राज्यों का एक बिसात था, जिनमें से प्रत्येक के अपने कानून, सेनाएँ, डाक प्रणालियाँ, अभिजात वर्ग थे; तथापि सतत द्वारा इसे और विभाजित किया गया था
अब अवैध जाति व्यवस्था सामाजिक स्तरीकरण की लगभग तीन हजार परतों में विभाजित हो गई है, जिनमें से प्रत्येक के अपने कानून और सामाजिक कार्यों को नियंत्रित करने वाले नियम हैं। इस सूची में किसी को विश्वास के विभाजन को जोड़ना होगा, हालांकि हिंदू धर्म व्यापक रूप से समावेशी है और इसमें मूल द्रविड़ और बाद के आर्य प्रवासन से देवताओं और पौराणिक कथाओं के दो अलग-अलग सेट शामिल हैं, जिनमें से जैन और बौद्ध धर्म शाखाएं हैं, और सिख एक सुलह संकर हैं हिंदू धर्म और इस्लाम.
ब्रिटिश साम्राज्य जैसे क्रूर और विश्वासघाती कब्जे के विरोध में ऐसे राष्ट्र को कोई कैसे एकजुट कर सकता है? मुक्ति के संघर्ष में राष्ट्रवाद और पहचान की अपील शक्तिशाली उपकरण हैं; ऐसे उत्तर-औपनिवेशिक उत्तराधिकारी राज्यों के साथ समस्या यह है कि उन्हें अपने क्रांतिकारी काल की पहचानवादी, सैन्यवादी और सत्तावादी संरचनाएं और विशेषताएं बल और नियंत्रण के अत्याचार के रूप में विरासत में मिलती हैं।
यह एक सार्वभौमिक प्रक्रिया है जिसे किसी करिश्माई नेता के बजाय संघर्ष के चरण में एक गैर-पदानुक्रमित अराजक आंदोलन के रूप में क्रांति का आयोजन करके, जैसा कि क्रांति अब दुनिया भर में कर रही है, और स्वतंत्रता और स्वतंत्रता पर आधारित राष्ट्रों को जन्म देकर दोनों से बचा जा सकता है। सभी मनुष्यों की समानता और सार्वभौमिक अधिकार।
इससे मेरा तात्पर्य बिल्कुल वैसा ही है जैसा यह लगता है; न्यायसंगत सरकार को कानून के तहत सभी व्यक्तियों के साथ किसी भी अंतर की परवाह किए बिना समान व्यवहार करना चाहिए, जैसे कि लिंग, नस्ल, विश्वास, भाषा या ऐतिहासिक मूल, या हमारी सामान्य मानव प्रजाति से कम किसी अन्य प्रकार की पहचान।
समानों के स्वतंत्र समाज के लिए आवश्यक है कि कानून के तहत हममें से प्रत्येक बिल्कुल एक जैसा हो।
जैसा कि मैंने 6 मई 2021 की अपनी पोस्ट में लिखा था, हिंदू राष्ट्रवाद के अखंड में एक दोष रेखा खुलती है: पश्चिम बंगाल ने मोदी के फासीवादी अत्याचार का त्याग किया; महामारी के प्रहार के नीचे, भारत में हिंदू राष्ट्रवाद के अखंड स्तंभ में एक दोष रेखा खुलती है क्योंकि पश्चिम बंगाल के लोग मोदी के फासीवादी अत्याचार को एक धोखेबाज के रूप में त्याग देते हैं जिसने उन्हें धोखा देकर उनकी मृत्यु कर दी है।
ऐसी व्यवस्था में जहां रक्त, विश्वास और मिट्टी का विभाजन समाज के सभी स्तरों पर स्थानिक और व्यापक है और एक राष्ट्र को अपने अधीन करने के लिए पहचानवादी राजनीति में भय और नफरत को सत्ता द्वारा हथियार बनाया गया है, सरकार द्वारा अपने लोगों को त्यागने के भयानक परिणाम सामने आए हैं यह भारत पर बिजली की तरह गिरा और लोकतंत्र को शानदार चुनावी जीत मिली।
भारत में अत्याचार और फासीवादी राज्य का आतंक टूटना शुरू हो गया है; केवल यह देखना बाकी है कि क्या विघटन और कार्रवाई की एकजुटता क्रांतिकारी संघर्ष और मुक्ति बन सकती है, और एक नए एकजुट भारत का निर्माण हो सकता है।
अंतर्राष्ट्रीय समुदाय के तीसरे मोर्चे पर भी आशा है, क्योंकि मोदी अपने नियंत्रण से परे जोखिम के कारण नियंत्रण में आ जाते हैं।
जैसा कि मैंने 6 फरवरी 2021 की अपनी पोस्ट में लिखा था, एक्सपोज़र के साथ राज्य के आतंक और अत्याचार की जाँच: रिहाना और ग्रेटा ने भारत के किसानों के साथ एकजुटता में विश्व रैली की; जैसा कि अलीशा इब्राहिमजी ने सीएनएन के लिए लिखा है; “मंगलवार को, बारबाडोस में जन्मी सुपरस्टार ने अपने 100 मिलियन फॉलोअर्स से पूछा, “हम इस बारे में बात क्यों नहीं कर रहे हैं?” और सीएनएन की एक कहानी से जुड़ा हुआ है जिसमें यह जांच की गई है कि सितंबर में स्वीकृत नए कृषि कानूनों का विरोध कर रहे किसानों और पुलिस के बीच हिंसक झड़पों के बाद भारत ने नई दिल्ली के आसपास इंटरनेट का उपयोग कैसे बंद कर दिया है।
“2011 में भारत की सबसे हालिया जनगणना के अनुसार, भारत की आधी से अधिक कामकाजी आबादी कृषि क्षेत्र से आती है। कानून लाखों भारतीय किसानों और उपभोक्ताओं को प्रभावित कर सकते हैं, और वे वैश्विक उपभोक्ताओं को भी प्रभावित कर सकते हैं जो काली मिर्च जैसी सामग्री के लिए भारत पर निर्भर हैं।” हल्दी और मिर्च.
प्रधान मंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी का कहना है कि नए कानून किसानों को अपनी कीमतें खुद तय करने और किराना श्रृंखला जैसे निजी व्यवसायों को सीधे बेचने का मौका देंगे। उनका कहना है कि इससे बिचौलिए, इस मामले में कृषि उपज बाज़ार समिति, को बाहर कर दिया जाएगा।
किसानों का तर्क है कि नए कानून बड़ी कंपनियों को कीमतें कम करने में मदद करेंगे। उनका कहना है कि अगर मांग हो तो किसान ऊंची कीमत पर फसल बेच सकते हैं, लेकिन बाजार में बहुत अधिक आपूर्ति होने पर उन्हें उन वर्षों में कम कीमतों से जूझना पड़ सकता है।
किसानों का तर्क है कि कानून उनकी आजीविका को तबाह कर देंगे और बड़ी, निजी कंपनियों के लिए कृषि क्षेत्र का शोषण करने का अवसर पैदा करेंगे।
भारत के सर्वोच्च न्यायालय ने अगली सूचना तक कृषि कानूनों पर रोक लगा दी है।
मानव जाति की नैतिक मार्गदर्शक ग्रेटा थुनबर्ग ने तुरंत इस संदेश को बढ़ाया और इसका समर्थन करते हुए कहा, “ट्विटर के माध्यम से कि वह “भारत में #FarmersProtests के साथ एकजुटता से खड़ी हैं।” मोदी सरकार की धमकियों के बाद उन्होंने अपनी प्रतिबद्धता दोहराई; उन्होंने ट्वीट किया, ”मैं अभी भी #StandWithFarmers और उनके शांतिपूर्ण विरोध का समर्थन करती हूं।” “किसी भी तरह की नफरत, धमकियाँ या मानवाधिकारों का उल्लंघन इसे कभी नहीं बदलेगा। #FarmersProtest।”
मुझे इसमें जो दिलचस्प लगता है वह यह है कि मोदी की सरकार एक्सपोज़र और अंतरराष्ट्रीय दबाव के कारण पीछे हट गई, यह हिंदू जातीय, सांप्रदायिक, पितृसत्तात्मक और कुलीनतंत्रीय फासीवाद की सरकार थी और आधिपत्यवादी अभिजात वर्ग का प्रभुत्व था जो कुख्यात है
असहमति के दमन में नरसंहार और राजकीय आतंक के इस्तेमाल के लिए।
यदि रिहाना और ग्रेटा विदेशी तटों की सुरक्षा से अपने मंच की शक्ति का उपयोग करने वाली मशहूर हस्तियों के बजाय राज्य के अत्याचार और क्रूरता के खिलाफ बोलने वाली भारतीय महिलाएं होतीं, तो वे अब स्वतंत्रता के लिए शहीद होतीं, इतने सारे लोगों की तरह चुप करा दी गई होतीं दूसरों के साथ बलात्कार किया गया, हत्या की गई, अंग-भंग किया गया और उनकी लाशों को अन्य ऊंची महिलाओं के लिए चेतावनी के रूप में सार्वजनिक रूप से लटका दिया गया।
लेकिन तब नहीं जब दुनिया देख रही हो.
नहीं अगर हम विरोध करते हैं.
तब नहीं जब हम सत्ता और अत्याचार तथा फासीवादी विभाजन के प्रति अपनी अधीनता को चुनौती देने के लिए एकजुटता से खड़े हों।
दूसरों को वश में करने के लिए बल का प्रयोग नाजुक है और एकजुट चुनौती, अवज्ञा और प्रतिरोध से बच नहीं सकता है।
मैं आपसे फिर से वही कहता हूं जो मैंने लंबे समय से चेतावनी के रूप में और शक्तिहीन और वंचितों, खामोश और मिटाए गए लोगों के लिए आशा के संदेश के रूप में कहा है;
हम अनेक हैं, हम देख रहे हैं और हम ही भविष्य हैं।
Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2024 Edition
World Literature: India
History
The Discovery of India: History, Culture, Politics, Religion and Philosophy of India, Jawaharlal Nehru
Ka, Roberto Calasso
Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God, Jonah Blank
India: A Sacred Geography, Diana Eck
The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent before the coming of the Muslims, A.L. Basham
The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History, Sanjeev Sanyal
Many Many Many Gods of Hinduism, The Reign of the Vedic Gods, The Ascent of Vishnu and the Fall of Brahma, Rama and the Early Avatars of Vishnu: plus Ramayana abridged, Swami Achuthananda
The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback, Yashaswini Chandra
Gem in the Lotus: The Seeding of Indian Civilization, The Mughal Throne, The Mughal World, Abraham Eraly
Akbar: The Great Mughal, Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire, Heroines: Powerful Indian Women of Myth and History, Ira Mukhoty
The Queen of Jhansi, by Mahasweta Devi
Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, Heinrich Zimmer
The Myths and Gods of India, Alain Daniélou
Alberuni’s India, Embree ed.
A History of the Sikhs: Volume 1: 1469-1839, Volume 2: 1839-2004, Khushwant Singh
City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, The Last Mughal, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire, William Dalrymple
An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India, Inglorious Empire: what the British did to India, Nehru: The Invention of India, India: From Midnight to the Millennium, Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-First Century, Shashi Tharoor
Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire, Why Gandhi Still Matters: An Appraisal of the Mahatma’s Legacy, Modern South India: A History from the 17th Century to Our Times, Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten, Rajmohan Gandhi
India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, Ramachandra Guha
Freedom at Midnight, Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre
In Light of India, Octavio Paz
Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians: The On and Off the Field Story of Cricket in India and Beyond, Boria Majumdar
Indian Cinema: The Bollywood Saga, Dinesh Raheja, Jitendra Kothari
Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City, Ranjani Mazumdar
100 Bollywood Soundtracks Every Music Lover Ought To Hear, P.C. Hille
Bollywood’s India: Hindi Cinema as a Guide to Contemporary India, Rachel Dwyer
Literature
Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems, Mīrābāī, Robert Bly & Jane Hirshfield (Translators)
Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda, Miller trans
Origin of the Young God: Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhava, Heifetz trans
Speaking of Siva, Folktales From India, Ramanujan
The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic, The Guide, The Grandmother’s Tale and other stories, R.K. Narayan
The Illustrated Mahabharata: The Definitive Guide to India s Greatest Epic, DK publisher
Song of Draupadi, Ira Mukhoti
Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation, Stephen Mitchell
The Ramayana: A Modern Retelling of the Great Indian Epic, The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering, Siva: The Siva Purana Retold, Devi: The Devi Bhagavatam Retold, Blue God: A Life of Krishna, Ramesh Menon
Ramana, Shankara and the Forty Verses: The Essential Teachings of Advaita,
Alan Jacobs, Ramana Maharshi, Adi Shankaracharya,
The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary
by Patañjali, Edwin F. Bryant editor
The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakārikā, Nāgārjuna, Jay L. Garfield trans
The Essential Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo, Robert A. McDermott ed
Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
The Gandhi Reader, Jack ed
Entering the Stream, Bercholz & Kohn eds
Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man, U.R. Ananthamurthy
The Chessmaster and His Moves, The Meaning of India, Raja Rao
The World of Premchand, Ruben trans
A Tagore Reader, Chakravarty ed
Collected Stories, Clear Light of Day, Fire on the Mountain, The Artist of Disappearance, Anita Desai
Coolie, Selected Short Stories, Mulk Raj Anand
Out of India: stories, Ruth Jhabvala
Midnight’s Children, Shame, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Shalimar the Clown, Fury, Salman Rushdie
Show Business, The Great Indian Novel, Shashi Tharoor
A Suitable Boy, Golden Gate, Vikram Seth
Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
The Namesake: A Portrait of the Film Based on the Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri,
Mira Nair
Jasmine, The Holder of the Word, The Tree Bride, Desireable Daughters, Miss New India, Darkness, Bharati Mukherjee
Ibis Trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, Flood of Fire), The Glass Palace, Gun Island, In an Antique Land, Amitav Ghosh
The Mistress of Spices, The Palace of Illusions, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The Widows of Malabar Hill, The Sleeping Dictionary, Sujata Massey
The God of Small Things, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, My Seditious Heart: Collected Nonfiction, The Shape of the Beast: Conversations with Arundhati Roy, Things that Can and Cannot Be Said: Essays and Conversations (with John Cusack, Daniel Ellsberg, and Edward Snowden), Azadi, India: A Mosaic, Arundhati Roy
The White Tiger, Between the Assassinations, Aravind Adiga
The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, Arun Joshi
The Atlas of Lost Beliefs, Ranjit Hoskote
The Far Field, Madhuri Vijay
The Peacock Throne, Harilal & Sons, The Confessions of Sultana Daku, Sujit Saraf
Narcopolis, The Book of Chocolate Saints, Collected Poems, Jeet Thayil
Delhi, The Sunset Club, The Portrait of a Lady, The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous, End of India, Khushwant Singh
The Braided River: A Journey Along the Brahmaputra, Samrat Choudhury
English, August: An Indian Story, Upamanyu Chatterjee
Torch of Liberty 
